All posts tagged with poetry

April 10, 2024

Michael Larrain’s “The Life of A Private Eye”

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Member Writing & Art, Writing

As we continue to celebrate National Poetry Month, Here is Part 3 of Michal Larrain’s epic poem. Thanks to those who have shared Comments – the author and your editors would love to hear what you think! This new episode, in our opinion, is a real doozy – and so is Katherine Willmore’s exclusive, exemplary artistic rendering. Watch for it! The Life of A Private Eye A Noirvelette in Verse By Michael Larrain Part 3: The Spider Pool She had trained enormous Amazonian butterflies, each the size of a man’s hand, to land upon her person in a pattern either random or preordained, and stay there for a space of hours, forming a living evening gown, their wings slowly fanning, black and green bands of breathing velvet. Speculation was running rampant as to her technique….

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April 9, 2024

National Poetry Month 2024: 3 Poems by Salvatore Difalco

Posted by Malik White in Member Writing & Art, Writing

National Poetry Month continues on strong with long time FC contributor Salvatore Difalco. Difalco has proven himself in the past to be a master of imagery, and he delivers once again with these touching poems. Take a look, you won’t be disappointed! Bleeding From The Ears I feel like the moon is attacking me tonight under the crosshatched shade of palm trees, my amnesia an impenetrable white wall. If I see stars they do not shine above, they shine inside my head, among its clouds. I wear a rumpled sheet, my clothes and shoes nowhere to be found. The palm trees sigh like sleepy aunts, but do not speak of the laguna and the black surrounding hills. Shapes advance and withdraw in the charcoal darkness, accompanied by flashes of eyes. Nothing comes to me, nothing,…

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April 8, 2024

2024 Cow Creek Chapbook Prize

Posted by Malik White in Writing

*Featured image courtesy of Alvaro Serrano on Unsplash Attention all poets! In honor of National Poetry Month, we want to bring your attention to a contest by Cow Creek Chapbook. Check out the information below if you are interested. From Cow Creek Chapbook: Judge – Traci Brimhall Submission Deadline – May 15th, 2024Style and Subject – As long as the poems challenge and capture the imagination, we want to see them.Prize – $1,000 and 25 author copies.Submit – For more guidelines and our submission portal, visit our website: https://www.cowcreekchapbook.org/ Best of luck to anyone that submits. Don’t be afraid to let us know if you win, we love to show off our writers!

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April 2, 2024

National Poetry Month 2024: Four Sonnets by Kai Jensen.

Posted by Malik White in Member Writing & Art

Kai kicks off NPM with an excellent collection of themed poems. Welcome to FC, Kai. Enjoy the blue ribbon! Desperado (Boneless Café) These short, bright autumn days, the sky a lighter blue than summer’s as though it’s fading with the year. The bay nudges into the land saying, Look what wealth of sparkles I bring. The fronds of the palms along Lamont Street dangle, relaxed, like a gunslinger’s fingers above the holster – or is that me, confident I can draw something out of all this loveliness to fly and pierce your heart? And like the desperado, I’m willing to gamble in this dangerous game of letting beauty enter us, my own flawed life. Boneless Café again Karen, on her way to a meeting, covered in zig-zags, stops to say hello as the track riffs…

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April 1, 2024

Fictional Cafe’s National Poetry Month, 2024

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Member Writing & Art, Writing

For the 4th year, Fictional Cafe spends the month of April celebrating poets and their poetry. April Fool’s Day notwithstanding, welcome to America’s National Poetry Month! We have a full month of great poetry, written by our own Coffee Club members, to share with you. Two highlights: please welcome our new Poet-in-Residence PS Conway! Just last month PS published his first collection of poetry in a book entitled Echoes Lost in Stars. It was an immediate hit bestseller. Grab your copy from your favorite bookseller. This guy loves to write, and we’re saving a special spot for an excerpt in two weeks. But first up for the month is a frequent contributor, Michael Larrain, who has written a six-part epic poem entitled “The Life of A Private Eye.” It’s engrossing, and we just published Part…

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December 5, 2023

“Happy Birthday to Us,” Poetry by Bruce McRae

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Happy Birthday To Us I arrived mid-century. A flaw in the seamed dimensions. A stone dropped down a cistern. Already ancient, wonderstruck, fire in my gills and hair, life-naked. I was born all of a sudden. A shift in the given paradigm. A handheld globe of teeth and fur standing athwart of all of history. A faint itch, a rudimentary element, I appeared as if quite by accident. A figure blurred by the side of the road, an eleventh planet, a tiger’s teardrop, a snowman in the parson’s orchard. Heavy with dreams, I was awoken early for my rough appointment. A manic isotope in a fat-lit cavern. One of those molecular contrivances you hear so much about. A mighty atom. A coy abstraction. ** Reality The rules of the game remain couched in esoteric phrases…

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November 27, 2023

“As the Storm Arrives,” Poetry by David Dephy

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

As the Storm Arrives Silence with its excellent syntax is so real, rhythm compensates breathe when the stream of our thoughts shapes our lives, we are the same and always seek each other when silence between us dies. Are we all identical in nature, different in degree? Children can smell the wind more than pets, as you know they prowl the streets, and the smell of the wind will color them lilac, though for now only the moon rises, and each tree, remains as the heart of a wind, each wind a string on time’s lyre, divine love reflected upon its own reflection, wickedness kindling that flame of darkness, but when the hero strikes her anvil of freedom, the vision returns, here the mist is a single thought floating within islands of silence, and the…

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November 13, 2023

“Wednesday in a Factory Town,” Poetry by John Grey

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

WEDNESDAY IN A FACTORY TOWN Sunlight succumbs to weather and chimney, fat gray clouds, much billowing of smoke. In a town of factories, faces stare, solemn and blackened like stove flues, through windows, as red eyes make tunnels in the gloom. Rivers wait like standing water for more dust and grime to fuel their current. Shoppers cough their way from store to store. Kids grub up without even trying. No sky as once was promised. Not even the church, chiming three o’clock, can get back God’s attention. ** EMMA, A MONTH BEYOND THE DEATH OF HER FATHER She can’t swerve to avoid the dead possum on the road without crashing through huddled sobbing mourners and braking just in time so she doesn’t topple down into the freshly dug hole, and smash headlong into her father’s…

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October 11, 2023

“Taking Daddy’s Photograph,” Poetry by Gopi Kottoor

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Taking Daddy’s Photograph Daddy’, I said, ‘Stand by those shoe flowers, there are so many of them blooming this morning’. Daddy took a step back. There is a strange beauty, in the hibiscus sheen, when, from the fresh green the hundred shoe flowers mount red. Daddy now looked like he was some God coming to me in a dream of sacrifice. He puffed hard at his cigarette, its red butt putting all the hibiscuses to shame. Looking on into the camera eye, Daddy said, ‘Be careful, son, The sun is still in front of you. Don’t let in too much light’. I remember, I knelt down, so the lens could take the shade, holding him right. Dad smiled, as though in the camera eye Lay his only woman. And in that stained Hibiscus silence, Time…

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August 9, 2023

“Coddled by Mountains,” Poetry by PS Conway

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

coddled by mountains watercolor skyline we have forgotten the artist but recall the art on a wall, set apart while all the while Cézanne lies face down in a field surrounded, coddled by mountains carefully crafted by the same god he helped re-create ** seaside ministrations bundled warm and dry midst the juniper subtle scents of pine and lavender blend to blunt the violence of raging surf and the winds that lament with banshee song first days of February, tides carry reminders of winter’s devastations flotsam mottles waves snowflakes cascade white blur the aplomb of the horizon line springtide seems so far away, here amongst the rocks and sand, no driftwood dry enough to light a fire no reeds to weave a holy rood nor to silence the dogged banshee keen the poet has denied…

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