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inspirations: images & words
Now available! The first collection of poetry inspired by the prompts page!
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anger
Emily Ramser is a high school author living part time in North Carolina and California. She has had work published in a small school anthology and in online literary magazines such as The Crocodile Journal and Spinozablue. Emily works with Stage of Life as a featured blogger and on the team of a local magazine based at Living Word Church. She wishes to be published so that she might touch the world with her words. Visit her blog.
anger
By Emily Ramser
anger
bolting
rushing
slamming against the door,
rattling, rattling, doorknob
broken
dangling
dangling // one wire // hand // left holding on
circle in the wood // passage to the stars
the anger steals
thieving hands, thriving in a world
of deceit
our hands reaching
down
save us from anger
they beg
anger
By Emily Ramser
anger
bolting
rushing
slamming against the door,
rattling, rattling, doorknob
broken
dangling
dangling // one wire // hand // left holding on
circle in the wood // passage to the stars
the anger steals
thieving hands, thriving in a world
of deceit
our hands reaching
down
save us from anger
they beg
ICU
Patty Cole's most recent poem to appear here was Meditation (March 2012).
ICU
By Patty Cole
Outside this room in ICU,
February's snow spits
at the window, swirls
around street lamps below.
You lie warm, unaware of time,
how it hovers over you like
a failed romance—neither partner
knowing when to leave.
I never realized you
are my every second
until this minute. I can't
guarantee the world
will remember you. I can
only testify you were here.
I lean, say Mamma,
it's ok to go as if I need
to set you free. You quiver,
rattle; your hand releases mine.
I shut my eyes, watch you
gather your black taffeta
scalloped skirt, float away,
light and whippy—a feather
I can't quite catch.
ICU
By Patty Cole
Outside this room in ICU,
February's snow spits
at the window, swirls
around street lamps below.
You lie warm, unaware of time,
how it hovers over you like
a failed romance—neither partner
knowing when to leave.
I never realized you
are my every second
until this minute. I can't
guarantee the world
will remember you. I can
only testify you were here.
I lean, say Mamma,
it's ok to go as if I need
to set you free. You quiver,
rattle; your hand releases mine.
I shut my eyes, watch you
gather your black taffeta
scalloped skirt, float away,
light and whippy—a feather
I can't quite catch.
Bored Hearts
Greg Wood is a retired English teacher and coach who has lived for 66 years in Delmar DE/MD on the Delmarva Peninsula. He has also worked in the construction industry in steel fabrication and home building. He earned a BA and an MEd from Salisbury University, Salisbury MD. Greg has 3 sons, 7 grandchildren, and one newly minted great grandchild. Visit his blog.
Bored Hearts
By Greg Wood
Shuffle and flip and shuffle again
I press my card at your side of
The table and look for a response
In diamonds so that I can dump
On you
A queen
You are most slick and grin
And shove a spade my way
Digging that having a long
Run I
Cannot escape
I wish I could club you
Bored Hearts
By Greg Wood
Shuffle and flip and shuffle again
I press my card at your side of
The table and look for a response
In diamonds so that I can dump
On you
A queen
You are most slick and grin
And shove a spade my way
Digging that having a long
Run I
Cannot escape
I wish I could club you
A Chance Will Tell
John Swain lives in Louisville KY. His work has appeared recently at BluePrint Review, Red Fez, and Up the Staircase Quarterly.
A Chance Will Tell
By John Swain
Lace of white sycamores
stripped in passage
as rain took rust off nails
that boarded the old house
from staying
as the river rose to the hill
in a bliss of turbulence.
The stacks and tower held blue fire
like an acrid sky
of vertical water
as I then twisted my limbs
to let down
from the wooden fencing
where a chance will tell.
I looked to the abandoned
for the secret of escape.
A Chance Will Tell
By John Swain
Lace of white sycamores
stripped in passage
as rain took rust off nails
that boarded the old house
from staying
as the river rose to the hill
in a bliss of turbulence.
The stacks and tower held blue fire
like an acrid sky
of vertical water
as I then twisted my limbs
to let down
from the wooden fencing
where a chance will tell.
I looked to the abandoned
for the secret of escape.
Invocation
William Ryan Hilary has had poems published in Junk, 40oz Bachelors, The Wilderness Review, and Aquirelle's print anthology, Poets Amongst Us III. His prose has been published in The Midway Review. Bless them all for having him. Ryan studied English at Vassar, where he was accepted into the competitive Senior Composition program. In other words, he was allowed to submit creative writing instead of a real thesis. Somehow this Ryan chap also earned an MA from Union Theological Seminary in philosophy and theology. Ryan will always feel uncomfortable writing about himself in the third person ... Mr. Torrance. He will use humor to distract from his madness.
Invocation
By William Ryan Hilary
Amuse me!
Nothing is as nothing was
Now emptiness is and blindness
And all the spaces
And all those "things" forgotten
Or unheard are
Suddenly important.
This will be the hour of something.
The clamorous grief of a dead slave's voice
Rising to an orchestral, bitter peak.
I was their familiar stranger
Sailing the poet's night tyreme
Drifting the surface of the salty universe
While waiting for the Son to come up.
As the ancients invoked their gods
I invoked the abandoned dead
Indians, slaves, martyred women.
In the distant clamor
I sang
Through an unanticipated storm.
Invocation
By William Ryan Hilary
Amuse me!
Nothing is as nothing was
Now emptiness is and blindness
And all the spaces
And all those "things" forgotten
Or unheard are
Suddenly important.
This will be the hour of something.
The clamorous grief of a dead slave's voice
Rising to an orchestral, bitter peak.
I was their familiar stranger
Sailing the poet's night tyreme
Drifting the surface of the salty universe
While waiting for the Son to come up.
As the ancients invoked their gods
I invoked the abandoned dead
Indians, slaves, martyred women.
In the distant clamor
I sang
Through an unanticipated storm.
Parallax
Nicole Yurcaba's most recent poem to appear here was Midnight Thoughts (April 2012).
Parallax
By Nicole Yurcaba
... and I had imagined that,
hand in hand
we would walk
the gravel hill's incline,
cowering
from peering passers-by gazes.
threatening to assume
more than half of what they saw.
Parallax
By Nicole Yurcaba
... and I had imagined that,
hand in hand
we would walk
the gravel hill's incline,
cowering
from peering passers-by gazes.
threatening to assume
more than half of what they saw.
Go Through This
John De Herrera is a writer/artist/activist who lives and works in Santa Barbara SC. Visit his website.
Go Through This
By John De Herrera
It's all about moving mountains;
crisp jabs when your arms are tired;
budging a boulder when it seems so set.
And then, you have a dream with a cat—
A Siamese, as a matter of fact.
You look up from this and see twins, with fins,
skating across ice chips of a galaxy
and think how much happier you'd be
if you didn't have to go through this,
fighting your way to a kiss.
Go Through This
By John De Herrera
It's all about moving mountains;
crisp jabs when your arms are tired;
budging a boulder when it seems so set.
And then, you have a dream with a cat—
A Siamese, as a matter of fact.
You look up from this and see twins, with fins,
skating across ice chips of a galaxy
and think how much happier you'd be
if you didn't have to go through this,
fighting your way to a kiss.
[E]Motional Vacancies
Amy Huffman's most recent poem to appear here was Diversity Rules (February 2011).
[E]Motional Vacancies
By Amy Huffman
I watch you in the mirror. Hoping
our eyes will meet. In reflection,
we appear nearer than
we actually are. Objects
and objections distorting. Until
we are scaled to fit neatly inside
each other['s lives]. A perception
of connection hovers at the edge
of distance. Is that really so far
to fall? I remember you
in a different frame: closer but still
closed. But which is rationality?
Conception is the final goal
of futility. Bursting [with] dreams,
I blink and the instant is gone. You are
intervisioned with another scape[goat].
I shepherd myself back to sanity. Tomorrow
will beget another chance at granting
intimacy. Though by image or imagery
still waits to be answered.
[E]Motional Vacancies
By Amy Huffman
I watch you in the mirror. Hoping
our eyes will meet. In reflection,
we appear nearer than
we actually are. Objects
and objections distorting. Until
we are scaled to fit neatly inside
each other['s lives]. A perception
of connection hovers at the edge
of distance. Is that really so far
to fall? I remember you
in a different frame: closer but still
closed. But which is rationality?
Conception is the final goal
of futility. Bursting [with] dreams,
I blink and the instant is gone. You are
intervisioned with another scape[goat].
I shepherd myself back to sanity. Tomorrow
will beget another chance at granting
intimacy. Though by image or imagery
still waits to be answered.
Joined
Sandra Forte-Nickenig's most recent poem to appear here was Peaceably (April 2012).
Joined
By Sandra Forte-Nickenig
They arrive
safely bound
separate
yet as close
as raindrops
mother and
father now
bound for the
ocean edge
the children
slowly reach
the pier and
release the
inner shell
pouring their
freed ashes
to the waves
wind gusts join
swift swirling
particles
ashes to
ashes and
ashes to
water crest
together
Joined
By Sandra Forte-Nickenig
They arrive
safely bound
separate
yet as close
as raindrops
mother and
father now
bound for the
ocean edge
the children
slowly reach
the pier and
release the
inner shell
pouring their
freed ashes
to the waves
wind gusts join
swift swirling
particles
ashes to
ashes and
ashes to
water crest
together
Impractical Beauty
William C Ross' most recent poem to appear here was Another View (April 2012).
Impractical Beauty
By William C Ross
On rare days in spring and fall,
when he was working in the fields,
she stole an hour away
from the washboard and churn,
and planted bulbs and seeds
in the unpromising ground.
Nothing would come of the effort
that could be eaten or sold,
nothing that the children could wear.
They were merely rows of impractical beauty.
Daffodils and daisies, snowdrops and snowflowers.
Neighbors envied the colors,
and soon planted flowers of their own.
Seed after seed, season after season,
bulbs surviving against all reason.
Withering heat and winter's snow
could not force death on the life below.
All the houses are gone now.
And the families that lived there.
Only a rough stone chimney stands,
a silent sentinel in the empty miles
where a strip mall lurks on the horizon,
and morning glory vines climb the sunflower stalks
along the old rows of impractical beauty.
Impractical Beauty
By William C Ross
On rare days in spring and fall,
when he was working in the fields,
she stole an hour away
from the washboard and churn,
and planted bulbs and seeds
in the unpromising ground.
Nothing would come of the effort
that could be eaten or sold,
nothing that the children could wear.
They were merely rows of impractical beauty.
Daffodils and daisies, snowdrops and snowflowers.
Neighbors envied the colors,
and soon planted flowers of their own.
Seed after seed, season after season,
bulbs surviving against all reason.
Withering heat and winter's snow
could not force death on the life below.
All the houses are gone now.
And the families that lived there.
Only a rough stone chimney stands,
a silent sentinel in the empty miles
where a strip mall lurks on the horizon,
and morning glory vines climb the sunflower stalks
along the old rows of impractical beauty.
