Ruth Holzer

Ruth Holzer is the author of ten chapbooks, most recently, “On the Way to Man in Moon Passage” (dancing girl press) and “Float” (Kelsay Books). Her poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, California Quarterly, Freshwater, POEM, Slant and elsewhere. She is a multiple Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee.

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► Ruth Holzer's microchap is available below. Download the PDF by clicking the title.

Origami Microchap with Selected Poems

My Joy

Click title to download micro

Ruth Holzer CVR My Joy 2026 Cover image from Unsplash.com

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Taking the Polygraph

The first name they call
doesn’t belong to the girl
with the golden eyes,
nor to the paunchy guy dozing,
worn out from a late night
watching baseball on TV.

Rather it is I who must go,
ripe for failure and mortification,
into the grim interrogation room
where the hot seat is wired and waiting.
The steel clips are ravenous for my fingers
and the flaccid arm cuffs start puffing up.

My Joy

After years of holding it close,
I decided to share it
secretly with kind strangers
on the gray and windy Prinsengracht,
and with sudden friends
in the noontime shadows
of rue Gît-le-Coeur
and finally with myself
in a bare room off the Edgware Road,
the sweet hidden fire that would always burn.

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Poets