Poetry Tips: Food For Thought

I don’t know about you, but I saw plenty of fancy cakes, cookies, brownies, and more around Valentine’s Day. The aroma of fresh pies, croissants, and all kinds of delicacies filled the air as I entered grocery stores and bakeries over the past weekend and it had me thinking of all the while of how often we show love through food. Since we also tend to write loving words in poems or letters why not also combine words and love of food into poetry this week? Write poems of all the things you would cook or bake to increase someone’s romantic love or to increase their comfort in cold weather or loss. What poems would you write as tributes to your favorite foods or wines? Be as sober or as playful as you like!

Have fun, good luck to all who try, please click in again next week…

Damselfly Open Submissions

Luckily, the editors read year-round. You may send 1-3 poems as a Microsoft word or .rtf attachment, include a bio of less than 50 words, and send it to editor Lesley Dame via e-mail to: LesleyATdamselflypressDOTnet

For more details go to:

http://damselflypress.net/submissions/


Good luck to all who submit, please click in tomorrow for more Poetry Tips…

Poems Found by Poet Hound

http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue14/html/main.html
“Vertigo and Bone Room” by Julie Doxsee


http://www.blossombones.com/summer10/stein_s10.html
“Todestrieb” by Emma Stein

Thanks for clicking in, please drop by tomorrow for more Open Submissions…

under a bridge by Stephanie Hiteshew

Stephanie Hiteshew has been published by Bone World Publishing, has had poems appear in Poiesis, Beatlick News, The Aurorean, Brevities, and many others. She currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland and her latest collection from Alternating Current’s Propaganda Press is titled under a bridge. The poems are unapologetically raw in their portrayal of homelessness, loss, drugs, and mental illness. I am happy to share the ones that stuck inside my mind long after I set the chapbook down:


Claim

Siren wails
come closer to the city
than cleanliness.
Under a bridge,
pin-eyed,
you narrowly smile.
I hold your hand
coated in bruises,
breathing in a fog
you’d see
over a pier at night.
I sigh and say prayers.
The truth
I can’t turn towards
(or away.)
I leave you
under blankets.
Soul free
to lay its claim.

This poem makes me wonder if the poet is holding the hand of someone dying, especially with the ending lines “Soul free/to lay its claim.” What kind of claim I wonder? Claim to life or death?



Fence

The fence wasn’t built
to keep you safe
but to keep us safe.
Us: the streakers,
manics, schizophrenics.
You: the closed-door
drunks, tax-evaders,
and cheaters.
Main difference:
we were caught.
Besides, we learned
long ago
how to climb that fence.

This poem hits home for me as I used to visit and advocate for residents in certain mental health facilities. There were often times I realized how thin the line really was when it came to who would be living inside such a place and living outside such a place in “normal life.” I think the lines “Main difference:/we were caught” hits the nail on the head as to where that line is drawn.



Doorstep

The empty pull
of disappointment,
children’s balloon popped,
farewell to kite escaping.

How lost in the well
or random traffic accident
has left me at the doorstep,
hesitating.

I like this poem because many of us can relate to such a moment. We arrive at a door that causes us to pause in dread for any number of reasons that are unpleasant. I wonder what the poet’s reasons are for hesitating at this particular doorstep?


If you enjoyed this sample of poems from Ms. Hiteshew’s collection, under a bridge, you may purchase a copy for $5.00 (add $2 for US shipping and handling or $3 for outside-of-US shipping and handling) by visiting this link below:

http://alt-current.com/pp/pp_item.html#under_a_bridge



Thanks always for reading, please click in tomorrow for more Poems Found by Poet Hound…

Poetry Dispatch

Henry Denander sent me a link to this website and it is absolutely wonderful. Norbert Blei shares thoughts about publishing presses, shares poems from chapbooks he has received and the quality of the chapbook produced, and so on. It is obvious that Mr. Blei loves and respects poetry so I urge you to check out his website at:

http://poetrydispatch.wordpress.com/


Thanks for visiting, please drop by tomorrow for another featured poet…