Dear Friends:
Peonies wilt.
Lilies get blight.
Too bad they’re not built
like the pages of Light.
Come enjoy our spring issue, guaranteed to last the season and beyond! Just visit https://lightpoetrymagazine.com (or click the cover photo above), and you’ll get:
* Featured Poet Steven Kent (with a Spotlight appreciation by Ned Balbo).
* A sparkling chandelier of poems in honor of X.J. Kennedy and Edmund Conti, both much-missed friends of this magazine. (We’re now building a chandelier in honor of Chris O’Carroll, whose passing last week has rocked the Light community. Scroll below to “tribute,” for info on how to submit a poem for that.)
* Barbara Loots’s reviews of books by Austin Allen, Dan Campion, Martin Elster, Rhina P. Espaillat, Richard Meyer, Leslie Monsour, and Chris O’Carroll.
* An updated News page with info on readings & events, Light poets’ honors & books, and light-verse-friendly contests & calls for submissions. (Click on News at the top of our home page.)
* Poems by Light fixtures Marshall Begel, Steven Urquhart Bell, Bruce Bennett, Jerome Betts, Elijah Perseus Blumov, Paul Burgess, Michael Calvert, Dan Campion, Pat D’Amico, Anna M. Evans, Andrew Frisardi, Daniel Galef, David Galef, Nicole Caruso Garcia, Charles Ghigna, Stephen Gold, Midge Goldberg, Julia Griffin, Rob Griffith, Max Gutmann, R.S. Gwynn, David Hedges, Michele Herman, Carl Kinsky, Philip Kitcher, Peggy Landsman, Neal Levin, Barbara Loots, Bruce McGuffin, Bob McKenty, Susan McLean, Leslie Monsour, Chris O’Carroll, Alexander Pease, Viv Priestly, Steven Peterson, David J. Rothman, Matt Schatz, Jan Schreiber, Christopher Scribner, Ed Shacklee, Julie Steiner, Mark F. Stone, Cara Valle, Richard Wakefield, Cody Walker, and Gail White.
* Poems by new-to-Light poets Roderick Bates, Pari Elora, Marianne Gambaro, Gerald George, Mary Soon Lee, Hal Ober, Richard Slotkin, and Cynthia Washam. (Welcome, all!)
* Poems of the Week (on our home page), by Steven Urquhart Bell, Dan Campion, Julia Griffin, Steven Kent, and Paul Lander. But as always, you can also read all the Poems of the Week right here:
by Steven Kent
“Huge American Flag Flies Into Power Lines, Knocking Out Power for Thousands”
—The New York Times
Old Glory twines,
The current arcs,
Electric lines
Erupt in sparks.
So what went wrong?
Says one report:
The flag was long,
But came up short.
“SpaceX Sets Milestone With World’s Largest I.P.O., Furthering Musk’s Power”
—The New York Times
by Dan Campion
I say it’s Tulipmania,
The South Sea BubbleX,
Titanic, Lusitania—
The Wall Street zoo’s T. Rex.
A “milestone” or a millstone? We
Shall see. I could be wrong.
But gamble on AI? Not me.
It’s big. So was King Kong.
by Julia Griffin
“Audience members at a matinee performance of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production, starring Kenneth Branagh as Prospero, complained after a baby gurgled and cooed its way throughout the entire first half.”
—The Guardian
“They hurried hence thy crying self,”
The Duke informed his child,
Explaining how they’d come to be
Demoted and exiled;
Alas, his evocation of
Miranda’s baby blues
Was barely heard above the sound
Of nearby glugs and coos.
“Thou art inclined to sleep”: alas,
The powers of the mage
Were not sufficient to transcend
The borders of the stage,
And, equally unluckily,
The right to hurry hence
Is one the RSC does not
Allow its audience.
They, in this case, had paid good cash
To hear Sir Kenneth B,
Which left them somewhat disinclined
To note the irony,
And though ’twas not The Winter’s Tale,
The atmosphere was frost.
“What trouble was I then to you!”
Yes, baby: thou sure wast.
by Paul Lander
Pratt campaign ran dry.
Hopes faded fast as more votes
Came in. Pratt’s all, folks!
by Steven Urquhart Bell
“Bird flu, extreme heat and super gonorrhoea: The top health threats facing Britain”
—The Telegraph
I don’t think gonorrhea will
Be half the threat they say,
If Britain gets much hotter than
The heatwave back in May.
When I was wilting in the heat
And cursing its effects,
The farthest subject from my mind
Was hot and sweaty sex.
by Steven Kent
“Red states push conservative rebrands of Pride Month in backlash to LGBTQ+ celebrations”
—The Guardian
Prudishly, proudly promoting propriety:
Celebrate marriage, the one true variety!
Out with your Pride flag, Old Glory looks better—oh,
Stonewall away, we’re declaring June hetero!
by Dan Campion
“68 Quadrillion Underground Miles of Fungi”
—The New York Times
Would you like to submit a poem for Chris O’Carroll’s chandelier? If so, please send it in the body of an email to lightpoetrymagazine@gmail.com, with “Chris O’Carroll Tribute” in the subject line.
Happy reading (and writing!),
The Light Brigade
https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/
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