Tag: International Poetry Month April 2023

Posted in General Interest, interNational Poetry Month, Poems/Poetry, Poets/Writers, Writing

Departure, Arrival | Julia Knobloch

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Pico-Robertson, Before Departure

A back alley glows in apricot and pink
seven trumpets praise the early sun
Crows sit on wires like purple sparks
palm trees worship the wind, their fronds clatter
like plastic blinds in a sparsely furnished bedroom
 
June gloom stretches into July
A skateboard stumbles over rotten dates
Marine layer is just another term for fog
but the beaches in the west are always open
 
The hot months I love to greet will arrive
after I have traveled to a summer in decline
My peach garden will be gone when I return
others will harvest what they plant
sit on dunes and squint their eyes
watch the sun set behind mid-century balconies
contemplate desert colors from the snow
 
Now that the silent neighborhoods light up 
again, I must leave
although I still don’t know what happened
to the silver hoops I forgot
pool-side on Shenandoah
next to a pile of cherry pits, another layer of my soul
The Beautiful Cityscape
©2023 Binod Dawadi

Arrival

In the first week, sleep comes any hour, hunger early
when the pillar of dawn climbs up the stone wall
in gray and blue, and the neighbors have sex, again
 
In the space between jet-lag and transition
exhilaration and exhaustion
water from the shower engulfs my skin
an orange glow
It seems easy to wash away age and memories 
longing to emerge
to exhale, to play a wind instrument
 
With gusto, I eat olives and labneh, warm pita
with za’atar from the Bukharian baker
I can’t write a line but walk far and beyond
in somnambulant serenity
through alleys that smell of fresh detergent
moth powder and worn ceramic tiles
 
I nod and smile and some smile back
I am not deaf but mute
I see but I don’t know how I am seen
I log my journey of discount and preparation

©2023 Julia Knobloch
All rights reserved

Julia Knobloch…

…is a poet and literary event organizer studying to be a rabbi. As part of her studies, she is living this year in Jerusalem.

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The 2023 (Inter)National Poetry Month BeZine Blog Bash

Pastel of European Robin perched on a small branch by Tom Higgins ©2021
Art: European Robin, pastels, ©2021 Tom Higgins
Posted in General Interest, interNational Poetry Month, poem, Poems/Poetry, Writing

from Hiraeth | Mike Stone

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A Place I Never Was
pastels ©2023 jsburl

Hiraeth

from “The Sylvan Dialogues”
Somewhere deep inside me
Is a longing for a place I never was
In a time I’ve never been
In a home I never had.
There is a feeling that belongs
To a person I never occupied.
There is a dream that is
More real than any reality.
It is a bird that flies through the
Night and can never land,
Whose home is my breast.
August 16, 2022

Blanks Blanks!

Blanks blanks
Another shouted
Smoking gun in hand
As a man crumpled
To the ground
One night long ago,
Just as another man
Shouts blanks blanks
As democracy crumples
To the ground
These days.
January 27, 2023

Echoes

Sitting next to a piano
In the dim light from another room
Reaching for an ivory key from memory
An echo from long ago
Sitting on a couch behind my aunt
As she sat on her piano bench
Both hands tentatively fingering the keys
How I loved her graceful movements
In my youth perhaps I felt that
If I could only fill the world with love
Perhaps I could feel its echo.
February 9, 2023

The Histories of the Future

I’ve often wondered what would
The histories of the future be.
Would they be as far from the mark
As the futures of our many pasts?
Would our pessimisms or optimisms
Prove as unfounded as our other
Beliefs and prejudices
That betray us? Silence and
Inaction are the unsung heroes
Who would save our lemming selves
From running off the cliffs
Unwittingly.
March 4, 2023

©2023 Mike Stone
All rights reserved

Mike Stone…

…was born in Columbus Ohio, USA, in 1947. He graduated from Ohio State University with a BA in Psychology. He served in both the US Army and the Israeli Defense Forces. Mike moved to Israel in 1978 and lives in Raanana. He has self-published ten books of poetry, four novels, a book of short stories, and a book of essays. Mike is married to Talma. They have 3 sons and 8 grandchildren.

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Uncollected Works

The 2023 (Inter)National Poetry Month BeZine Blog Bash

Pastel of European Robin perched on a small branch by Tom Higgins ©2021
Art: European Robin, pastels, ©2021 Tom Higgins
Posted in General Interest, interNational Poetry Month, Poems/Poetry, poetry, Poets/Writers

Eternal Memories Souls | Dessy Tsvetkova

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Eternal painted melody

Carry on
the rhythm
of bubbling air.
Sing with the ocean wind.
Step on jiggling sand
of the magic dunes.
The moments are there
to breath as twinned
with birds,
to fill the eyes with sand
and twisting tunes.
Embrace the streets
full of beats of hearts,
make a wish,
send your ivy thoughts
to the chronicles of the eternal time.
Each glossy belief
will enrich the shine of stars,
the paradigm of life
is to add your miniature
to the giant canvas of space,
if you can, with chime.

Memories 

The memories are sailing birds with us.
They make us travelling in time.
The cruise is sometimes sad ash in dust,
but often bright they really shine.
They float as feathers in the lake,
as autumn leaves they dance.
The memories are time for break.
We see ourselves in a glance.
The memories, the bridges of the moments,
I swim with you like surfer grabs the waves,
I travel back if I need some adornments.
Through you I grow and go on to behave.
My orange shining memories,
come when I need you, please!

The souls

Wherever I go,
the birds are right nearby.
Whatever was done,
It's always a moment to fly.
Whoever I meet,
I leave there a smile.
Wherever was taken,
It gives back Devine.
Some people are birds,
they are blessed by the sky.
Some others are shadows
and use other's shine.
Some persons are fishes,
They float into plasma
and reach deep to arteries,
Some others are stones,
They don't make a sign.
But they can build mountains
if needed as high as the Everest,
And back to the species,
I prefer to fly...

To S.

He had a light shadow.
His figure was holding on
to a straight shovel.
When he was walking,
among the beds the weeds disappeared.
The wind was always his way.
Birds ate from his palms ...
As soon as he smiled
to someone
they stopped to look at him ...
A real miracle,
every time,
when
its direction
led to my door.

©2023 Dessy Tsvetkova
All rights reserved

Dessy Tsvetkova…

…is a Bulgarian who writes poems in Bulgarian and in English. She lived in Luxembourg and currently she lives and works in Belgium. Dessy has publications in many Bulgarian magazines and newspapers, also in Romania, Belgium, USA, India, Peru,Philippines.She has 4 books in Bulgarian, 1 in English, and she has also compiled a book as translator from Bulgarian into English, an anthology of Bulgarian top authors.She writes about nature, love and God,and her accent is the positive message at the final.Member of Flemish Party for Poetry.Editor in Homagi international Web literature magazine.

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The 2023 (Inter)National Poetry Month BeZine Blog Bash

Pastel of European Robin perched on a small branch by Tom Higgins ©2021
Art: European Robin, pastels, ©2021 Tom Higgins
Posted in General Interest, interNational Poetry Month, Poems/Poetry, poetry, Writing

Sonnet Hues Profaned | Kushal Poddar

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Sonnet to the White

One, two, three leaves sink in the sun.
The bituminous pitch turns liquid.
The path undone runs towards the school 
I hear the Miss Teacher translating
English to Northern East, to the city
seeking a leeway in the narrow shadow
beneath the parking cars and licking
its rear before stretching and curling up. 

Quite feverish, I feel time peddle heat
through the veins, hear the children
croon in the manner they are tutored.
"This is the summer of everything."
I remember you used to say in the end.
I hold onto my shivering blurred to bleach.

Hues We See Not

We did not name these colours.
They exist between the shades 
When my uncle don madness
he can scoop those in his fist
and cast on the face of this race of the names. 

"We are not blind enough to see." 
He says. Whatever it may mean. 
I have to drag him inside. Sometimes
people are so hostile!
And my skin feels the sheen and grain.
I see no granules of hues. I rub my hands
again and again.

The Profaned Coparceners

I tell my cousin brother profaning,
"Defile anything; not a gentleman,
I am a poet. I can call my mother a whore
and still give her respect.”

This spring morning sky bursts into crows.
Their flight pattern looks like spokes
from a shouting mouth. 
I shake my head and head out for
the downstairs where I live.
He has the upstairs. It is landing of the stairs
where a big window makes us silhouette.

The Constant

Two men at work talks about iron
with gust and credulity unknown
to me. Last night's rain rusts away.

The flowers of summer leave a trail 
to the stream, to the West of the city. 
The residue of the clouds pass by
the delta of the labour hard hands.

The river gurgles, "There is a tectonic
shift nearby.”
Yet we build. Iron. Hands. Sun. Sweat beads.

©2023 Kushal Poddar
All rights reserved

The 2023 (Inter)National Poetry Month BeZine Blog Bash

Pastel of European Robin perched on a small branch by Tom Higgins ©2021
Art: European Robin, pastels, ©2021 Tom Higgins
Posted in General Interest, interNational Poetry Month, Poems/Poetry, poetry, Writing

our preoccupation | gary lundy

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i will speak better

Woman Sitting Near a Window
©2023 Binod Dawadi
when i arrive there.
or somewhere
where tongues are 
untied and given 
slack in order to 
properly tune by 
well designed fork.
you search for
oddities in order
to wrestle out.
fixed equations unlike
normative equilibrium.
you give it up seriously prior to reaching its midpoint 
place intrigued by various shorter stylized as a foot or 
consisting of inexplicable line breaks.

or possibly none
at all. a fact of
simply striking
the edge of a
page. denigrate
what they can't
understand poised
in alarming
discoloration.

where in the world did such a surprising animal come 
from. what might we have said had our language not 
belonged actually to the books we'd read or 
been reading.

done now 
at the least.

emaciated

incandescence 
tongue play 
somnolence 
pre lingual in 
foreplay. a voice 
in background 
not unlike talking 
on phone. one 
sided accuracy 
impeding other 
habits of 
language 
usage. 

i would bask in your pheromone productivity 
disavowed impermeable shrink wrapped. 

holding their 
hug past any 
need of excuse 
the consensual 
incursion 
into dream 
manufacture. 

all the while imagination takes a vacation abandoning 
us outside the geographic boundaries once so 
important and agreed upon.
Metaphorical Mind
©2023 Binod Dawadi

a driving ambition

to push the 
next sentence 
onto the next 
page. even if 
that necessitates 
an otherwise 
superfluous 
wordiness within a 
run on. 

marginal terms of division wrapped in winter apparel. 
spelling encroaches on the rapid flight of compound 
ideation. 

small packs 
able still to 
hold necessities 
of the coming 
day. 

murmurs framed by disparaging self imagination. our 
departure usurps any surprise of others.

we're almost
done with it.

it may reduce

to nearsightedness. 
our preoccupation 
with wants 
and needs 
instead of those 
too distant 
even to echo 
clearly. lost 
nights now sleeping 
on or near ocean 
broken by well 
timed fog horns. 

who might have understood the quiet isolated beach 
walks. their violet winter jacket stuffed with balls of 
what must surely be wool. 

all the buttons 
securely sewn on. 
the last thing 
we'd mean to 
do would be 
make you 
uncomfortable 
through poor taste 
in melodic 
intercession. 

salacious imposition of improbable lavender shadows 
mimic light bearing down in timed gaps on the street. 

when you said 
you'd something to 
share they couldn't 
have imagined 
the awaiting 
face slap.
The World of Cityscape
©2023 Binod Dawadi

the lights go out

and those 
before us engage 
in improvised 
dance while 
enjoying cold 
water or hot 
tea coffee. 

we shrug off the platitudinal diatribes slung out at the 
unsuspecting. merely to cover their guilt over mistakes 
made. 

whatever the 
reason no amount 
of volume or paper 
can justify 
that willingness 
to slip in blindness. 
you sleep in and 
may be late for 
work joining others 
in this well 
practiced cycle. 

evidently they don't deserve to live peacefully if their 
accent or skin tone differs from ours. don't believe it.

a cold time of year 
reflected in the 
breakdown of 
communication. 
what after all can 
they be wishing 
for if not an 
alternative physical 
presence.

Poems ©2023 gary lundy
All Rights Reserved

The 2023 (Inter)National Poetry Month BeZine Blog Bash

Pastel of European Robin perched on a small branch by Tom Higgins ©2021
Art: European Robin, pastels, ©2021 Tom Higgins
Posted in General Interest, interNational Poetry Month, Poems/Poetry, poetry, Writing

Vashti’s Name Corona | Alison Stone

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Vashti

I’ll obey your order –
shake my booty,
sway my naked hips 
until the drunk guests moan.
I know what a woman’s body’s for.

But not alone.
Husband, drop your robe
and join me, your lined skin
and paunch becoming handsome
as we move together in love’s light.
Take my hand and start to shimmy.
Then I’ll dance.
from Caught in the Myth (NYQ Books, 2016)

But Not His Name

Spring was lost to lockdown. Now it’s summer,
the air thick with humidity and fear.

Returned to work, we sweat into our masks.
The scientists are taken off the air.

I AM NOT A RACIST, the racist yells
while bodies pile up like bags of gold.

Cars honk for protestors carrying signs.
The ground trembles when stone generals fall.

It’s always about who has the power.
Years ago, at Ellis Island,

my grandfather, but not his name, allowed
to enter. Boats of Jews turned back to die.

What does it mean
to be American?

Official fireworks banned, my neighbor
provides a noisy, low-budget display.

Zimmerman autographs bags of Skittles.
Fake stallions watch through moss-covered eyes.
from To See What Rises (CW Books, 2023)

April, with Corona

Spring sticks to the lesson plan –
blossoms, brash light, gaudy shades of red.
So much new life multiplying,
but the virus has its own math.
Subtraction, division, bodies
in freezer cars waiting for graves.
Close to a school, I used to hear
the children’s recess cries, but now there’s only birdsong
and sounds of this sudden storm – an odd flipping
between hail and sun-streaked rain –
that drives me inside to screams
from the TV and yowls from the cat.
I want to howl my own prayer 
or recrimination, but to whom?
The men in charge are deaf
to voices pitched like mine, and the wind
that shakes my windows isn’t God.
from To See What Rises (CW Books, 2023)

©2023 Alison Stone
All rights reserved

Alison Stone…

…has published seven full-length collections, Zombies at the Disco (Jacar Press, 2020), Caught in the Myth (NYQ Books, 2019), Dazzle (Jacar Press, 2017), Masterplan, collaborative poems with Eric Greinke (Presa Press, 2018), Ordinary Magic, (NYQ Books, 2016), Dangerous Enough (Presa Press 2014), and They Sing at Midnight, which won the 2003 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Award; as well as three chapbooks. She has been awarded Poetry’s Frederick Bock Prize and New York Quarterly’s Madeline Sadin Award.

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©2023 Alison Stone
All rights reserved

The 2023 (Inter)National Poetry Month BeZine Blog Bash

Pastel of European Robin perched on a small branch by Tom Higgins ©2021
Art: European Robin, pastels, ©2021 Tom Higgins
Posted in General Interest, interNational Poetry Month, Poems/Poetry, poetry

(Inter)National Poetry Month

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April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

Poetry month is coming! Dust off your pens, pencils, or 🪶 feathers, and write ✍️ some poems!

European Robin
Pastel, ©2021 Tom Higgins

(Inter)National Poetry Month is a time to celebrate poets and their craft—in the U.S. and worldwide. It is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate your expressiveness or your pure charm, to delight and to show the importance of sharing thoughts, activities, nature, pain, joy—the descriptive words go on and on…

Poetry is a special oration that reminds us of the important role of poets and their poetry in our cultures.  

“Poetry helps us appreciate the world around us and empathize with one another. Typically, we think of poetry as boring and nerdy but this month allows us to change our perspectives and look upon poetry as a rhythmic art of expressing one’s love and thoughts.”

National Today
Wild Iris, Jerusalem, Israel
Photograph ©2023 Michael Dickel

The spring winds of April are coming fast on the streams of March’s melting snow. We are looking to catch those elusive poems blowing in the wind to share with many. So…April comes quickly and blows by swiftly.

We invite you to join us and express yourself. Share a poetic expression of yourself, your life, and experiences. We want to hear from you! 🫵🏽

How to submit.

there it goes

the wind has sticky fingers
it likes to play with us
upon a hillside lingers
to grab our papers thus 

off we go, running to fetch
our work we don’t want to lose 
running fast i try to catch
my paper which chose to cruise

like a dove upon the wind
free of the earth's restraints
i should have thought and pinned-it
i’m losing it oh good saints

oh wind you won this race today
against the likes of me
for tomorrow oh do not dismay
for i’ll wear sneakers you see!

©2023 jsburl
All rights reserved

How to Submit

Review these submission guidelines. NOTE: In addition to what is written in the guidelines, for the April Inter(National) Poetry Month submissions, please put: April Poetry Blog in the subject line of your email.

While it is mentioned in the guidelines, we remind you to send the poetry in a single file, up to 3 poems for this call for poetry. Include a bio either at the end of the poetry file or in a separate file. You may include a few links to prior publications. Please include any social media links you want us to share below your bio. If you are including a headshot photo, include it as a separate, hi-resolution JPG file (please not a thumbnail size).