WWPH WRITES ISSUE 56 TINY POEMS SPECIAL EDITION II

Welcome to WWPH WRITES 56… TINY POEMS Special August Edition II!  And if you are thinking of submitting to our 2024 manuscript contests in poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction when the contest opens on September 1, please make sure you review our updated guidelines here, including our 50th Anniversary Fiction Award sponsored by Carol Trawick.

Read on to TINY POEMS…we will be back in our next edition with prose…and more poetry!

Caroline Bock & Jona Colson

co-presidents, WWPH Writes

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PRESENT

Let the oven beep

and frozen pizza burn:

the cat is in my lap

Alyson Lynch is a poet and death doula living in Baltimore, Maryland. 

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AEROPHOBIA

The ten seconds after take off

When you are flying like a god before you remember:

Birdstrike

Danielle Stonehirsch writes and lives in fear of flying and birds in Silver Spring, MD.

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BIRDSCAPE

in pairs

kissing cardinals and mirroring titmice

morning loneliness

Cathy Hailey is Northern Region Vice President of The Poetry Society of Virginia and organizes In the Company of Laureates, a gathering of poet laureates in Prince William County. Her chapbook, I’d Rather Be a Hyacinth, was published by Finishing Line Press.

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HUMMINGBIRD

Climbing like a tiny rocket

a blur of beating wings

she hangs motionless in the air.

Lois Perch Villemaire of Annapolis writes poetry and memoir flash along with researching family history, practicing yoga, and raising African violets.

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HOME

Maybe home is merely the first life you built,

before you learned how much the world takes away,

always expecting you to construct again.

Jessie Atkin writes fiction, essays, and plays (not usually poems). She can be found online at jessieatkin.com

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A HAIKU FOR HOME

I hear your footsteps

wondering ghost weighted down 

by my memories

Jeff Scott Lane is an artist from Fairfax, Virginia with poetry published in So it Goes, Coffee People Zine, and What Rough Beast—COVID-19 Edition.

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NEXT STOP, VENUS

if you are an alien who has come for a visit

you should know that this place is 

inhospitable 

Jane Palmer is a professor, writer, researcher, and activist who lives in Takoma Park, MD.

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END GAME

Rows of mini-ants

mince in and out of baited trap:

Weapon of mass destruction.

Natalie Canavor has edited national magazines, run a communications department, written prize-winning feature articles and taught graduate-level writing. She turned to poetry four years ago, under the mentorship of Grace Cavalieri.

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MY YOUTH

shyness awareness camp

first day

nobody shows up

Eleanor Jones is a Maryland-based public relations executive and a private relations writer. 

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FRIENDSHIP LOVE HAIKU

I said I love you

She said I don’t feel the same

We kissed. It began

Harvard Magazine called Peter Coppelman “one of the leading public interest lawyers of his generation;” in retirement he has become a poet.

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WEST VIRGINIA SKETCHBOOK

Mountains, yes. But draw them abstract.

No honey dappled hills of clover.

Just curve a line to ground the sky to earth.

Henry Crawford is the author of two full-length collections of poetry, American Software (CW Books, 2017), and The Binary Planet (The Word Works, 2020). 

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DAWNING

Willa Cather sky

Virginia, not Nebraska

blue, pink, orange edged

Sarah Tollok lives in the Shenandoah Valley. Her debut novel, Bookstories, will be hitting shelves March of 2024.

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SMART ASS OAK

Smart-ass oak

drops one more leaf

on the pile I raked

Hunter Ward is a writer and songwriter based in Washington, DC.

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WATCH THE CREEK PURL AMONG THE ROCKS

The great blue heron rise,

its wings treading the air

with a low whistling sound.

Kay White Drew’s work appears in the Grace and Gravity series, This Is What America Looks Like, and Loch Raven Review, among others. She lives in Rockville, MD, with her husband.

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I PUT MY HAND INTO THE STREAM

watched the water circumvent

this scrim of worldly flesh

this dam of bones I had erected

Kathleen Hellen is the author of the full-length collections: Meet Me at the Bottom, The Only Country Was the Color of My Skin, and Umberto’s Night, and two chapbooks. She lives in Baltimore.

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LOUISE BROOKS WALKS THROUGH THE CITY 

Flirtation evades 

To induce the chase until 

It finds itself lost. 

James Toupin is a retired government lawyer who has published poems widely.

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LANDSCAPE

We escaped the land

and lost ourselves

among concrete pillars and glass portals.

Susan Drilea lives in North Potomac, Maryland. She has facilitated a poetry study group and participates in a poetry workshop and a creative writing group.

GLOVER PARK, DC Playground

playground noise

stepping through yellow

feral daffodils

Juliana Schifferes is a poet from the Washington, DC area. She has published in Bourgeon.

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MURPHY’S LAW BED SENRYU

Shut up in the wall

Just this solitary bed

And my breathing sounds

Alan C. Reese wanders and wonders lonely as a cloud in Baltimore.

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ANTIQUE SHOP

Family album

Someone’s Papa and Aunt Sal

Known to no one now.

 Patricia Gray is the happy recipient of a 2023 Artist Fellowship in Poetry from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

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MY FAIRY TALE

He places the car seat on the floor,
“Your granddaughter.”
I kiss the princess and wait for her to awaken.

Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka is the author of two prize-winning poetry collections and translator for four books by Lidia Kosk. Co-editor of Loch Raven Review.
Marylander since 1981. 

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week 9

beautiful invader; jellybean stranger
the answer, the question
my child yet to be.

Catherine Bloom is a Maryland-based librarian and scribbler.

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EVERLASTING MOM

Garinè Isassi is the author of the award-winning novel Start with the Backbeat. She loves music, chocolate, and altruistic sarcasm.

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ANNUAL PERFORMANCE REVIEW

My career goal?

Survive capitalism,

eyes still twinkling.

Caly McCarthy is a resident of Cleveland Park who finds uncanny delight in cooking chickpeas on her stove.

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EYE OF THE TIGER 

All these past lovers, 

a training montage.

Jennifer Browne cares deeply about penmanship. 

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AFTERWARDS

Light bounced from the lagoon

played on our louver slats

like the left hand of a phantom guitarist

Michael H. Levin a lawyer, solar energy developer and writer based in Washington DC, has been published widely and authored four poetry collections.

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WWPH Community News

IN MEMORIUM…Elaine Maria Upton (December 22, 1945 – July 20, 2023). She is the author of Children of Apartness (Washington Writers Publishing House, 1993), winner of the 1993 Columbia Book Award for Poetry, and a translator of poets from German to English. She was an assistant book editor for Being Human, the newsletter of the Anthroposophical Society in America, and taught at several schools and colleges, including the Max Stibbe School in South Africa, the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, Dartmouth College, and the University of Maryland. At the time of her death at age 77, she was living in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. At the Washington Writers’ Publishing House, we are able to publish our books today because of the others who came before us. Thank you, Kim Roberts, a WWPH author, for sharing this with us.

OUR 2023 AWARD-WINNERS will be published on OCTOBER 3, 2023. If you are planning ahead, our 2024 Manuscript contests in poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction open on SEPTEMBER 1-November 1…Prize monies, publication, editorial support, and promotion. Past WWPH winners judge all entries blind. We strongly encourage you to read our recent award-winning books to learn more about our literary sensibility. Purchase our books at our bookshop.org affiliate page and everywhere good books are sold. Our submission guidelines have been updated for 2024. Read details here.

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Purchase our award-winning books including THE WITCH BOTTLE AND OTHER STORIES, by Suzanne Feldman, winner of our 2022 Fiction Award, NOW AVAILABLE AS AN EBOOK for your KINDLE (only $7.99) and for all devices!

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