A Note from Poetry Editor, Emily K. Michael: For our Winter 2023-2024 Poetry section, we offer you a poem by our youngest contributor. Vala, age 10, who submitted a poem (written when she was nine) about her disabled sister, and it is a bright light for us at Wordgathering. We love Vala’s work because it gets at the heart of what poetry is for: a call to beauty and a new way to imagine the world. It’s a brief and clear example of how poetry can change the world.
Poetry in this issue:
- Vala Chu McAllister, Beautiful
- Bailey Dunn, 250 Water Lilies
- Makena Metz, The Desert
- Tim Murphy, For These Brief Moments
- Michael Northen, To Larry Eigner; Summa
- Camilla H. Pollock-Flynn, Bereaving
- Nicholas S. Racheotes, Cave Art
- Ron Riekki, Mister; I had a PTSD counselor say this to me one time; Have you had hallucinations?; In the military, when they would hit us in the skull; On the final day of your enlistment in the military, they hand out the PTSD
- Jen Stein, The clinical manifestations of bipolar I increase in the springtime; In praise of constant motion; We are, if nothing else, explorers; Aphantasia/mapping; It’s 5:30 am and
- Margaret D. Stetz, Nightbirds
- J. Tommy White, A poem that does not flatten
- Rebecca Wood, Care Team; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Soul Smells Comfort
- Claudia Wysocky, Stargazing Love: Letter to Sis
Editor’s Note: Each of these poems is accompanied by an audio recording of the poem.
Read poetry by Clark A. Pomerleau in the Gatherer’s Blog published in this issue of Wordgathering.
Poetry can be submitted to Wordgathering at wordgathering@syr.edu. Please review our Submission Guidelines prior to submission.