The Poetry Box LIVE – APRIL Edition!

Saturday, April 11, 2026 @ 4:00 PM (Pacific)

3pm (Alaskan) / 5pm (Mountain) / 6pm (Central) / 7pm (Eastern)

Featuring:

• Susan Willis Johnson (WA) – author of A Moment’s Breath
• Casey Robb (CA) – author of Morning Glory Moon
• Sharon Black (PA) – author of The Snow Arrow
• Joanne Kennedy Frazer (NC) — author of Well Seasoned

How to Join Zoom Show:

PLEASE NOTE: EVERYONE MUST REGISTER IN ADVANCE.

About the Featured Poets:

Casey Robb is a former physical therapist and a retired civil engineer from Texas, living in Northern California near her two adopted daughters. Her early passion for poetry was rekindled in middle age in the California Federation of Chaparral Poets (CFCP). Casey’s poetry has been published in many journals and has won numerous awards, including a best-of-convention trophy and a runner-up trophy at CFCP conventions. Her poems encompass a diverse range of subjects, both light and dark. She also enjoys writing fiction. Her short stories have been published in various journals, and she is currently working on a novel.

You can learn more about Casey’s book HERE

Joanne Kennedy Frazer is a retired peace and justice director and educator for faith-based organizations. Since writing her first poem at age 73, she has been published in over 100 literary venues. Having now achieved 84 years on this planet, she enjoys leisure to delight in its gifts, as well as time to grieve its desecration. She relishes her daily activity of watching a variety of birds on her balcony as they eat, drink, rest, and cock their heads, look at her. She’s fairly certain they sense her gratitude which makes it a mutual admiration society. Her go-to poetry themes are nature, justice, family and aging. Five poems have been turned into a song cycle, Resistance, by composer Steven Luksan, and performed in Seattle and Durham. Her second chapbook, Seasonings (Kelsay Books), was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. You can follow Frazer on Substack: @poetrybyjoanne.substack.com.  She lives in Raleigh, NC.

You can learn more about Joanne’s book HERE

Sharon Black credits becoming a poet to two girlhood memories from the late 60s. The first was accompanying her physician father on house calls through central Pennsylvania farm country, staring, often bored, out the passenger seat window between patient visits. The second has to do with the long row of empty, gallon-sized glass cider bottles, dusty and draped with spider webs, that lined the north wall of the unfinished basement in her childhood home. Ms. Black’s work appears in over 40 publications over many decades. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, her poems have placed in contests, secured best-in-issue accolades, and been selected for anthology/anniversary-issue publications. The Snow Arrow: Selected Poems gathers many of these poems as well as some newer pieces. Since her retirement from librarianship at the University of Pennsylvania, she has added abstract painting (see cover art) and playwriting to her creative pursuits. Her first play, Welcome to the RAA, received a staged reading at Burning Coal Theater in 2021 and she is at work on a second called The Drip in which hypodermic media indoctrination, climate change, cultism, and conceptual art collide to test family relations. She resides in Wallingford, PA with her husband George though they spend a lot of “spirit time” on Rainbow Lake in the Adirondacks.

You can learn more about Sharon’s book HERE

Susan Willis Johnson writes in the mountain town of Roslyn, Washington. She hikes daily with family and friends on trails along the Cle Elum River Valley. Serving as the spokesperson for a Roslyn grassroots citizens’ group, she collaborated to promote sustainable forestry and to protect wildlife habitat. Susan taught in the local schools and was Co-Director of the Central Washington Writing Project. She was named the 2009 Washington State Teacher of the Year. Her chapbook, The Call Home (The Poetry Box), was a finalist in the 2022 Chapbook Contest.

You can learn more about Susan’s book HERE

The post The Poetry Box LIVE (April 11, 2026) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Featured Poets:

• John Arthur – Grand Prize Winner, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2025 for Lucy the Elephant Wins in a Landslide
• Katie Dozier – Editor’s Choice Winner, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2025 for All That Glitter
• John Wojtowicz – Designer’s Choice Winner, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2025 for No Lightsabers in the Kitchen
• Laura Foley – Editor’s Choice Winner, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2024 for Ice Cream for Lunch: a grandparents handbook

Heres a video in case you missed it:

About the Featured Poets:

John Arthur is the author of Lucy the Elephant Wins in a Landslide. John is a writer and musician from New Jersey. His work has appeared in Rattle, DIAGRAM, Frogpond, Failbetter, trampset, ONE ART, and many other places. He has worked as a valet at a casino, a waiter, a Ferris Wheel operator, a cook, a pizza delivery driver, a fast food delivery driver, a landscaper, a journalist, an editor, a librarian, a library director, a manager, and for one long, hot day as a guy going door to door asking if you’d like to donate to the Sierra Club.

You can learn more about John’s winning chapbook HERE

Katie Dozier’s love of poetry first bloomed as a child. She memorized Robert Frost sitting on a tree stump and bathed in Edgar Allan Poe as an adolescent. While studying words at Florida State University, Katie also played with chips and became a professional poker player. She’s passionate about encouraging others to discover and share contemporary poetry—through her social media, Substack, and NFTs.  Katie is the author of All That Glitter; Watering Can: a Month of Poems; and the co-author of Hot Pink Moon: a Crown of Haibun and Did You See the Moon Honey. She is the creator of the top-rated podcast The Poetry Space_,   the haiku editor for One Art,   and an editor at Rattle. Katie lives in The Woodlands, Texas, with her husband Timothy Green, their four children, and way too many books.

You can learn more about Katie’s winning chapbook HERE

John Wojtowicz, author of No Lightsabers in the Kitchen, grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery and still lives in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey” with his wife and two children. Currently, he teaches social work at Rowan College South Jersey. He has been featured on Rowan University’s Writer’s Roundtable and the Painted Bride Quarterly’s Slush Pile Podcast. Several of his poems were selected for Princeton University’s 2021 Unique Minds: Creative Voices exhibition at the Lewis Center for the Arts. When not writing, teaching, or rolling around in the yard, he enjoys monitoring bluebird boxes, volunteering at the Cohanzick Zoo, and flipping horseshoe crabs.

You can learn more about John’s winning chapbook HERE

Laura Foley, author of Ice Cream for Lunch: a grandparents handbook, is also the author of ten previous poetry books, most recently, Sledding the Valley of the Shadow. Her book Why I Never Finished My Dissertation received a starred Kirkus Review and an Eric Hoffer Award. She has won a Narrative Magazine Poetry Prize, The Common Good Books Poetry Prize, Atlanta Review’s Grand Prize and others. Her work has been included in many journals including: Alaska Quarterly, Valparaiso, Poetry Society London, Atlanta Review, Poetry of Presence, and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. She lives on the steep banks of the Connecticut River in New Hampshire, and romps with her grandchildren as often as possible.

You can learn more about Laura’s winning chapbook HERE

The post One Art x Poetry Box Crossover Event appeared first on The Poetry Box.

The Poetry Box LIVE – MARCH Edition!

Saturday, March 14, 2026 @ 4:00 PM (Pacific)

3pm (Alaskan) / 5pm (Mountain) / 6pm (Central) / 7pm (Eastern)

Featuring:

• Debbie Hall (CA) – author of Mixtape: Marginal States
• Angelika Quirk (CA) – author of Chaos & Calm
• Priscilla Bernard Wieden (OR) – author of Solitary Light: Mourning Poems
• Julie Potiker (CA) – author of Gentle Currents: Poems of Pause & Peace

Enjoy a Video of the Show:

About the Featured Poets:

Debbie Hall is a former psychologist whose poetry has appeared in Hawaii Pacific Review, Arlington Literary Journal, Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine, Sunshine/Noir III:  Writing from San Diego and Tijuana, and many other literary journals and anthologies. Her books include What Light I Have (2018, Main Street Rag Books), Falling into the River (2020, The Poetry Box) and In the Jaguar’s House (2022, The Poetry Box), a book of wildlife photography and poems for children. Her essays have appeared on NPR (This I Believe series), in USD Magazine, and the San Diego Union Tribune. She holds an MFA in writing from Pacific University in Oregon and is a poetry editor with Writer’s Resist. Her photography has been published in Orion, The National Humane Review (a 2009 photo contest winner), The San Diego Union Tribune, Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine and in other literary journals.

You can learn more about Debbie’s book HERE

Julie Potiker is a mindfulness expert, author, and—much to her own delight—a debut poet at the age of 65. Her journey to poetry feels like a joyful surprise, arriving after a decade of helping others bring more peace and wellness into their lives through her Mindful Methods for Life programs. A former attorney, Julie is a Certified Mindful Self-Compassion teacher affiliated with UCSD Center for Mindfulness, and founder of the Balanced Mind Meditation Center in La Jolla, California. She trained with leaders in the field, including Kristin Neff, Christopher Germer, and Rick Hanson, and holds certifications in trauma-sensitive mindfulness, grief education, and multiple adaptations of the Mindful Self-Compassion program.

Her first two books—SNAP! From Chaos to Calm and Life Falls Apart, but You Don’t Have To— and are available in print and audiobook format. Julie’s work has been featured in The Oprah Magazine, Costco Connection, AARP, and major news outlets including NBC, CBS, and Fox. Now, she embraces the wonder of sharing her first poetry collection, proof that creativity can bloom at any stage of life. More at MindfulMethodsForLife.com.

You can learn more about Julie’s book HERE

Angelika Quirk was born and raised in Hamburg, Germany. Her poetry is influenced by German culture and the angst of post-World War II experiences. At the age of 18 she immigrated to the United States. She graduated from U.C. Berkely with a BA in German Literature. Her poetry has appeared in various literary magazines including N.Y. Quarterly, California Quarterly, TRANS-LIT2 and Marin Poetry Center’s Anthologies. She was a member of the Marin Poetry Center for six years in charge of the High School Poetry Program. Two of her poetry books, “After Sirens,” “Of Ruins and Rumors,” and her memoir “Kriegskinder” are in the library of the German American Heritage Museum in Wahington D. C. Her poem, “Vom Vergänglichen” recently won the SCALG Lyrik-Preis, 2023.

In a former life, she danced in “Totentanz” at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and was on the record album cover of the “Schlagerparade 1968” (Hit Parade 1968) in Germany. A lover of music, collector of words in English and German, she now writes poems about life and living. Her Leitmotif: to instill emotions and passions from the surreal to the sublime, from chaos to rhythm to rhyme.

You can learn more about Angelika’s book HERE

Priscilla Bernard Wieden is a lifelong Poet and Arts, Education and Environmental advocate. She is celebrated for her active engagement in Portland’s vibrant artistic community and contributions to Caldera, an award-winning year-round program for underserved youth, dedicated to nurturing creative and environmental education. Priscilla serves as Co-chair of the Caldera Board, an organization founded by the Wieden family in 1996 with the belief in the power of creativity. She also currently serves on the Board of Literary Arts and on the board of Trustees for Wieden + Kennedy.

Priscilla has devoted her life to being of service in the healing arts, having founded and run Evergreen Clinic for 35 years, and in the theater arts, having served as Board Chair for Profile Theatre. In 2024, she was a TedX Salon Speaker “Courage emerges from Love” on Mortality after the passing of her husband, Wieden and Kennedy Founder and creator of the eponymous “Just Do It” Nike Tagline, Dan Wieden.

Priscilla is a proud mother, grandmother and gardener. She stays immersed in issues of social justice, the arts, women and children, housing, the environment, and hunger, including past Board service with Urban Gleaners and Ecotrust, keeping Priscilla actively engaged with the world.

You can learn more about Priscilla’s book HERE

The post The Poetry Box LIVE (Mar 14, 2026) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

The Poetry Box LIVE – Prizewinners Edition!

Saturday, Feb 7, 2026 @ 1:00 PM (Pacific)

12pm (Alaskan) / 2pm (Mountain) / 3pm (Central) / 4pm (Eastern)

Featuring Winners from our 2025 Chapbook Contest

• John Arthur (NJ) – author of Lucy the Elephant Wins in a Landslide
• Katie Dozier (TX) – author of All That Glitter
• John Wojtowicz (NJ) – author of No Lightsabers in the Kitchen
• George Bilgere (OH) — 2025 Contest Judge, Special Guest

Enjoy a Video from the Show:

About the Featured Poets:

Grand Prize Winner, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2025

John Arthur is a writer and musician from New Jersey. His work has appeared in Rattle, DIAGRAM, Frogpond, Failbetter, trampset, ONE ART, and many other places. He has worked as a valet at a casino, a waiter, a Ferris Wheel operator, a cook, a pizza delivery driver, a fast food delivery driver, a kati roll delivery driver, a landscaper for a week or so, a journalist, an editor, a librarian, a library director, a municipal manager, and for one long, hot day as a guy going door to door asking if you’d like to donate to the Sierra Club. His band is The Deafening Colors.

You can learn more about John’s book HERE

Editor’s Choice Winner, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2025

Katie Dozier’s love of poetry first bloomed as a child. She memorized Robert Frost sitting on a tree stump and bathed in Edgar Allan Poe as an adolescent. While studying words at Florida State University, KHD also played with chips and became a professional poker player. She’s passionate about encouraging others to discover and share contemporary poetry, through her X account (@Katie_Dozier), her Substack, and NFTs.  KHD is the author of All That Glitter, Watering Can: a Month of Poems, and the co-author of Hot Pink Moon: a Crown of Haibun and Did You See the Moon Honey. She is the creator of the top-rated podcast The Poetry Space_, the haiku editor for One Art, and an editor at Rattle. Katie lives in The Woodlands, Texas, with her husband Timothy Green, their four children, and way too many books.

You can learn more about Katie’s book HERE

Designer’s Choice Winner, The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2025

John Wojtowicz grew up working on his family’s azalea and rhododendron nursery and still lives in the backwoods of what Ginsberg dubbed “nowhere Zen New Jersey” with his wife and two children. Currently, he teaches social work at Rowan College South Jersey. He has been featured on Rowan University’s Writer’s Roundtable on 89.7 WGLS-FM and Painted Bride Quarterly’s Slush Pile Podcast. Several of his poems were selected for Princeton University’s 2021 Unique Minds: Creative Voices exhibition at the Lewis Center for the Arts. When not writing, teaching, or rolling around in the yard, he enjoys monitoring bluebird boxes, volunteering at the Cohanzick Zoo, and flipping horseshoe crabs.

You can learn more about John’s book HERE

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins has called George Bilgere’s work “a welcome breath of fresh, contemporary air in the house of American poetry.” Bilgere has read his poems at the Library of Congress, the 92^nd Street Y in New York, the Chautauqua Institute, and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC. NPR listeners know him from his many appearances on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac and A Prairie Home Companion. He has received grants and awards from the Pushcart Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fulbright Foundation. He is a recipient of the May Swenson Poetry Award, the Society of Midland Authors Poetry Prize, the Ohioana Poetry Award, and the Cleveland Arts Prize. His work received the Editor’s Choice Award from the New Ohio Review in 2022, and in 2023 he won the Reader’s Choice Award from Rattle. His eighth collection of poetry, Central Air, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in March, 2022. His new book, Cheap Motels of My Youth, won the Rattle Press Chapbook Prize in 2023 and appeared in 2024.

You can learn more about George HERE

The post The Poetry Box LIVE (Feb 7, 2026) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

2025 Nominees:

Click on the poem titles below to read these beautiful poems (and why we chose them):

• “Rejection Speech” by Flavian Mark Lupinetti, from The Pronunciation Part (The Poetry Box, February 2025)
• “Leaf Fall” by Carolyn Martin, from Splitting the World Open (The Poetry Box, March 2025)
• “What a performance is” by John L. Miller, from Andes (The Poetry Box, May 2025)
• “Loowitlatkla” by Christine Colasurdo from There Is Always a Volcano Before You: Poems for Mount St. Helens and the Cascade Range (The Poetry Box, November 2025)
• “Sacred Ground” by Kristin Roedell from Lessons in Buoyancy (The Poetry Box, December 2025)
• “In the Assisted Living Home” by Debbie Hall from Mixtape: Marginal States (The Poetry Box, December 2025)

We wish all of these talented poets the best of luck!

The post Pushcart Nominees for 2025 <br>(and links to poems) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

This poem pulls you in with a title that immediately takes an unexpected turn, a clear signal to get ready for an emotional and masterful poem that doesn’t let go…not even when you’re finished reading it. Every time I read it, I’m left speechless.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.

Rejection Speech

by Flavian Mark Lupinetti

that you can’t trust a teenager
is a lesson I learned the hard way
because I trusted Tommy who was
thirteen when I met him but with
the physique of a four-year-old
thanks to a heart the size of a
half deflated beachball and just as robust
when it came to pumping blood and
although some of my colleagues said
he was too sick for me to do anything
I transplanted his heart and
by the following spring he played
Little League—not well; it turns out
that hitting a curve ball can’t
be transplanted—and over the
following years he took his antirejection
drugs and made his appointments
and developed a side hustle talking
to civic groups to raise money
for the hospital until five years later
when he decided taking meds
sucked so he quit taking them
(rejection, obituary) and if Tommy
was the only teenager who did this
that would be tragic enough but Charlene
age fourteen did the same thing because
the drugs grew hair on her forehead
and her back—talking Lon Chaney
wolfman pelt here—and Derek at sixteen
moved out of his mom’s house
to live in the trunk of a friend’s car
before giving up and that shit happens
over and over and over so don’t say a
fucking word to me when I transplant
kids who are mentally challenged
because one thing I can count on is
they’re supervised so closely they never
miss a dose and the other thing I can
count on is I never have to ask myself
should I have put that heart into somebody else

from The Pronunciation Part by Flavian Mark Lupinetti (The Poetry Box, 2025)
nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Shawn Aveningo Sanders, editor/publisher

The post “Rejection Speech” <br>by Flavian Mark Lupinetti appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Every year, Robert and I each have a love/hate relationship with leaves littering our lawn and walkway. This poem not only reframes the splendor of their magnificent color and our relationship with our neighbors, but turns this deciduous routine into gratitude for life’s slow doling out of both triumph and tragedy alike.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.

Leaf Fall

by Carolyn Martin

Late autumn and the game rages on.
Six weeks of blowing/raking/recycling
in between foggy frost and rain.
Neighbors tease about whose belong to whom—
cherry/maple/myrtle/star magnolia—
and groan at Nature’s outside joke:
as soon as lawns are clear, leaf-devils swirl
dervishly around our cul-de-sac.
We call timeout and plan to reconvene
tomorrow if the sun breaks free.
Which makes me wonder: what if
leaves fell in unison? We could pick
a Saturday before football games kick off,
and gear up to tackle one morning’s work
to shut the season down. We’d bench
memories of grudges and gripes and cheer
each other on with splashes of camaraderie.
But … a second thought: Nature may be wise
with her leaf-by-leaf strategy.
What if grief came all at once?
Or failure, love, success, crinkled skin?
What if, in one determined day,
we faced decades of experience?
It’s the doling out that makes life bearable.
This afternoon, after I store my rake and gloves,
I intend to chat with my star magnolia tree.
Branches of pussy willows are blooming
beneath her dome of half-green leaves.
I’ll thank her for nudging me off the couch
when her yellows sprinted down the street
and ask if she can estimate
when the thousands holding on will fall.
I want to strategize how to say good-bye
before we lock our doors, turn our lights
inside out, and hibernate until
buds argue their way into early spring.

from Splitting Open the World by Carolyn Martin (The Poetry Box, 2025)
nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Shawn Aveningo Sanders, editor/publisher

The post “Leaf Fall” <br>by Carolyn Martin appeared first on The Poetry Box.

I love how this poem is an Ars Poetica in the setting of a poetry reading, but with the listener in mind. It fills me with a sense of community and honors the unspoken communication and connection between speaker and listener. And then that killer last line—so unexpected, yet reassuring—giving this poem unlimited layers of meaning.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.

What a performance is

by John L. Miller

is to make you listen, who happens to listen,
to make you pause, stop what you do,
even carrying what you carry, you decide
for a little longer you can bear it,
but you come to the doorway,
listen when it’s said in the pause,
the moment of the room, you
attuned to the speaker, the song,
nothing else happens, yet you
change, you are given intention,
given invitation, you sit beside yourself,
place at your feet what brought you,
what you thought you carried
was not what weighed you,
you pass from your hand
to your hand the gift brought to you,
it is smaller than you believed,
a shiver, a heartbeat, an eye blink, you become
wholly anew in the longest minute
of the Calvary of risking, the listening
when it ends is now your day
surging forward. Know you
are never accidental.

from Andes by John L. Miller (The Poetry Box, 2025)
nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Shawn Aveningo Sanders, editor/publisher

The post “What a performance is” <br>by John L. Miller appeared first on The Poetry Box.

I love how this poem keeps expanding into new metaphor with each rich description of the volcano. Each time I read it, I gain a new appreciation for Mt Saint Helens and that ominous eruption in 1980.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.

Loowitlatkla

by Christine Colasurdo

Everybody knows mountains can’t read,
capped by lenticular clouds, licked by rivers.
But I send my words to the mountain anyway—
words like salmon eggs heaped at creek bottom,
words like ravens released from a long night’s breathing,
words like the tiny pink trumpets of twinflowers
tooting their perfume to the ants and bees.

Lawetlat’la. Sounds like water.
Sounds like the echoes of tongues long accustomed
to ocean, rain, dew, marsh, lake, stream.
Droplets fall from fir boughs smacking my forehead.
Lawetlat’la: Cascade Mountain.

I was born with a dream of the volcano,
old hump of earth peeping through hospital windows
to where I beached, slippery and screaming.
Mountains don’t peep any more
than they can read, though I woke to milk
and milkshake rivers trickling under glaciers
whose sweat described the heat of the sun.

Loowitlatkla: is that the old woman wheezing
over smoldering coals at Tamanawas Bridge
or the dimple-faced virgin in love with her own skin?
Is she heavy as old andesite or light as new snow?
Kind as a grandmother or vain as a teenager?

Or perhaps the volcano is both and neither—
old as a precocious girl, young as a grinning octogenarian,
admitting nothing, the way mountains do.
The stories never say if she had children.
They never speak of her in middle age,
only that she tended fire and fostered fire
and doomed and saved her nation.

Years ago the mountain was my grandmother,
gave me huckleberries to eat when I was seven,
chewy thimbleberries whose leaves I used as hankies,
beady salmonberries gold and plump as summer.
Berries are the mountain’s tart blood:
snowberries, soapberries, dewberries, bunchberries,
elderberries red and blue, blackcaps and salal,
and the petite poisonous blue berry
of the queen’s-cup bead lily,
petals white as a winter crevasse.

With berries she gave me black bears
snorting and heaving, slinking past the family
tent to upturn metal cans and rustle up watermelon rinds,
barbecued-chicken bones, stiff right angles of bread crusts
soaked in stale mayonnaise and mustard.

But maybe the mountain is a young woman after all,
a young woman in love with stars on lake water,
clutches of wildflowers, meditations, guitars
whose music drifts over night’s black waters,
like those underground rivers at the volcano’s heart,
those runnels of superheated ground water flashing
to steam in an instant so half the face cascades
like a broad and deafening waterfall,
like rough bark from a rotting snag
like dreams from an adolescent
who must shrug off childhood
for a paved and dutiful world.

Lawetlat‘la. Smoking Mountain.
Sounds like harmonic tremor, fizzing of magma,
rhythms long played beyond understanding,
an unseen rising for fools’ disbelief.

The summer before the eruption
I felt the volcano shudder—rattling cabinets,
shaking worn floors of a timbered lodge.
I didn’t know it was the future
crouching like a cougar.

Lawetlat’la: Sounds like the past going under—
a burning of osprey, voles, chipmunks, martens,
a suffocation of spiders, steelhead, bobcats, ptarmigans,
a drowning of otters, beaver, salamanders, mink,
a ripping of cedars, cottonwoods, hemlocks, alders,
a blocking of rivers, storm of lightning, plume of darkness,
landscape of fire, a crushing of all places
under rock, ice, wood, water, corpses, mud.

Loowitlatkla. Destroyer and destroyed,
she who covers by uncovering,
reveals by concealing, closes by disclosing.

Can we know the difference
between a word not yet said and silence—
those moments of calm between
cudgels of thunder on backcountry days?
Smooth water pools silently above a large fall.
Some mountains sputter and die.
One day that soft hot belly will harden—
like drowned logs slowly petrifying
in a lake smashed and dammed.

Compared to the volcano my own
life is less than a spatter of stones
skittering down that old Dogs Head dome
to break an afternoon’s long silence,
a grain of pulverized dacite
lost among landslides.

Lawetlat’la: Sounds like all things—
dying and rising, sweetness and violence,
a slow accretion of Earth’s molten meanings.
I want to know how the volcano carves
a pond out of its profile to collect rainwater,
how it fashions a furnace in the grip of a glacier,
how it catches clouds on summer mornings
and loses them to wind and crater dust.

For it seems that mountain is everywhere—
lies buried in cells, flies like a god to distant places,
bubbles up like spring water deep beneath willows,
sings in cracks no human can hear.
Nothing escapes the volcano—
it senses the long ropes of cedar roots sinking,
sneaking like snakes through pumice;
it hears fir needles breathe, their stomata
sighing like little accordions in the subalpine air;
it knows how long each tree will live.
I breathe because it lets me.

Lawetlat‘la. Sounds like something
crashing through brush, like deer sniffing
for shrubs beyond the sedges, like a ladder
of arrows shot up to the moon,
the trickle of an old cycle starting anew.

Tadpoles burst the seams of blast-zone lakes,
cutthroat fingerlings dart downstream,
chickarees screech and whip their tails,
elk lumber past ponds where newts have mated,
marmots creep along blasted logs whose tips
swing off ledges high in the air, even the trillium
blooms and dies as though nothing has happened,
as though nothing might ever happen again.

The past is a pocketful of pumice
I have tried to piece together.
Everybody knows mountains can’t talk
but now the volcano flaps her fireweed quilts
and whispers how the bats love her evening light.
These words might burn before I hike
past timberline in morning.

—-Note—-
*Loowitlatkla: A 19th century Indian-white term for Mount St. Helens. Versions include Loo-wit Lat-kla, Tah-one-lat-clah and Lawetlat’la. The word Loowitlatkla first appeared in print in 1860.

from There Is Always a Volcano Before You by Christine Colasurdo (The Poetry Box, 2025)
nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Shawn Aveningo Sanders, editor/publisher

The post “Loowitlatkla” <br>by Christine Colasurdo appeared first on The Poetry Box.

I couldn’t help but smile every time I read this poem. What a glorious celebration of life; our bodies—in all its beautiful forms; and to never taking ourselves so seriously we forget to let our mouth curve into a faint smile. If I live to be 98 years old, I will wear purple gloves and go for a naked stroll.

Please enjoy the poem, and feel free to leave a comment.

In the Assisted Living Home

by Debbie Hall

William stands naked
in the foyer, gripping his walker,
fingers shielded from sticky germs
by bright purple surgical gloves.

Sipping her scotch and water
in the living room,
my mother raises one eyebrow
and her mouth curves
into a faint smile
as she watches him.

It’s too damn hot in here!
William barks.

Perhaps he is counting on shock value
to deflect attention
from the 30 rolls of toilet tissue,
12-pack of paper towels
and 100-count box of rubber gloves
he has pilfered and stashed
beneath his bed.

And yet, this laying in of supplies
may indicate
nothing more than
William’s strong belief
in his potential for a long life.
Who would not call that
a healthy outlook at 98?

Who would deny him
the privilege of walking naked
down the hallway,
skin glistening,
every motion of his body
a triumphant song?

from Mixtape: Marginal States by Debbie Hall (The Poetry Box, 2025)
nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Shawn Aveningo Sanders, editor/publisher

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