In the leadup to our fourth issue, nevermore, we shared a series of micropoems from some talented submitters:
Author: juliette
Forever Midnight
Forever Midnight
Larry Blazek
Why can’t the nighttime last forever?
Why can’t the creatures that rule the night
scuttle endlessly from shadow to shadow?
Why can’t an unholy army of the dead
snuff out the sun like a candle flame?
Why can’t the earth stop turning?
Why can’t the nighttime last forever?KB Ballentine
KB Ballentine
Poetry Contributor
KB Ballentine’s sixth collection, The Light Tears Loose, appeared this summer with Blue Light Press. Published in Crab Orchard Review and Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, among others, her work also appears in anthologies including In Plein Air (2017) and Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace (2017).
Works in Nightingale & Sparrow
Elizabeth Spencer Spragins
Elizabeth Spencer Spragins
Poetry Contributor
Elizabeth Spencer Spragins is a poet and writer who taught in community colleges for more than a decade. Her tanka and bardic verse in the Celtic style have been published extensively in Europe, Asia, and North America. She is the author of With No Bridle for the Breeze: Ungrounded Verse published by Shanti Arts and Publishing and The Language of Bones: American Journeys Through Bardic Verse published by Kelsay Books.
Works in Nightingale & Sparrow
In the Dungeon of Duntulm Castle
Double, Double
Double, Double
Steve Deutsch
My doctor said
he could find nothing
wrong.
The symptoms—
extremities on fire
pinprick pain
in my face
and chest
were merely
occasional
and not all
that worrisome.
He didn’t believe
the sleepwalking
was new.I was new
then to teaching.
High School calculus
for fifteen gifted students.
We cruised through
to double integrals
and April
when interest waned
and even my best students
seemed lovesick
and dull.
I doubled down—extra
homework, special assignments
and frequent quizzes.
and the dullness
turned to testiness.
But I was new to this.
What could I know?One May night
I woke to a full moon
over the town square.
My legs were blistered
to my knees
and my right eye
unfocused.
The wire trash bin
was burning blue
and around the edge
were fifteen effigies
of me—
crude clay makings
with blackened legs
decorated with straight pins.Somewhere
nearby
young voices
were chanting.
An owl hooted
and the hair on my head
stood on end.I was gone
before first light.
I didn’t pause to pack.Mark A. McCutcheon
Mark A. McCutcheon
Poetry Contributor
Mark A. McCutcheon teaches English literature at Athabasca University. Mark’s poems appear in literary magazines like Grain, On Spec, EVENT, and Kaleidotrope; his debut poetry book, Shape Your Eyes by Shutting Them, is forthcoming from Athabasca U Press in 2019. He has also written a cultural studies book, The Medium Is the Monster (2018), and his literary criticism appears in The Explicator, Continuum, and other scholarly journals.
Works in Nightingale & Sparrow
J V Birch
J V BirchPoetry Contributor
J V Birch lives in Adelaide. Her poems have been published in anthologies, journals and magazines across Australia, the UK, Canada and the US. She has three chapbooks with Ginninderra Press – Smashed glass at midnight, What the water & moon gave me and A bellyful of roses – and a full-length collection, more than here.
Works in Nightingale & Sparrow
Brielle Epoh
Brielle Epoh
Photography Contributor
Born in the Deep South, it didn’t take the Alabama native long to realize she had an immense passion for photography. Brielle’s style of art displays the raw and gritty experiences of minorities; predominantly those within the African American and LGBTQ+ communities.
Works in Nightingale & Sparrow
Ginger Dehlinger
Ginger DehlingerPoetry Contributor
Ginger Dehlinger writes in multiple genres. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and she has won two Pacific Northwest writing competitions with her essays. Most of her work is set in the West including novels, Brute Heart and Never Done. Ginger lives in Bend, Oregon with her husband and a black cat.
Works in Nightingale & Sparrow
Supplication to Flame
Supplication to Flame
Nate Maxson
Sun shadow of a Blakean jaguar passing overhead/ sun didn’t set today/ only light from the stripes of the wildfire
Here is your prayer made of smoke and dust/ rising shamanic signal, skywide: approach the throne and whisper, like so, inside the old world’s red lungs
Let this earth disappear/ this ash-land singularity/ burn, big world to the ground
J V Birch
Ginger Dehlinger