Featured Works: Week of Jan. 7 (New Year)
With the new year comes reflection. We look at the past, reflect on the present, and ponder the future. Such is the case here at Wild Violet, where we return to a regular publishing schedule after a lengthy hiatus. Join us in contemplation, celebration, and renewal with poems from longtime contributors to Wild Violet. “The Hammer and the Nail” by Larsen Bowker eulogizes a friend and fellow “word merchant.” “K5, (P10, K10) repeat to last 5sts, K5” by Anthony Botti contemplates a fractured family relationship, with hopes for reconciliation. “The Mad Girl Dreams of Houses...
Read MoreThe Potato in Me
What if it’s not a poet in me, but a potato that lies mute, still as a stone, stiff with all that starch, sweet beyond all blessed belief? Yet doomed for some inevitable and — yes! — edible destiny. And would all my words abandon me? All my days above ground have not prepared me for this single moment of roundness being next to soundness, of brownness being wholly skin deep and just as easily bruised. A fist, a hand in glove, a hardened heart. Half-baked, I see more than I am believing; I have the lumps to prove it. So what about grief? Don’t ask me. I only said...
Read MoreThe Mad Girl Dreams of Houses Left Behind
in Segovia, in Alsace Lorrain. Last night she dreamt her old Maine house was up for sale and she was determined to buy it. Just when she’s letting go of everything that mattered, jewels she has no one to give to, no place to wear. Wind moves under the door. She remembers that morning standing under a dripping sign as fog eddied around her feet waiting for the bus, unsure how she ended up with this man she imagined going off somewhere far, feeling she should feel guilty about that as if it was the only life she...
Read MoreK5, (P10, K10) repeat to last 5sts, K5
(knitting pattern for a baby blanket) Your voice unspools inside me knitting on the porch while bats crisscross the yard. The blow-up that morning at Dad’s funeral is as burnished as a scar on that old elm tree we used to play kick the can under. I’m halfway through a blanket for a friend’s baby, using lopi wool skeins hunted down in Ireland last winter. I thought we had reached a truce in that old family quarrel. Yet my fingers will not allow me to rest, the wooden needles ticking knit 10, purl 10 into a basket weave design. Just now I have lost count of the rows and...
Read MoreThe Hammer and the Nail
for Charlie Knauss ‘Word merchant‘, ‘big talker‘, ‘word man‘, ‘rather talk than eat‘, are names given he whose sandstorms of syllables darkened the lightness or lightened the darkness of conversations aimed at either lyrical, or philosophical impulse, about life’s genial quirks and oddities, or icy blasts of scientific research. He holds truths poetically alive with atoms changing and rearranging a stream of words that plunder and soothe in his love of challenge, his chisel’s love ...
Read MoreFeatured Works: Week of Apr. 23 (April Pirates)
April drags on in the Northeastern United States, as tax season bludgeons us as numb as the persistent cold, damp weather. With that in mind, this week’s contributors focus on twin themes of piracy and spring. “Gentlemen’s Piracy” by Lake McCullough delves into the depths of a modern-day scavenger’s thinking. “A Country for Old Men” by Aaron Sokoloff takes us on a journey through Florida real-estate ventures. “Vagrants” by David Filer depicts the slow, soggy, gray days of spring, punctuated by geese honking. “A Man Who Is Not April” by John Grey reflects...
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