Vita Poetica | Poetry

Vita Poetica 1/25/23 Vita Poetica 1/25/23

Bookshelf

by Sean O’Neill

These parti-colored tomes,
that rank themselves
by some haphazard logic
only chance can winkle out,
are each a brimming casket
like a capsule of a stealthy mind
that has disgorged its light.

Vita Poetica 7/18/22 Vita Poetica 7/18/22

A Small World Smaller Yet: A Cenotaph

by Steven R. Weiner

from obituaries in The New York Times of people who died from infection with Covid-19

The barber and his scissors died.
What she did was read, & draw, and read some more.
A hummingbird & puppeteer, she flapped her own wings.

Vita Poetica 7/16/22 Vita Poetica 7/16/22

Night Calls

by Stephen Reilly

The jasmines thick, plentiful

tonight, the perfumed spirits

of aging matrons from the Fifties,

women of my grandmothers'

generation, women who

Vita Poetica 7/15/22 Vita Poetica 7/15/22

Dustfully

by Phocas

And then left to roam and to play on the blank, empty page, what freedom and rapt holy summons rolling, tumbling fields across and thrumming deep inside the ground in the very roots and tendrils of every tree and

Vita Poetica 7/15/22 Vita Poetica 7/15/22

Spiritual Exercise

by Marda Messick

My friend told me the man who was my enemy

has lost his rage along with his words. She’d seen

a video of him, happy, stroking a mechanical cat.

Vita Poetica 7/15/22 Vita Poetica 7/15/22

From Isaiah

by Remi Recchia

Vita Poetica 7/14/22 Vita Poetica 7/14/22

Where We Come From

by Gabriella Brand

Use any milk, Holstein heavy, scummy white, or teat-bloated mother’s milk, thin and sudsy as dishwater, with a bluish hue like an old wound. Heat it up.

Vita Poetica 7/14/22 Vita Poetica 7/14/22

A Nick, to the Heart, Is a Fatal Wound

by E.V. Noechel

My arms feel so empty.

I stand 12lbs short, a little dog less. I guess

losing just two-thirds of a pound of flesh

per year should be a bargain.

Vita Poetica 7/14/22 Vita Poetica 7/14/22

Morning Ruckus

by Mira Martin-Parker

Look, God’s fighting with himself again. All ones and zeros. All lines and circles. Light and shadow, going at it. Look how he flails about. Talking to himself.