Welcome to the Origami Poems Project™
A palm-sized booklet with rooom for 6 (line-restricted) poems on a single sheet of paper.
We exist solely through your generosity
Welcome to the Origami Poems Project™
A palm-sized booklet with rooom for 6 (line-restricted) poems on a single sheet of paper.
Our 14th Year Sharing Free Poetry (2009-2023)
Poets featured:
Andrena Zawinski, Andrew Shillam, Daphne Milne, E.M. Foster, John Dorroh, Karen Pierce Gonzalez, Kavitha Krishnamurthy, Lorraine Caputo, Martin Willitts Jr., Sam Calhoun & Vishal Prabhu
Our Next Newsletter - Early Winter 2023 - will include work by:
Martin Willitts Jr., Lorraine Caputo, Kavitha Krishnamurthy, Vishal Prabhu, Daphne Milne & others
Our Six 2023 Pushcart Prize Nominations
Icarus – Karen Pierce Gonzalez * Non-Fungible Token – Alexey Deyneko * Grief – Marsh Muirhead
Learning to Read – Laura Sloan Patterson * The Sundown – JD DeHart * Kitsungi - Ariana D. den Bleyker
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Recent Origami Microchaps Published
Anthony Bartolla - Break Time on the Tallahatchie Bridge
Beth Fournier - I Dream in Colors
Jerome Berglund - Rock & Roll
· § ·
distant shore — gather on beach squinting, signal with mirrors
trampled grass past the ghosts of lions • Jerome Berglund © 2024 |
Whatever I See Knows Joy • Martin Willitts Jr. © 2024 |
Black Maple I used to think this black tree So I thought. Texture stands out, • John Robinson © 2024 |
Stretching Into Awareness Sometimes, at the end of the class, • Diane Elayne Dees © 2024 |
Dad and Charlie. They plan the place Rib joint on Northern Lights Avenue. Maybe Charlie pays. extra ribs and sauce to go. • Ronda Piszk Broatch © 2024 |
Memory with Water
For now, let's talk about sinking cities, said my mother who carries a pair of Neptunes in her eyes & paints about phantoms
in the 21st century. Gravity is when the psychiatrist assessed you & heard a heart murmur like rain. In an instant, you were in the sea:
a merman sticking his head above the surface, swathed in salt water, standing by for austere arms, like a remembrance possessed by echoes
of phantoms playing on a record player. Almost always, there are greetings— at sunrise, say hello to clouds, to sparrows, to the maps of music you made in your mind.
& when the morning arrived as a Roman god of waters & seas, you finally crawled on land. • Jessie Raymundo © 2024 |
a knuckle-like sprout eager and wind-strong, wide parasol leaves tendril-set-fruit keeps frost-stitched with morning • Jennifer Ann Dennehy © 2024 |
new years day January 3rd
winter storm watch cranky morning * Kelley Jean White © 2024 |
FOG RELUCTANTLY Deeper, deeper I exit the fog • Diane Webster 2024 |
NOTHING IS DIFFERENT I have no need to pretend I stay in this house as much possible. So, despite what you might think, • John Grey © 2024 |
A Brief Ecclesiastes Clouds cannot tell time, Hours or years, Origami wind folds, unfolds, • B. J. Buckley © 2024 |
How to Paddle Upstream Consumed with your own thoughts, So pull yourself along the bank. Or face those challenges, solve • Ken Gierke © 2024 |
1. Sun trails the fence line The oncology nurses
2. Laden with rain Protocol demands |
3. More sunflowers A needle has long since
4. Buskers sing The nurse • Mary Ellen Talley © 2024 |
“Two duties belong to our souls. One is to • To marvel When you consider a raindrop, I cannot see this as impossible; |
I must be amazed with wonderment, I watched a snail in the garden, But to the snail, When I consider how seldom I walk very far, All my trivial concerns trail far behind me. • Martin Willitts Jr. © 2024 |
"We are in God and God We are all a part of God. |
“In God's sight we do not fall: I tripped and fell. I did not watch where I was walking. I was in a hurry. I can’t remember why. I do recall the fleeting pain, We all stumble. Practicing and living my belief has falls, • Martin WIllitts Jr. © 2024 |
Breathing Lessons I’ve been to Ketchikan |
The Next Morning Bright yellow soaked the hotcakes,
•
Keli Osborn © 2023 |
My Mum’s Singing I love my mum’s singing. I’m convinced she has a tiramisu soul, |
So we dance around the kitchen • Holly Payne-Strange © 2023 |
Virga once but then as if they were shot |
Apogee Last night the full moon Come spring who lives Smoke climbs settle on the edge --crows dance, Is there still room in the dark to howl? • Sam Calhoun © 2023 |
Things That Come and Go Wash of sea foam at low tide, Message in a bottle bobbing Sunny side of leafy trees Bee buzzing flower blossoms, Canary’s song longing Stars sparkling in the night sky, First breath, first kiss, first love, Coming to these things that come
—Highland Park Poetry |
my documents …hold onto these memories,
–from “Four Cells,” Santa Clara Review • Andrena Zawinski © 2023 |
Repurposed
My grandparent’s house They’ve been gone too |
Resurrection
There are lessons in bread. proofing and rising again, • John Dorroh © 2023 |
"The more the soul sees of God, the more it desires Him." I did not understand why I am wanting. When I was not paying attention, I knew roots I did, too. • Martin WIllitts Jr © 2023 |
The Spanish Garden Poets, shuffling stillness into words, unfold again the lacquered night, and, where a seated woman with dark braided hair plays chess, the chamber rings with chirping birds… Echoing through some recess beyond time, the unfolding night reveals each facet cut with the precision of a sonnet. A fountain plays in a courtyard where lime trees and oranges grow in an arrangement until, cutting the cards, the night is spent. Waking from enchanted sleep with dead sand in our pockets, metal poles ringing down the street, unloaded on the cold dawn, and a smell of baking bread over the town. • Andrew Shillam © 2023 |
Perimeter Mundane slog, Recluse charm, Slump, exile, |
Roots Spirit runs to body • E. M. Fosters © 2023 |
Lightning quick Under amber autumn moonlight, Shreds of redwood tucked into place, rising early in the Corona Borealis. travels seventy-five light years |
Icarus Unlike you, too close to the sun, from failing beyond nebulas, thread strands of distant light tattoos hold me - • Karen Pierce Gonzalez © 2023 |
equation love is seek same water |
the sea a (wistfully |
hometruth a cat is not where walking to and fro ing---
• Vishal Prabhu © 2023 |
Mr. Dapperman struts his stuff at 46 Henry Street The women are waiting He’s ready for anything |
A story yet to be written Hemingway’s up in the hills • Daphne Milne © 2023 |
“Pray inwardly, even if you do not enjoy it.” We can enter prayer like opening a door, |
“Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance, Sunlight from my window finds me, I hold that music to never let it go, • Martin Willitts Jr © 2023 Quotations from Julian of Norwich |
SAVORING THE STORM Suddenly the sky outside my room |
ABIDING someplace behind those clouds the moon is slowly disappearing then she shall grow again her light growing brighter unless those clouds hide her away • Lorraine Caputo © 2023 |
My Journey I see life as a journey. As the train moves, I get to see a lot of I keep the imprint of the good scenery But I ensure that I sit inside the train dark tunnel, but I still sit inside the train |
As I travel in the train called life, I get to Those fellow passengers who travel with me From childhood to middle age to growing
• Kavitha Krishnamurthy © 2023 |
Non-Fungible Token If your token is non-fungible, Non-yeastable, At the same time. If you want to add Oomycetes are very fungi-like too. |
Like a book If you read me like a book, I’d like to listen to
Not this time “Not this time,” With a long-lasting • Alexey Deyneko © 2023 |
What I Said Mired in my mind maze, |
I’m OK I’m OK with being a cliché, • Philip Brent Harris © 2023 |
Philip Brent Harris has written a dozen original screenplays and two adaptations solo and four with Stanford Professor, Jasmina Bojic. For over a decade, he served as a juror for both the San Francisco Film Festival and the United Nations Association Film Festival. The latter was founded by Professor Bojic, who also serves as the Executive Director. Harris was honored as the final poem in the print anthology: Humans in the Wild: Reactions to a Gun Loving Country, Mythic Picnic. He has two poems online with PoetryXHunger, and two with Silent Spark Press, one online and one in Amazing Poetry 4.
second-hand bookstore –
sirens in the night- |
modern plumbing-
Risso Road- • Sally Quon © 2023 |
Fireplace Dolls fireplace dolls |
Learning to Read This is how you teach your child • Laura Sloan Patterson © 2023 |
• ♦ •
Thank you for your interest in the Origami Poems Project™
We know you'll enjoy these Origami Microchaps
Contact us
Welcome to the Origami Poems Project™
What is an Origami Poems microchap?
Read this Newsletter - Microchaps by: Austin Davis, Dmitry Blizniuk, Glenn Ingersoll, Jane Beal, Lauri Burke, Lynne S. Viti, Mary C. Rowin, Matthew James Friday, Nikhil Parehk and Tom Pescartore |
♦ Recent Origami Microchaps Published ♦
A Woman of Letters • K. Srilata © 2019 Poems in this microchap are part of a larger collection,
"The Unmistakable Presence of Absent Humans" published by Poetrywala, Mumbai
Cover art by Roshni Vyam, is by her kind permission.
|
A Poem in My Mother Tongue When I moved out, I left behind an aquarium, in it a fish, mad and solitary, swimming, the entire line of a poem in my mother tongue, a poem I am still fishing for, miles away and out in the stinging rain. |
Dust
If we are just dust · Together Elderly couple waddling
|
DNA Destiny I reach out in bed, press · Trickster Time We are a few moments of time
An almost invisible thread
Delay just an illusion, a gift. · Matthew James Friday © 2019 |
entering the garden water trickles down
a turtle hatchling
the hen is asleep |
origami in the garden white origami a paper airplane! shining buffalo · leaving the garden the old mother-tree · Jane Beal © 2019 |
(inspired by Robert Lang & Kevin Box artwork - Rancho Santa Ana Botanical Gardens exhibit, Claremont, CA * April 2019)
From Good Morning Sunshine Good Morning Sunshine; thank you for filtering stringently through my dingily dilapidate window; embedding optimistic rays of hope in my life, Good Morning Cuckoo; thank you for waking up my gloomy sleep with your poignantly austere sounds, Good Morning Grass; thank you for rejuvenating my dreary soles; as I trespassed on your voluptuous carpet; with your magnificent sheath of dew drops tickling my skin to unprecedented limits, Good Morning delectable pet; thank you for clambering up my bed; awakening me with a pleasant jolt; as you flapped your slippery tongue over my rubicund cheeks, Good Morning Shirt; thank you for imparting me with compassionate warmth; as I swung you over my naked chest the instant I broke my reverie, Good Morning Wife; thank you for providing me your mesmerizing shoulders to rest upon in times of the treacherous night, Good Morning Ducks; thank you for quacking so boisterously; that I became oblivious to all the loneliness and wretched depression that heavily circumvented my life, Good Morning Air; thank you for so celestially wafting into my nostrils; seductively caressing my mass of unruly hair; to transit me higher than the heavens, Good Morning Lotus; thank you for spreading your ingratiatingly pink petals into full bloom; inundating my solitary life with astronomical happiness, Good Morning Tea; thank you for profoundly reinvigorating my diminishing breath; fomenting me to walk briskly forward with untamed exhilaration, • Nikhil Parekh © 2019 |
Cover collage: Loaf of Bread, Lilacs & Thee by JanKeough
There’s Nothing Black You and I are out in the sunny, snow-covered park. · Dmitry Blizniuk © 2019 |
You are a cat, and all your nine lives are wasted on trifles, · Dmitry Blizniuk © 2019 Previously Published: Sheila-Na-Gig Online, |
Dmitry Blizniuk is an author from Ukraine. His most recent poems have appeared The Pinch Journal, River Poets , Dream Catcher, Magma, Press53, Sheila Na Gig, Palm Beach Poetry Festival and many others. Dmitry Blizniuk is the author of "The Red Fоrest" (Fowlpox press, Canada 2018). He lives in Kharkov, Ukraine.
Cover art by Lauri Burke w/JKeough
Why I'm not Coyote he walk with belly face the ground I've no story of Coyote man Coyote is not Buddha |
Who Owns These Trees? I am not quite sure who owns or manages these trees. they are nice. I am not quite sure who manicures this forest it was incorporated long ago. I am not quite sure who has planted these seeds they are biologically engineered. I am not quite sure who to thank for the fences that surround them. • Tom Pescatore © 2019 |
First Star - Infinite Chi
First star am I, crying dibs upon the night, · Note: Poem written from words in a Scrabble game. How many points? |
Keeping Company with the Moon
Watercolor moon hesitates in sky, |
From Tales from the Button Drawer: Harold the Button Harold was a large ivory button, a singleton, who lived in a button drawer with his many friends. Most were small families plucked from worn out sweaters, party dresses and outgrown coats whose fabrics had gone on to make up quilts and socks stored upstairs in the tall closets and dressers of the second floor. Harold’s companions ranged in size from tiny mother of pearl creations to a set of great, curved horn buttons who once strained mightily to fasten a woolen coat of loden green. Though the horn family liked to toot of days gone by, hunting in the deep woods with Grandpa Swenson, all such adventures were long in their past. The pearl sisters, in turn, were always eager to talk about the high tea Grandma Swenson once put on for the elite of the neighborhood. They saw it all, in great detail, from their perch on her high-necked, ruffled dress. Even the shoe buttons were full of themselves, having covered a great deal of ground in their time. Harold, sad to say, came from the button shop one hole short, he had only three when he should have had four for thread to enter and secure. Yet, being made of ivory, in those frugal times, he wasn’t thrown away, simply tossed into the button drawer, there to stay, and stay... and stay. It was hard to have to listen for so many years to the adventures of others, and have none to share in return. • Lauri Burke © 2019 |
propped by the door the electric scooter he kept telling me I wanted * reading bad news cat on my shoulder fussing * lighting the incense to contemplate higher odors |
in the machine the clothes slosh labor-savingly * I have my mother’s hands my mother’s nose but bigger * she doesn’t look at me I don’t look at her bus stop bench • Glenn Ingersoll © 2019 |
What She Kept in Her Wallet It was folded in thirds, a yellowed fraying bit |
The Only Object I Pocketed Illegally I probably intended to label • Mary C. Rowin © 2019 |
A Trip Back Home We’re only 19 - you’ll look at me as if we could change |
Don’t thank me for a perfect night just yet. Hold me tighter and tighter • Austin Davis © 2019 |
In Louisburgh, County Mayo, Thinking About Dublin The smell of burning peat in this steady morning rain textbooks collected, counted, accounted for, our bosses I stayed a week in Dublin, wandering the paths Joyce describes. frequented by the Dublin theatre crowd— I could’ve sworn |
In Boyle, County Roscommon, town of my great grandmother, slowing down, stopping often for the sheep, accepting waves Brown bread and white, tomato, tea, lashings of butter— • Lynne S. Viti 2019 |
Julia Klatt Singer 2/15/2019
I’m over the moon to receive this acceptance. I oh so appreciate OPP’s mission and am honored to be included once again. ... I hope you enjoy the holidays. Thank you again for believing in my work.
Many thanks for your passion for microchaps.
"Poetry belongs not to the writer but to the reader who needs it."
Your project is excellent and I am proud to be part of it and happy to support it.
Write On,
Norma Jenckes, RI, 10/15/2018
What beautiful gifts you make for poets. So many thanks.
Peggy Turnbull, 9/25/2018
•
Thanks for all your hard work! I am proud of our little creation.
Phil Huffy, 8/04/2018
•
I'm so excited! Thanks so much, Jan. I can't wait for the magic.
Gail Goepfert, New England, 7/10/2018
Thank you again for your confidence and support!
Daryl Muranaka, Massachusetts, 6/30/2018
•
Thank you so much Jan. I am exited to be a part of your lovely project!
Ann Christine Tabaka, Delaware
*
I love your philosophy and making of tiny books. I was also tickled to see one of my painting on the bar of books when I went to your website. Thank you for considering my work. And now I'm about to walk my dog, Otis. He'll be happy about that.
Julia Klatt Singer
*
Etcetera!
Helen Burke Oct 30, 1953- Apr 20, 2019
We take this moment to tell you that Helen Burke, a much-lauded UK poet & artist, and great friend of ours,
passed away Saturday, April 20th at home. We greatly mourn her loss and send our sympathy to her steadfast & loving companion, Phil Pattinson.
♥
-• Poets' group in Lincoln, NB | • Wildflour Artisan Bakery & Cafe, Decatur, IL |
• Cafe 164 at Leeds Gallery & at Cafe in York, UK | • Self-stocked libraries in RI |
♦ Due to the widening perimeter of the Origami Poems Project we are hard pressed to replenish the many locations that have previously visited the (primarily) RI locations. We are happy to send a sampling of chapbooks for a display but cannot "stock" them on an ongoing basis. We are grateful for your understanding. If you wish to volunteer to support a location, please ask... origamipoems(at)gmail(dot)com ♦ |
Thank you for your interest in the Origami Poems Project™
We know you'll enjoy these Origami Microchaps
Contact us