Tag: Poetry

“Try to remember the actual
moon is never less than full.
The evening cashier has a secret
sorrow and plans for the weekend.”

“Dear eyes
like breaking stars,
some days I hear your voice
in the trees, some nights
I send you half my dreams.”

“I thought it was just opening, he says. I thought
the petals were just unfurling.”

“Tonight, I am going to push
the Susquehanna away with my body,
ignore the waning moon’s fractioning
of light.”

“Still awake believing our silence might leave us,
desperately needing to make ourselves heard,
every girl told a story before parents came for us.”

“Always, I begin
with nothing and too much
to say.”

CALYX Celebrates Fire, Fury, and Resilience  with Oregon Artist Betty LaDuke Please join us in ekphrastic appreciation of the artist Betty LaDuke, whose most recent exhibition, Fire, Fury, and Resilience:

“Hideous beauty, I shake you loose
from a cushion of the wicker chair
where, it seems, you’ve gone to die.”

“Something reminded me today that a parent of mine had died
and the barometric pressure fell, and rain began to touch the river.”

“a white moth arrives rising and falling
on the warm breeze, lingers on the headstone

then on my bare arm, clinging as if
searching for moist skin or the scent of me.”

“Milk passes through me like liquid moons,
wet stars on her tongue. She sucks

till I’m emptied of all the white
cells in my celestial body.”

“Bored, my children open me up, like a fridge,
to find out what’s inside. I glow and show them
leftovers, mostly, some of them over a week old.”

“one was peering at a recipe
for risotto, the other
at the microscopic script
in an obsolete telephone book.”

“You salt the egg anticipating
the salt. Count on the hill
for the view, and, when you get to the top,

there’s the view.”

“We approach
middle age as undiscovered country when
really it’s the same old alley, the bowling pin
that wobbles like a drunk but won’t go down.”

“In quietude I feel I am everywhere at once—my own body rehearsing its wintering act, too. I look up from the table to the far side of the lake to see a buck limping, his hind legs sixteenth-notes in the dry leaves. From far off, a shot sounds like an encyclopedia falling to a wooden floor and like the echo of its striking.”

“It’s too good to last, this early sunshine in April,
this smell-of-cut-grass morning
and this body, with its mirage of infinite breaths,
its lie of immortality.”

“It’s official: dementia and medication. Not unexpected. But getting the ICD code is like being pinned. Mom does not protest.
The transitions before me are not unique, I know. Yet the fact that they’re universal and part of life matters as much to me as cocktail party chitchat.
What I treasure are tiny pearls that appear in mundane surroundings, a particular moment between particular people.”

“They tried to scratch off the paint. A portrait. They tried to scratch. A woman. The paint. A woman with a long face.” This audio recording of “La Femme” by

“When I imagine a life after this one, I imagine a field. And in this field, there are people running toward each other, delighted to be able to.“ Enjoy this

“revolve this landscape encased by pulverized petals the stories round the wood in areola waves” This audio recording of “Rings of Pink, Enheduanna” by Nicole Miyashiro from Vol. 32:1 of

This week we are excited to share Caitlin Scarano’s poem “To My Little Sister, Driving Drunk,” which was published in CALYX’s 27:3 issue. Caitlin Scarano is a poet in the

CALYX is happy to showcase Abby Minor’s piece “Whitetail,” which was published in volume 28:2. Abby Minor has studied at Smith College, The Penland School of Crafts, and The Pennsylvania

We’re proud to exhibit our first audio piece, written and recorded by Camellia Phillips. Camellia’s piece appears in Volume 27:3 of CALYX Journal. Camellia Phillips is a longtime grant writer

To Do List for the Damaged: My Hedgebrook recipe for writing a book By Tammy Robacker As Hedgebrook opens their call for women writers to apply this June, I cannot