One Poem Only

Midlife Calculus Britt Kaufmann Edited by Dava Sobel View the poem in Scientific American More from Britt Kaufmann ↓ @brittwriter on Instagram Her website: brittkaufmann.com Her book, Midlife Calculus , is out now from Press 53 Mentioned in this episode: One Poem Only submissions are open. I’m filling the next chapter of One Poem Only and would love to include your work. Send me the poem you wrote...

Here’s your recap of this week’s poems plus one new poem to carry us into the week ahead. Jun 9 - Last Fog at Sunrise by Travers Charron: @the_inkwellian on Threads, Scattering Poem Seeds on Substack. His tanka and haiku collection, Glass Shadows , is available now. Currently he is preparing his first full-length poetry collection, Thunderclap Heart , for submission later this year. Jun 10 - A Jel...

the body idea Bree North I know i am not my body But if i were I would remember just long enough For memory to mean imprints I would be curious as corneas Whiten with fear like follicles Wired up from the inside Disease could be free to teach me Like feldspar fragments or meteorology According to some holy math And I wouldn’t even wonder about it I would be water and dirt That’s it. Every hand wou...

I look for the Holy Fuck in everything I see. Jo Guzman —after Courtney Love I look for the Holy Fuck in everything I see. I wanna whisper Wow, Wow, Wow and have no idea I am even whispering it like a child Until someone with a dick smaller than mine tells me to Shush. I tell him to Fuck Off. Wow me, Life! Holy Fuck that is hot! You with those red lips In those vintage boots from Paris. That time...

History in Art Maggie Devers My husband tells me I have a twentieth century ass And that’s a type of poem. Rubens put touches of red on his angels' rears, Literally rogue on cheeks And I feel that’s what this world is missing— More blushed bottoms More naked debauchery More holy stories We laugh out loud at some of the babies, Old man newborn is forever the haha trope, The mortality, ever life, af...

"TELL ME, WHAT IS IT YOU PLAN TO DO WITH YOUR ONE WILD AND PRECIOUS LIFE?" -Mary Oliver I plan on washing my sheets, cooking pasta, and cleaning broken glass off the kitchen floor quickly lest it cut up any little feet. I plan on eating peaches in the summer and oysters only in months that end in -er because that's what my mother taught me. I plan on making lovers out of poetry and poetry out of l...

A Jelly-Fish Marianne Moore 1887 – 1972 Visible, invisible, A fluctuating charm, An amber-colored amethyst Inhabits it; your arm Approaches, and It opens and It closes; You have meant To catch it, And it shrivels; You abandon Your intent— It opens, and it Closes and you Reach for it— The blue Surrounding it Grows cloudy, and It floats away From you. Mentioned in this episode: One Poem Only submiss...

Last Fog at Sunrise Travers Charron If life stretched on forever, would we still kneel in the wild mint just to listen to the wind? It’s the fire burning low that draws us near. The song, fading that makes us sing. The morning mist lifting that reveals the deer in the clearing. Grief is not just absence– it’s the overflow of all we didn’t say, the touch we postponed, a life paused too long on some...

Here’s your recap of this week’s poems plus one new poem to carry us into the week ahead. Jun 2 - cream soda by Stephanie Valente , Portals on Substack, @stephanie.maria.valente on Instagram; her book, Internet Girlfriend , is out now Jun 3 - Lines Written At Thorp Green by Anne Bronte Jun 4 - Honey by Debbie Radford, @debbiearadford on Instagram and TikTok ; her book, The Enchanted Cottage , is o...

Goodnight, Yesterday Nichole Johnson I thought My heart might die loudly– Thunder cracking, Lightening Grinding stone to sand. But– It is quiet. It withers In my ribcage, Like a heavy fog– The last breath Of midnight Softly tiptoeing Towards dawn. More from Nichole Johnson ↓ @nichole_johnson_poetry on Instagram and Threads Her two books: Love, Death, and Other Distractions, a Collection of Poetry...

I open a book. One brittle flower falls, Shudders into dust. No flicker of flame Could be as beautiful and as burning and as brief As the memories that perfumed powder evokes. - Joanne Witzkowski  More from Joanne Witzkowski ↓ @a.wannie on Threads & Instagram

Because that is all it is. Maggie Devers I want to know your process So I can make it with you The way you sketch until your nails are packed with graphite And your warm hands smell of wood shavings and masking tape I could hold them to my nose and die happy I want to know how you change So I can be there with you As you chop off your hair Let your eyebrows grow wilder and abandon heels for Birks....

Honey Debbie Radford Honey pools in the dip of my waist. It flows like warm sunlight down my thighs. Every curve a golden river, every step a supple pour. Like a honeycomb, my body is textured and endless, mailable like bees wax, with threads of dripping sweetness curling around my hips. My skin gleams like amber in the late afternoon- something one cannot help but savor. I wear the curves of my b...

Lines Written At Thorp Green Anne Brontë 1820 – 1849 That summer sun, whose genial glow Now cheers my drooping spirit so Must cold and distant be, And only light our northern clime With feeble ray, before the time I long so much to see. And this soft whispering breeze that now So gently cools my fevered brow, This too, alas, must turn To a wild blast whose icy dart Pierces and chills me to the hea...

cream soda Stephanie Valente Glamor is a spell. I want to feel glamorous. Imagine this: being born from Aphrodite’s ocean pearls. Foamy, iridescent, shimmery, and moody all over. I bet it’s gorgeous. It's the kind of feeling when you take the first sip of cream soda. That kind of confidence is the real beauty. Honey. I was hand carved by the gods. You can’t bring me down. More from Stephanie Valen...

Here’s your recap of this week’s poems plus one new poem to carry us into the week ahead. May 26 - St. Pancras Station, August 1915 by Vera Brittain May 27 - The Coliseum by Edgar Allan Poe May 28 - The garden path and all that jazz by Anisha SenGupta Yanger @anishasgy May 29 - Did you know? by Maggie Devers May 30 - Long, Too Long America by Walt Whitman May 31 - The Wish, By a Young Lady by Laet...

The Wish, By a Young Lady Laetitia Pilkington 1709 – 1750 I ask not wit, nor beauty do I crave, Nor wealth, nor pompous titles wish to have; But since, 'tis doomed through all degrees of life, Whether a daughter, sister, or a wife; That females should the stronger males obey, And yield implicit to their lordly sway; Since this, I say, is ev'ry woman's fate, Give me a mind to suit my slavish state....

Long, Too Long America Walt Whitman 1819 – 1892 Long, too long America, Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only, But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not, And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are, (For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your childre...

Did you know? Maggie Devers The divine feminine loves to find trouble and commune To cannonball into the pool just to make waves And feel the splash back More from Maggie Devers ↓ Read my debut poetry book, For My Daughter Follow me on Instagram for more poetry @rembrandts.cure

The garden path and all that jazz Anisha SenGupta Yanger Often enough, the ziplock splits the bones crash, and I can feel the days presence all too well, the particles of my cerebellum, caught unawares just like the watchtower its not able to keep track of the salubrious needs and has put together a search of sorts, futile in time, a calibrated onset of old and new, a used photo, a preset to an on...

The Coliseum Edgar Allan Poe 1809 – 1849 Type of the antique Rome! Rich reliquary Of lofty contemplation left to Time By buried centuries of pomp and power! At length—at length—after so many days Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst, (Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,) I kneel, an altered and an humble man, Amid thy shadows, and so drink within My very soul thy grandeur, gloom, an...

St. Pancras Station, August 1915 Vera Brittain 1893 – 1970 One long, sweet kiss pressed close upon my lips, One moment's rest on your swift-beating heart, And all was over, for the hour had come For us to part. A sudden forward motion of the train, The world grown dark although the sun still shone, One last blurred look through aching tear-dimmed eyes— And you were gone. Mentioned in this episode:...

Here’s your recap of this week’s poems plus one new poem to carry us into the week ahead. May 19 - Fides, Spes by Willa Cather May 20 - Love by Elizabeth Barrett Browning May 21 - Storm Chaser by Melanie Hess May 22 - During this year's lunar eclipse by Maggie Devers May 23 - The Visionary by Emily Brontë May 24 - Spring Storm by William Carlos Williams May 25 - She was in her prime And she knew i...

Spring Storm William Carlos Williams 1883 – 1963 The sky has given over its bitterness. Out of the dark change all day long rain falls and falls as if it would never end. Still the snow keeps its hold on the ground. But water, water from a thousand runnels! It collects swiftly, dappled with black cuts a way for itself through green ice in the gutters. Drop after drop it falls from the withered gra...

The Visionary Emily Brontë 1818 – 1848 Silent is the house: all are laid asleep: One alone looks out o’er the snow-wreaths deep, Watching every cloud, dreading every breeze That whirls the wildering drift, and bends the groaning trees. Cheerful is the hearth, soft the matted floor; Not one shivering gust creeps through pane or door; The little lamp burns straight, its rays shoot strong and far: I...