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.

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

“My Mother’s Satchel Whispers”

From beside your bed
on this seasick ship,
I listen to you moan and pray.
I wonder if you can smell
Dresden death
seeping through my seams
and hear the sounds of bombs,
screams, and labor pains
echoing through
the darkness in between
your documents.
I remember how
you clutched me tight
and rescued me
from blood-stained tracks,
rats and snow,
the taunts of brutal men.
And when János said,
We must go,
you never thought twice.
The heavier I got,
I never feared
you’d leave me behind.
We were wedded each to each,
my sweet, steady woman.
My companion, my guardian.
What can I give you
as we plow through
unsteady storms
toward The Promised Land?
The only thing I have:
the vow we made
to protect your memories
until we both wear out.

The post “My Mother’s Satchel Whispers” by Carolyn Martin appeared first on The Poetry Box.

The Poetry Box LIVE – August Edition

August 14, 2021@ 4:00 PM (Pacific) / 7:00 PM (Eastern)

Enjoy a Video from the Show:

August Featured Poets:

• Gary Percesepe (New York) – author of GASLIGHT OPERA
• Don Badgley (New York) – author of WHAT IS NOT A MIRACLE
• Carolyn Martin (Oregon) – author of CATALOG OF SMALL CONTENTMENTS

ABOUT THE POETS 

Don Badgley is a lifetime resident of the Hudson Valley in New York State. Raised in a rural setting in a Quaker family Don is married and the father of two grown daughters. He remains active with the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and is the presiding clerk of his local Quaker meeting in Poughkeepsie, NY. He continues his now 35-year career as an insurance agent.

Don was encouraged to write poetry by his father and has been writing since his youth. What Is Not a Miracle is his first published collection.

Order Don’s book HERE

From associate professor of English to management trainer to retiree, Carolyn Martin has journeyed from New Jersey to Oregon to discover Douglas firs, months of rain, and dry summers. After years of writing academic papers and business books, she discovered that poetry is the way her mind interacts with the world—in images, rhythms, sounds, and intensities of language. So she’s settled into the joyful challenge of translating experience into as few words as possible and making those experiences accessible to her readers.

Martin prides herself on flashes of humor that light up her poems. Her intention is to begin and end poems with delight and throw in splashes of wisdom along the way. Add her penchant for musicality and obsession with unusual words, she crafts poems that are surprising and satisfying.

Her poems have appeared in more than 130 journals and anthologies throughout North America, Australia, and the UK. Her fourth poetry collection, A Penchant for Masquerades, was released by Unsolicited Press in 2019, and her first chapbook, Nothing More to Lose, by The Poetry Box in 2020.

She currently serves as poetry editor of Kosmos Quarterly: journal for global transformation. Find out more at carolynmartinpoet.com.

Order Carolyn’s new book HERE

Gary Percesepe is the author of a new poetry book, Gaslight Opera (The Poetry Box, 2021) plus eleven books, including Moratorium, a short story collection forthcoming from Atmosphere Press. He is Associate Editor at New World Writing (formerly Mississippi Review). Prior to that, he was an assistant fiction editor at Antioch Review. His work has appeared in Brevity, Story Quarterly, N + 1, The Greensboro Review, Wigleaf, Christian Century, Mississippi Review, New World Writing, Salon, Camera Obscura, Westchester Review, PANK, The Millions, Atticus Review, BULL, The Good Man Project, Word Riot, Necessary Fiction, Solstice, The Maine Review, Mercurius, and other places. He resides in White Plains, New York, and teaches philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx.

Order Gary’s book HERE

The post The Poetry Box LIVE (Aug 14, 2021) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

The Poetry Box LIVE – February Edition

Feb 13, 2021@ 4:00 PM (Pacific) / 7:00 PM (Eastern)

RESCHEDULED DUE TO ICE STORM

Feb 20, 2021@ 4:00 PM (Pacific) / 7:00 PM (Eastern)

Enjoy the video from February’s show:

February Featured Poets:
• Carolyn Martin (Oregon), author of NOTHING MORE TO LOSE
• C.W. Emerson (California), author of OFF COLDWATER CANYON—3rd Place Winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, 2020 (CW will be rescheduled later this summer)
• Deborah Meltvedt (California) author of BUILDING A WOMAN

ABOUT THE POETS 

From associate professor of English to management trainer to retiree, Carolyn Martin is a lover of gardening and snorkeling, feral cats and backyard birds, writing and photography. After years of producing academic papers and business books, she discovered that poetry is the way her heart and mind interact with the world —in images, rhythms, sounds, and intensities of language. So, she has settled into the joyful challenge of translating experience into as few words as possible.

Martin’s aesthetic is embodied in Jack Kerouac’s comment in Dharma Bums: “One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple,” and in Sting’s statement, “All my life I have tried to find the truth and make it beautiful.” Her poems attempt to use simple words to embrace truths wherever she finds them, and to turn them into something approximating the beautiful.

Her poems have appeared in journals throughout North America, Australia, and the UK, and her fifth poetry collection, The Catalog of Small Contentments, will be released by The Poetry Box^® in 2021. She is the book review editor for the Oregon Poetry Association and the poetry editor of Kosmos Quarterly: journal for global transformation.

Order Carolyn’s book HERE

NOTE:  C.W. had to cancel due to a personal emergency. We will reschedule a reading for him this summer.

Poet and psychologist C.W. Emerson, raised in western New York’s Finger Lakes region, now lives and works in Palm Springs, California.  Following a varied, non-traditional career path as musician, celebrity assistant, and fundraising executive for The American Foundation for AIDS Research (Amfar), Emerson received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Fielding Graduate Institute in 2007.

C.W. Emerson is the recipient of the C. P. Cavafy Poetry Prize, as well as awards and honors from The Atlanta Review, The Comstock Review, New Letters Press, and others. His work has appeared in journals including Crab Orchard Review, Greensboro Review, december, New Ohio Review, and The New Guard. Off Coldwater Canyon is his first published chapbook.

Order CW’s book HERE

Deborah Meltvedt is a high school teacher who loves to blend medical science and art in both the classroom and in her own writing. Deborah grew up in the suburbs and fields of the San Joaquin Valley whose landscapes and culture form a backbone to her poetry. As a doctor’s daughter and feminist, she feels strongly about women’s health and reproductive rights and respecting the traditional and non-traditional paths women take in their lives.

Her poems and stories have been published in the American River Literary Review, Susurrus, Under the Gum Tree, Tule Review, The Poeming Pigeon, and the Creative Non-Fiction Anthology What I Didn’t Know: True Stories of Becoming a Teacher.

Deborah lives in Sacramento with her funny and supportive husband, Rick Kushman, and their cat, Anchovy Jack, who in his former life used to be a pirate.

Order Deborah’s book HERE

The post The Poetry Box LIVE (New Date: Feb 20, 2021) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Annie Bloom’s welcomes local poets Margaret Chula, Melanie Green, and Carolyn Martin

Thurs, Nov 14, 2019
at 7:00 pm
Annie Bloom’s

7834 SW Capitol Hwy
(Multnomah Village)
Portland, OR 97219
503-246-0053

The poems in Melanie Green‘s A Long, Wide Stretch of Calm (The Poetry Box) are an invitation to slow down, to rest deep into quiet and the contemplative. Melanie Green’s poetry explores the connection with the numinous—as well as speaking to the difficulty of living with a chronic illness.  https://thepoetrybox.com/bookstore/long-wide-stretch-of-calm

In Shadow Man (The Poetry Box), Margaret Chula brings her father out of the shadows where he had been since 1957, the day her mother packed their five children—all under the age of ten—into the car and drove away. Over the years, Margaret comes to accept the differences between a mother who wants China cups with saucers and a father who’s content with a Budweiser. Through writing about these awkward, often heartbreaking, interactions with her estranged father, she discovers that there’s more than one truth and that each of us must find our own.  https://thepoetrybox.com/bookstore/shadow-man

From the universal to the personal, the formal to the experimental, Carolyn Martin’s fourth poetry collection, A Penchant for Masquerades (Unsolicited Press), takes an unflinching look at the fluidity of truth, time, identity, history, death, and relationships. A lover of all things poetic, Martin has created an eclectic collection for readers who have a penchant for words and who are open to believing in everything and nothing. Carolyn will also be sharing poems from her 2^nd poetry collection, The Way A Woman Knows (The Poetry Box). https://thepoetrybox.com/bookstore/the-way-a-woman-knows

Free to Attend. All are welcome to share the love of poetry by these phenomenal women.

Books will be available at the event or you can also order copies of the book in our Bookstore.

The post Melanie, Maggie and Martin @ Annie Bloom’s appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Please enjoy today’s selection: “Innkeepers Wife Irate Over Loss” by Carolyn Martin, which appears in The Way a Woman Knows:

Innkeepers Wife Irate Over Loss

I could spit! I shouted in his face.
Turning paying guests away!
He brushed that couple off without
so much as, Maybe we could find … .

When will he learn? The Census earns
five years of room and board,
but lugging wood and curing hay,
learning isn’t on his mind.

Of course I’d carve a plan. I’d hearth
an extra rug to keep her bundle warm.
He and that soft-eyed man would share
a bed. And when it came her time,

we’d march those smelly shepherds far
beyond the barn and hush those wings
and aggravating songs. They drive
a dreamer from his restless sleep.

And, the publicity we’d glean!
A destination site, at least.
Not every day do morning stars
and cameled Kings ruckus through

our town. We’d be well-mapped,
well-known for hospitality,
not the butt of half-lame jokes.
We lost the chance. I’m furious!

Know what’s worse? That dotty neighbor
with the rotting manger molding hay
lets strangers muck across his barn,
dropping coins to say they’ve been.

Now he roams his days across the hills,
singing sounds like tidings, peace,
and human hearts. Who talks like that?
I’d like to know. Who talks like that?

The post Poem of the Day (04-06-2018) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

On Pompano Beach after My Father’s Funeral

I’m glad he never knew, my mother says
as we walk the storm-sloped shore, precarious
with angry clouds and wind. My father’s gone
and we’re deflecting grief with talk
deeper than weather in her Florida,
gardens in my Oregon.

She tells me she’s relieved I grew into myself
and never let him know. When all my mates
were feminine, she says she understood
and kept her peace.

Your daughter’s stubborn, bright, successful
on her own. Why bother with a man?
She fed my father facts without excuse.
It worked for years, she tells me now,
and she’s comforted.

I remind her of Sunday afternoons
when we owned the baseball field. He’d pepper
shots to older guys and I’d snag tosses
home, lobbing them so he could strike again.

I tell her how I loved a cowhide’s feel,
my Yankees cap, the smell of leather
in summer heat. And how, at twelve, I toughed
it out when hardballs bruised and stung.
My three sons, he loved to joke
about two boys and me.

Thank God, he never knew, she intervenes
and grabs my arm. The shifting sand unsteadies her.
I stop her almost-fall and tell her how I’m hurt.
Would it have been so bad? my voice on edge.

Her light blue eyes avoid my green. My father,
her best friend, is dead and here we are, slipping
toward that ancient mother/daughter thing
about who owns what’s right.

I hold her while she knocks sand from her shoes
and motions toward the car. But I won’t let
it slide. What if he knew? I press.
Would that have been so hard?

We stop where sidewalk meets the beach,
stubborn in our stance, awkward in our pain.
I’m holding on until her voice unsteadies me.
You’d lose his love, she claims with certainty.

Without remorse, without regret
my mother, his best friend, shatters me
with what I can’t conceive. She pulls away
before my voice can find its words
and stinging winds hit my face.

The post On Pompano Beach after My Father’s Funeral by Carolyn Martin appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Sunday, March 22, 2015
7:00-9:00 pm

The Way A Woman Knows
Book Launch Celebration

at

TaborSpace (Dining Room)
5441 SE Belmont Street
Portland, Oregon, 97215

The Poetry Box is proud to announce the release of Carolyn Martin’s poetry collection, The Way A Woman Knows. We invite everyone to join in the celebration and hear Carolyn’s new book come to life – from her voice along with the voices of local poets and friends.

Books will be available at the event or you can also order copies of the book in our Bookstore.

The post Carolyn Martin Book Launch Celebration appeared first on The Poetry Box.