Poets

Darcie Dennigan is the author of Madame X and Corinna A-Maying the Apocalypse. She's a Discovery/The Nation winner and recipient of awards from the Poetry Society of America and Rhode Island State Council of the Arts. She works as an assistant professor in residence at the University of Connecticut and is a cofounder of Frequency Writers, a Providence-based writing community.   

Sasha A. Palmer (aka Happy) writes blog posts, poetry, and to-do lists.

She tries to follow the motto she has created: Live for the Love of it!

Visit Sasha at www.sashaapalmer.com

► Sasha's Origami microchaps & selected poems are available below.

Origami Microchap	Selected Poem(s)
CAST
Cover art: Galaxy by Sophie Palmer   Poems featured in CAST have previously appeared on personal blogs. — Every Origami Microchap may be printed, for free, from this website. •	{mooblock=Gravity} She used to be a bird once before she found gravity cannot be transformed or shielded against, before she fell and touched the sky. • Sasha A. Palmer © 2017   {/mooblock}
Autumn
Cover art by Pip Hartnett •	{mooblock=Page Two} You will rule the stars, You will ride the Milky Way, Curb a wild comet. You will know your moves, Your mind will be clear, agile, You will shed your doubts. The passage of clouds, The low whisper of twilight Will render your thoughts. She’ll stay by your side, Nature’s daughter, your true love, No gloss on her lips. She’ll call you her own, Honey is too sweet for her, A hint of pepper. •   Alexandra Palmer © 2012 {/mooblock}

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. 

Origami Microchaps	Selected Poems
How can the heart?
Click title to download PDF Cover photo by author •	The Dead Are Quiet    They don't answer  when you ask     if they want a drink  or had a good lay.    They don't leave love notes  in the charnel house    reminding you   to warm the sheets     or turn off the light  or lock the coffin,    but you wake  in the middle of the night    hearing them  whisper    in an extinct language,  maybe Mycenean Greek.	How can the heart?    on which everything depends  suddenly begin beating    like John Bonham battering  Moby Dick?    And why does it happen  in the middle of sudden grief—    this crazy stick pick licking  life, life, life    sudden whip-flip  in the middle of sadness?  • Lois Marie Harrod © 2024
Karl's Rhubard
Click title to download PDF microchap Collage Rhubarb Sky by JanK *  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. - 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. - Grandmother's Oppossum What was she if not pretense? Nice when she felt dour Dour when she could not mend. Her sex, the sour lemon on her tongue No, he did not want to hear her woes or tend her pleasure, she was just the tight end to the long game, the tag end in the downtrend. Keep your secrets to yourself, Grandfather said, You’re luckier than most of your widow friends. - Lois Marie Harrod © 2020
Nightmares of the Minor Poet
Click title to download PDF microchap Cover photo: beatnik girl By fille de la ville Audio recording by Lois Marie Harrod   '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. •   Lois Marie Harrod © 2014
The Blinding Walls
Cover - ‘Mykonos” (the web) •	A Little Poem 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.  •  Lois Marie Harrod © 2012 Acknowledgment: Hot Metal Press 2009
Breadcrumbs	Breadcrumbs So many substitutions in this story: stepmother for mother, brother for father, morsels of muffin for little white stones, and once the oven was hot, witch for boy, and in earlier locations, Gretel for pearl, grill for teeth, take my thumbs for chicken bones, grandma, take my babies for wolf meat. I’d give you my incisors, my mother said when I knocked out my own, carrion for crow, cave for castle, ogre for goat who suddenly regrets he didn’t eat the damn kid when he could have. In some tales a few children get back home. • Lois Marie Harrod © 2012 Acknowledgment: Lunch Ticket	Truth sat in the Barber Chair 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. • Lois Marie Harrod © 2012 Acknowledgment: Fickle Muses

    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).

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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.

http://aliznaidi.blogspot.com

 ►   Ali's Origami micro-chapbook and selected poem are available by clicking on the title.   

Origami Micro-chapbook	Selected Poem(s)
Moon's Cloth Embroidered with Poems
Acknowledgments “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. •	{mooblock=Booby-trapped Pigeons} The dictator ordered that each carrier pigeon had to be booby-trapped. The dictator wanted that each advocate of freedom had to be exploded. But he forgot that blood would irrigate seeds of liberty, & that pigeons would continue to bathe in the fountain of freedom, while pecking little grains given to them by a little innocent child. • Ali Znaidi © 2013 {/mooblock}

Scott Devon is a British born poet, with an MA in Creative Writing from MMU. He is the former head of neo:writers, a department of neo:artists CIC, and the organiser of the neo:anthology Project 2013, which has published writers such as multiple Pushcart prize nominee Howie Good, and Faber poet George Szirtes, http://www.neoartists.co.uk/blog/.

Scott's work explores the duality of nature and man, attempting to uncover and understand the ambivalence which lies within us all. His work has been published widely across Europe and America, but most recently by the Origami Poems Project, Stepaway Magazine, Epicentre Magazine, Egg poetry, Bareback, Diastixo.gr, Staxtes.com, Chicago Literati and Matchbox Poems.

His poem ‘Belief’ was independently selected to be translated and read on National Greek radio, and he was selected to write in conjunction with the Royal Philharmonic Society in July 2013. His prose piece, Mobled Souls, was published by Starburst magazine, the world’s longest running magazine for Sci-Fi, Horror and Fantasy in November 2013.

More of his work can be found at neo:writers - Scott Devon

Some comments on Scott's latest book, "The Book of Doubt" -

 ► Scott's Origami micro-chapbooks and selected poems are available below.

Origami Micro-chapbook	Selected Poem(s)
The Book of Doubt
Cover photo: ‘Despair’ by Rose Waugh www.niterose.tersonodesign.com • Click this mp3 link To hear Scott reading his poem, 'ambivalence'	{mooblock=ambivalence} “to save our people we must sacrifice our people”                                                               G’Kar I saw him today down in Circle Nine found only decay in his hate he said forgiveness is the highest form of faith   our souls unborn buddhas wanting freedom from the dark he said so all life must die I saw him today down in Circle Nine   yet I fear the matin light which you have stoned blue with bruises he said hear my prayer forgiveness is the highest form of faith   ascending a blind guide led me beyond the dark asked me if the sun was rotten I saw him today down in Circle Nine   and so the sun bled out and lost the sky orphaned all to ineffectual fire forgiveness is the highest form of faith   in the morning the sunrise smells of wings and whip marks and blood and ambivalence I saw him today down in Circle Nine forgiveness is the highest form of faith • Scott Devon © 2014 {/mooblock}
Tightrope
Cover: Photo of 1880 New England headstone by Jan Keough •	{mooblock=(R)ex Deus} If I could sample the sun I would use it, I would dip my brush lightly in the atomic light. And if scattered atoms be my stardust I would let sunsets explode upon the world, And paint a yellow road That leads back to you. It is all giving, No face may feel the warmth without its blessing. And if blessings be the warm tide of the world, Then drown me in you.   If I could turn lightning to liquid I would use it. I would drain the sky of anger So I might better see All the light from all the suns who have already died. And those pinpricks that map the black Would shine me home to you.   It is all giving, No heart may make a beat without its blessing. And if blessings be the under-current of everything Then know this, I am, I know you. • Scott Devon © 2012 {/mooblock}