Contributors to the Summer 2025 Edition

Lida Bushloper
Duane Caylor
Frank Coffman
Matthew Cory
William Courtney
John Cowan
Gary Davis
David Devries
Christopher Doss
Stephanie DuPont
Kevin Foflygen
Peter Grace
David Greenwood
J. L. Hagen
Amanda Harrod
Maggie Huff-Rousselle
Jonathan Kinsman
David Kiphen
V. P. Loggins
Barbara Loots
L. G. Mason
John Maclean
Susan McLean
Tom Merrill
Steve Mitchell
James David Montren
Bob Moore
Elise Power
Ron Schneider
Amy Jo Schoonover
Chris Scriven
W. B. Spillman
David Stephenson
Judith Stillion
Susan St. Martin
B. R. Strahan
Colleen Waldron
Donald Mace Williams
Shannon Winehouse
Bob Zisk

Selected Poems From Summer 2025

The Poet Constellates

The Verseids open their show tonight,
meteoric showers of metaphoric light
southerly afoot in the northern sky
(that Kinsman kenned in his own write)
with hyperbole gazillion times bright

and glaring than Mars with his leering eye
on Venus as she transits coyly by.
(No comet here)And there the Sturgeon Moon
regards Lake Champlain from on high
(Good news from Pisces, there are fish to fry!)

Now remember this, roundabout July
to the thirty-first day of June,
is the night today the Verseids fly
blissfully aligned, a Cosmos in tune.

So whether Star Fleet elite hard and hewn
or a frequent now and then amateur,
mark five iambs on your Pentameter,
in retrograde, a shade or two past noon

to find Cassiopeia on her chaise
where the Heavens move to illuminate
fine, fitted phrases that alliterate
as sonnets fall, with rhymes and tropes ablaze.

Jonathan Kinsman

Bright Boys

Friendly favorite fireflies
lighting up the lawn,
who will fill the dark skies
after you are gone?

Pretty constellations
in among the trees
holding conversations
with the evening breeze,

You are so endearing
in your glowing swirls
bowing, flirting, hearing
your shy chosen girls.

Tell them funny stories,
Show them starry nights;
you have all the glories
of the dancing lights.

Amy Jo Schoonover

Kitchen Memories

She snatched that wasp from the morning air,
Like catching stray thoughts or plucking hair,
She closed it deep inside her palm,
Clenched and squeezed without a qualm,
Until her hand was nothing but
Fine boned fingers in a fierce white knot.

A swift shake sent the corpse to the floor,
Not a twitch of protest, not one move more,
She wiped the hand on a hem of skirt,
Turned back to the high chair feeding, unhurt,
Warbled a tune while the baby sat,
Sang God watches over us all like that.

Amanda Harrod

Sonnet On The Lord’s Prayer

In heaven, Father God, is where you are,
as here on earth we breathe your holy name.
Though we may view your kingdom from afar,
Your will in earth and heaven is the same.
We beg that day by day we may be fed.
Forgive us every debt we owe to You,
and then, in gratitude, may we be led
to find forgiveness for our debtors, too.
Help us avoid temptation’s ugly path,
and know the One that we are following.
Deliver us from evil and its wrath,
as we acknowledge our Eternal King.
You are the Power in a velvet glove,
the glory and the liberty of love.

Barbara Loots

My Grandson’s Lesson

His smile makes me want to see them dead:
not only stalking psychopaths, but brutes
who hide their hate in uniforms instead,
smug sadists in red ties and business suits.

Each night’s news brings some dimpled, lifeless face
that stares up from its bed of dirt and pain,
uncomprehending in its trampled grace,
unable to bring grandpa joy again.

In films of tattooed little wrists I see
my daughter’s unsuspecting little boy,
while modern fly-blown bellies scream to me
there’s no child they can’t casually destroy.

How can men only see collateral,
blind to babe that sees each heartless deal?
His innocence drives innocence from me
and chokes me with a shame that they should feel.

John Maclean

Pomme Tree

Writing poems for me
Is no more difficult
Than falling from an apple tree.

Scaling gnarled trunk
Gallantly to reach
My high, familiar seat,

I disregard mortality.
A little push and gravity or
Sometime serendipity
Suffice to set me flying

Free, then terrified,
Distractions flee;
Eyes closed,
Ground now rushing
Up at me, I concentrate on
How to finish gracefully.

Tumble, agile, roll off softly
Or smack down, stumble,
Hard and clumsy;
Lie back, savor
Cool earth smell or
Pooling blood, numbing swell;

Then recollect
Spilled metaphors,
Scramble
Up the trunk once more;

Holding tightly, edge out
On the limb again,
Search for pips of
Inspiration;

Reach up, tipping backwards
Past the apex, no return to
Balance upright;
Easing grip, prepare for flight, now
Plummet slowly into light.

J. L. Hagen

Dawn

Each day opens with a burst of light
when the sun’s rays burn through in the east,
as problems shoved in corners for the night
stretch tentacles and strain to be released
and all the world’s subsystems turn back on,
supplying tuneless racket everywhere;
familiar worries bask in the new dawn;
a thousand balls jump back into the air.

It’s morning in the vale of toil and sin,
the big coin-operated humming hive,
and everything is gathering to begin
another day when you are still alive.
Time to rub the dreams out of your eyes.
The sun is not done shining on you. Rise.

David Stephenson

Announcements

The winner of the quarterly award for the Spring issue was chosen by Duane Caylor, a retired physician who began contributing to The Lyric when Leslie Mellichamp was editor. Although he is not necessarily a Dante devoté, the following poems rose up to him for commendation:

• Quarterly Prize: “When Dante Died,” by Gail White. ‘The prosody is skillfully done and the conceit is worthy of Donne.’
• Honorable Mention:’ “Dante’s Doomed Lovers.” by Royal Rhodes.
• Honorable Mention: Joanna Stokkink’s sestina, “Albany Rathskeller.”

Over the past 25 years, we have felt the need for a path of communication between poets without opening up the Pandora’s box of social media, with its many venues. Enter poetic commentator, Jonathan Kinsman, who suggested that poets could include an email to their Contributors’ Notes entries to enable that communication to take place. So simple and direct, without signing up for apps or forums or digital whatnots!
Thank you, Jonathan for the suggestion! So…..in the future, if contributors are so inclined, poets might want add an email address to their bios, which will appear only in the printed copy in a given issue, avoiding the tangled web of digital opinion, often patrolled by silly trolls (likely living under a bridge to nowhere).

If not trolls then Artificial Intelligence is filtering through everything it seems. But writing poetry demands more than words strung together in a pattern. I’m sure AI can find rhyme and meter, but machines do not have multiple layers of consciousness underlying their “thoughts.” Harrumph.

Speaking of multiple layers of consciousness, Jonathan Kinsman, poetic commentator for this issue, prefers to describe himself rather metaphorically. He writes that he “has been traveling, as of late, sailing his sloop the ‘Zephyr’ among the Isles of Langerhans, and visiting the Witch of Agnesi thereabouts. He was born in a swamp of southern Alabama and raised on a small tropical island in the Northern Pacific. He has one more year to serve in solitude and looks forward to finally being promoted out of 8th grade. “ You don’t say, Jonathan!

Noting some of the many wonderful poems in this issue, he
sends this preview……

Guest Poet’s Preview

By Jonathan Kinsman

‘Sumer is icumen in’ begins the transcription of the oldest (to date) song in the English language. Yes, in all her iterations Nature is as fickle in this season as in her others. Here in northern California we bake under saturated, humidity free sapphire skies. My relatives back east weather floods and thunderstorms. And warmer wear is de rigeurin the cooling beaches of southern California.
But don’t take my word for it. On page 82 we read of Susan St. Martin’s up close and personal encounter with Old Solin Rhode Island: ‘The doldrums stare at me/limp in my lawn chair’ in a becalmed sea of humidity that ‘only a butterfly/comes to defy.’
In the sonnet by Bob Moore on page 85, and although a gently strong love poem, offers us advice pertinent to the season: ‘And sitting, still, the music of the spheres/is what a human gem of atoms hears.’
Donald Mace Williams reminds us that summer is also the time for connecting with our family. In his twin pieces on pages 90 and 91, Williams’ recall of his granddaughter’s birthday focuses on the joy of learning new things and trying new perspectives with a wit and wonder we all should heed in these open and lazy days of summer. I especially love his ‘Study your Granddadese/So you can make that clear. /You will come, won’t you? Please?’ This recalls Frost’s ‘You come too!”
And summer is also the time of concerts from those folk of furrow, nest and den. Stephanie Dupont’s aptly named poem on page 105 reminds us how rich marshlands are with life: ‘Nocturnal symphonies composed in blue/By croaking frogs, raccoons, and owls in flight” on page 105.
And woven through the summer we have poems of memory and childhood as seen in the poems of Amanda Harrod and Steve Mitchell. Poems of regret and loss so aptly crafted by Gary Davis and Susan McLean. Dark humor and dark dreams in David Kiphen and John Cowan. All in all a wide array of music light and somber, of glee and reflection.
However long the hot days or short the fun at the lake or on the shore, Lida Bushloper reminds us to ‘Listen’ on page 106 to the ‘crickets at evening, /a whip-poor-will’s call, /till rustling dry leaves/prophesy Fall.