Most recent poets. Select "Pick a Poet" for entire list.
Carol Anderheggen
Carol Anderheggen published regionally for years, and, has now published in national literary journals. Finishing Line Press published her two chapbooks, Writing Down Cancer, and Born-Child, both available from Finishing Line Press. She is currently working on a manuscript, Safety of Dreams, for publication.
She worked at the Frost Festival of Poetry in Franconia, NH and taught a poetry workshop at Salve Regina University, in Newport, RI for ten years. She is a member of and webmaster for Ocean State Poets, a collective of Rhode Island poets.
Carol recently completed a two-month tour of many talk show interviews and videos on the internet. Her website, carolmaeray.com, contains a full biography, poems, slideshows and a link to a video interview.
David Dragone's poems have appeared in Avocet Review, California Quarterly, Common Ground Review, The Providence Sunday Journal, Newport Life, and others. His poetry has also been broadcast on WRNI, Rhode Island’s NPR station. Trinity Repertory Company in Providence also featured one of his poems.
David lives in Middletown with his wife and son and is a member of the Ocean State Poets.
► David's Origami micro-chapbooks & selected poems are below.
Fishermen pick holes through frozen lakes.
Skaters sculpt hieroglyphs, drawing frosty lines
With skate blades shaving ice-spray
From ankles, knees, hips, legs, all angles
And whirling arms too.
Their whole bodies blur in fog breaths
Reflected glides over crystal ponds
Mirroring their feet at the carving edge
Of sky and water.
Flight or drowning
Gambles on uncertain ice
And cold wind that softens no fall
But brushes white snow silence
Over the pond center’s brittle.
Men tramp back from fishing
Hauling in their catch
Each line growing heavy
Baited with unspoken fears of cracking ice.
Fish flop around in buckets
Braving as much as they can
Back into the center
Of their cold brave eyes.
Lois Marie Harrod's 18th collection Spat was published by Finishing Line Press, 2021 and her chapbook Woman by Blue Lyra, 2020. Dodge poet, life-long educator and writer, she is published in literary journals and online ezines from American Poetry Review to Zone 3. She currently teaches college level courses in literature at The Center for Modern Aging, Princeton. More info and links to her online work www.loismarieharrod.org
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► Lois Marie Harrod's microchaps, selected poems & audio versions are available below.
Her Face - First published in Shot Gun Journal: Online Journal for Short Poems
Anatole’s Hold
He was holding me loosely his arms were round his arms round me how I change everything one leg, could you, love could you love a one-legged man? One leg over your legs one leg, two oh, he had two legs too keeping me warm keeping my two legs warm Anatole though some sunrise some Sundays I rise imagining him carrying me through the thrash through the threshold hopping on one leg not two.
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Karl's Rhubarb
Karl was a slob but he planted rhubarb and handed his stalks over the back fence, Here, cook this, he said, low carb, and though he was garbed in a stinky himmelfarb t-shirt, he was a heart-throb among the old ladies who longed for rhubarb pie and rhubarb tea. What I am saying is there was something about him that even I loved, the jam I could make, though I knew poison in those spargelkraut leaves. What I am saying is that I kept my cats from perturbing his dog, I kept my sickles from his sheaves.
What My Mother Told Me
Not much. She wasn’t much of a talker.
Sometimes a tad. Be quiet in church.
Mostly cautionary. Chatter is the coin of fools.
She didn’t know silence makes some uneasy
and refused gossip. Be kind, she said
and I tried to harness my tongue
but the pen proved, as pens do, that writing is a sword
silent and sneaky.
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Grandmother's Oppossum
What was she if not pretense?
Nice when she felt dour Dour when she could not mend.
'From Nightmares of the Minor Poet' was previously published in Off the Coast
The Minor Poet
If the world had been his aviary, he would have been the lesser bird, unable to sing the high notes or the low though he knew enough of depression to spill himself into that well which is the world.
And perhaps that was his purpose, he thought, a beak that might bring to the surface just enough water to sustain someone, anyone, passing by,
not for eons or years, but an hour . . . less, just until she trod a little farther on and found a fresh stream, where she could sit, maybe listen.
The Minor Poet Tries Haiku
Stinkbug hibernating in Manny’s suitcase– been there since Tennessee.
Manny sips his morning chai, too noisy, can’t write, all the lattes chattering.
Tattered scarecrow – left in the wild oats never did more than watch. Steamy bath, – Manny plops in ouch!
Cold rain falling – and no umbrella Manny takes yours.
is best. No one has time or inclination for voyages or treks. Long wars take a life or more and the shortest spat becomes a drawn-out divorce. We’ve been here and there fore and aft. So avoid story. Avoid conflict and all its sticky dead. Be slick. Be quick. A little poem is best.
Splitting the Chair
Like dividing – a baby Solomon knew which mother by her distress. But the chair was hideous and the child, not easy either. So take it, she says, to the one who is leaving. You chose the chameleon green. Keep it, he says, believing he is generous.
Truth sat in the barber chair bald and cold except for the fringe the blind woman tried to trim. It’s often that way: we pare the eyes from the potato and shuck the silk from ears of corn. But tidying up – the relative – even to set it free reveals how naked truth can be.
Penelope Decides What to Wear to Her Funeral
Penelope Decides What to Wear to Her Funeral
Depends, she says, on when she dies: in winter the blue silk with its Mediterranean shifts, in summer, white clouds, the blinding walls of Mykonos. Whatever the weather, she will look good, better than life, Botox can do that these days, a new body before she’s shrunken under, just in case her man returns from his wanderings to stand at her casket, to say he loved her once with the terseness of men who drift, who suddenly remember that once they promised to be faithful as the flotsam that bore them home.
Martin Willitts, Jr., a frequently published Origami Poetry Project poet, has over 20 full-length collections of poetry. He has four books released in 2023, “Not Only the Extraordinary are Exiting the Dream World” (Flowstone Press, 2023); “Ethereal Flowers” (Still Point Press, 2023); “Rain Followed Me Home” (Glass Lyre Press, 2023); “Leaving Nothing Behind” (Fernwood Press, 2023).
Qinglan Wang is a 2010 graduate of Bates College and a resident of Wickford, RI. She was born in Shanghai, China and lived in Berlin, Germany for two years prior to emigrating to Honolulu, Hawaii where she spent a large portion of time before attending Bates College. Her poetry draws upon her experiences living in these diverse places.
►Qinglan Wang's Origami micro-chapbook is available by clicking on the title.
Jenny Hudson has worked as a graphic designer, art teacher, and has designed and produced a line of outerwear for the boutique market. She became smitten with the Internet while designing a site for the clothing business and went on to study web design. She has produced websites and graphics through her own business since 2002.
Now she now publishs print-on-demand books and helps authors market them through her business, Merrimack Media (http://merrimackmedia.com).
Jenny has published three of her own novels along the way and written many short stories and poems. She was the producer and host of the cable show about live jazz, Live From Chianti, and is an exhibiting digital artist.
Jenny lives in Cambridge, MA with a cat, a dog, and her guy.
► Jenny's Origami micro-chapbook & selected poem are available below. (See her OPP Artist page, here.)
Ali Znaidi lives in Redeyef, Tunisia. He graduated with a BA in Anglo-American Studies in 2002. He teaches English at Tunisian public secondary schools. He writes poetry and has an interest in literature, languages, and literary translations. His work has appeared in The Bamboo Forest, The Camel Saloon, phantom kangaroo, BoySlut, fortunates.org, Otoliths, Dead Snakes, Speech Therapy Poetry Zine, streetcake magazine, The Rusty Nail, Yes,Poetry, The South Townsville micro poetry journal, Shot Glass Journal, the fib review, Ink Sweat and Tears, Mad Swirl, Eskimo Pie, Spinoza Blue, Haiku Journal, Three Line Poetry, UFO Gigolo, and other ezines. His debut poetry chapbook Experimental Ruminations was published in September 2012 by Fowlpox Press (Canada).
He also writes flash fiction for the Six Sentence Social Network—http://sixsentences.ning.com/profile/AliZnaidi.
“Dejection Falls Apart,” and
“Booby-trapped Pigeons” appeared in
The Camel Saloon.
“Moon’s Cloth Embroidered with Poems”
appeared in The Bamboo Forest.
“A New Light” appeared in Speech
Therapy Poetry Zine.