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

Sail On

by Linda Ferguson

It’s not a matter of sequins and chiffon.
Of ruffles. Of petticoats.
Or even pink—

although I do love that—

the sandy pink of a kitten’s tongue
the rustling pink of coneflowers baked in the late-August sun
the creamy pink of birthday icing and its tender,
curling peaks—

It was Mom who balked at the sight of me, her boy—
she was the one who squirmed
who screwed on a stiff smile
whose taut, rusted tendons creaked
as she bent to press her ear to my bedroom door—

What did she expect to hear?
I was cross-legged on the floor, clipping pictures from her magazines
to make my walls bloom with yellow-tongued nasturtiums,
with sunflowers, their open hearts abuzz,
with pots of red salvia I wanted to drape
over my shoulders like a feather boa.
I imagined myself enveloped by blossoms,
some with the audacious ruffles of cancan girls,
others as delicate as the fingertips of a glass ballerina
pirouetting on the pedestal of a music box—

That was it—is it!—a craving for options!

Once I slipped into my mother’s room
and tried on her swimsuit—

the stretch of a palm-sized orchid print, the snap of elastic straps,
the pale flesh-toned cups sewn into the lining of the chest—
my boy trunks had none of this—
maybe a stripe, a drawstring, a zippered pocket for a locker key—
just shorts, really—for soccer, T-ball and play combat.

I am—go ahead and say what you think—
aberrant
unnatural
anomalous
strange
sick—

I don’t understand what it’s like to be any other way,
to want to be any other way,
to never wonder how it feels to hold the carved handle of a parasol
to never sense its fringe swaying overhead
or to dab a drop of lavender scent behind my left ear
or vanilla
or rose
or hyacinth—

What is ‘manly’? Wood spice?
What’s that?
And what’s it like to smell of nothing else?
Maybe it’s like being in a box,
a narrow, pine box
nailed shut,
deaf and blind as dirt.

Not for me, aberrant, gloriously sick, sick me:
I’ve twirled through lockstepping crowds on their way to work
I’ve floated down grocery store aisles in a snowy tutu
I’ve wound two strings of my grandmother’s pearls around my Adam’s apple
I’ve trilled my countertenor over strip malls and clover fields
and decked myself in blue and silver sequins to become a splendid sea creature
unfurling my pliant limbs—

Now voyager, I then say to myself,
sail on, swim on
through rip tides and lightning and jellyfish stings,
through the inky secrets of the deep
beneath the glowing moon that blooms in shades of white
and gold and tangerine and—yes!—pink.

from The Poeming Pigeon: A Journal of Poetry & Art (#14)
nominated for The Pushcart Prize by Shawn Aveningo Sanders, editor/publisher

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The Poetry Box LIVE – January Edition

January 8, 2022 @ 4:00 PM (Pacific) / 7:00 PM (Eastern)

January Featured Poets: Chapbook Contest Winners

• Mary Warren Foulk (MA) – author of Erasures of My Coming Out (Letter)
• Linda Ferguson (OR) – author of Of the Forest
• Tricia Knoll (VT) – author of Let’s Hear It for the Horses

Enjoy a Video from the Show:

ABOUT THE POETS 

Mary Warren Foulk is the first-place winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, 2021 for her chapbook, Erasures of My Coming Out (Letter). She has been published in VoiceCatcher, Cathexis Northwest Press, Yes Poetry, Arlington Literary Journal (Gival Press), Los Angeles Poet Society, Pine Hills Review, Palette Poetry, Visitant, Silkworm, and Steam Ticket among other publications. Her work also has appeared in (M)othering Anthology (Inanna Publications) and My Loves: A Digital Anthology of Queer Love Poems (Ghost City Press). Her chapbook, If I Could Write You a Happier Ending, is forthcoming from dancing girl press (2021). 

Mary has attended several writing workshops and conferences, including The Writers Studio and AWP events, as well as received several artist and educator grants, including from the National Endowment of the Humanities. She recently won the “Teach! Write! Play!” fellowship to the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and her poem “The Inventory of Fumbling” received first place honors. Her poem “portrait of a queer as a young boy” has been nominated for the 2021 Best of the Net Anthology. A graduate of the MFA Writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Mary lives in western Massachusetts with her wife and two children. She is an educator, writer, and activist.

Instagram: @mwfoulk
www.facebook.com/mary.w.foulk
Twitter: @mwfoulk

You can order Mary’s winning chapbook HERE

Linda Ferguson is the second-place winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, 2021 for her chapbook, Of the Forest. Linda started her career writing software how-to manuals before she even owned a computer. She also worked as a copywriter and journalist until she became hooked on reading, writing and performing poetry when she saw Naomi Shihab Nye, Lucille Clifton and Jimmy Santiago Baca in the Bill Moyers program The Language of Life. Here it was, she realized: a tool to say the unsayable while savoring the pleasure of piecing together intricate word puzzles.

As a passionate community-builder, she teaches affordable creative writing classes for adults and children. Based on her belief that artistic expression should be available to everyone regardless of income or experience, she creates a warm, friendly atmosphere where students are free to delve into imagination and memory to find their voice while relishing the camaraderie of their fellow writers.

A four-time Pushcart nominee, Ferguson is also a writer of fiction and essays. Her first chapbook, Baila Conmigo, was published by Dancing Girl Press, and her collection of feminist persona poetry, Not Me: Poems About Other Women, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in fall 2022.

She’s also an amateur dancer who loves to draw, paint, and shoot the breeze with her husband and their grown children.

Website: https://bylindaferguson.blogspot.com

Instagram: @ljd.ferguson.1

You can order Linda’s winning chapbook HERE

Tricia Knoll is the third-place winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, 2021 for her chapbook, Let’s Hear It for the Horses.

“A horse. A horse. My kingdom for a horse!” cried King Richard the Third. Tricia Knoll’s father thought this as a child until his practical father detailed the costs and suggested he rent one. Which he did, at Colorado dude ranches. On weekends in suburban Chicago to ride hell bent on trails through cornfields. Her father did everything he could to make sure Knoll loved horses too. Summer horse camps. Riding with her dad in Rocky Mountain National Park summer after summer. Sometimes riding at mad gallops with the suburban men. Horse shows and rodeos. He was at his best in his cowboy boots and pearl snap-button Western shirts.

Knoll has degrees in literature from Stanford University (BA) and Yale University (MAT). She taught high school English. Edited a newspaper for elementary students. Served as Public Relations Director for Portland, Oregon’s Children’s Museum. Acted as the Public Information Officer at the Portland Water Bureau and went to New Orleans as an emergency responder following Hurricane Katrina.

Knoll retired in 2007 to write. Her poetry collections address interactions of wildlife and humans in urban habitat (Urban Wild); people and creatures on an organic farm in Washington State (Broadfork Farm); change in a small town on Oregon’s northern coast (Ocean’s Laughter); her understanding of white privilege (How I Learned To Be White); and relationships that sometimes go askew (Checkered Mates). How I Learned to Be White received the 2018 Human Rights Indie Book Award for Motivational Poetry. She is a contributing editor to the online journal Verse Virtual. For more information, visit triciaknoll.com.

Knoll lives in the woods of Vermont. Stables for dressage horses, a herd of pintos, and a one-horse family barn are less than a quarter mile in any direction. She smells them on warm days.

You can order Tricia’s winning chapbook HERE

The post The Poetry Box LIVE (Jan 8, 2022) appeared first on The Poetry Box.

“An Annotated Facebook Acrostic” by Linda Ferguson, a poem from The Poeming Pigeon: Pop Culture issue, released in December, 2020 by The Poetry Box, has  been nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

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

“An Annotated Facebook Acrostic”

Feverishly photographing beautiful food and flowers.*
*I hate my boss. My kid served detention three times this week. Again,
ants in the jelly. So not perfect. Don’t tell anybody.

Ahhh, squirrels, puppies, llamas, donkeys. Soft and warm and snuggily.*
*My anti-anxiety medication is NOT working.

Cats! Sleeping in baby’s brand new cradle, leering at squirrels, licking
their toes in the bathroom sink.*
*I know I’m supposed to be eager to please, but how cool to be a furry,
arrogant beast with claws and teeth.

Everyone is smiling, smiling, smiling, just like celebrities! Perched on a
ladder cleaning the gutters or cheering for the team (windchill factor
below 20), blissed out in the recovery room just after surgery!*
*Remember what happened when you cried in front of everyone in third
grade? Do NOT, under any circumstances, look sad in public ever again.
I’m not kidding.

Bevy of besties. Besties at the apple tasting. Besties sipping wine on
the balcony at the beach. Besties belting out birthday karaoke.*
*I am never alone. Never lonely. I am adored. I never lie awake in the
dark thinking Oh hell, what’s wrong with me. I’m not kidding. Really.

Oh là là! Me in front of the Eiff el Tower and the Tower of Pisa, the Tower
of London, Thailand’s State Tower and Santiago’s Gran Torre. All the
torres and me!*
*See how adventurous I am! Such good taste (and money)!

Offl ine, I think about doing yoga, taking in orphans and communing
with fungi under trees.*
*If I do more things, I could post about them, and people would love
and admire me even more. How awesome would that be?!

Kudos! I won a prize! You won a prize! We donated money! Our latest
remodel is so lovely! We’ve all been with the same partners forever!
Our children are so successful and happy! We signed the petition
to save the bees! We rode the bus one day this week! We’re all so
beautiful, clever and aware, I can hardly speak!*
*When oh when will I be happy?

The post “An Annotated Facebook Acrostic” by Linda Ferguson appeared first on The Poetry Box.

Columbine

Ballerina slender stalks, opening
to petal silk, fluted
like a fairy’s skirt as she flits from fern
to fragrant moss

round leaves sheltering
ladybugs, potato bugs,
bees of bumble and honey,
pink worms, green crickets,
wings of moon-white moths,

my first Columbine – fingertips pressing seeds
into yogurt cups on our window sill – then
cradling my baby daughter on the couch, both of us
sick and falling into sweet fever dreams
of whimsical blossoms the color
of butter and cream –

silence of seeds beginning to stir,
pushing open, unseen, as my young son plays
beside me, humming a song
in a parallelogram of sunshine –

Columbine, flower of picnics and
petrichor – the baby awake now
and sucking on me for dear life –

Columbine

Columbine

suddenly flowering
into a burst of fire
forcing entry,
moving from room to room,
taking hostages in fertile imagination,
finger-painting it with the gore
of church pews, classrooms, and the dance floor
where the elegance of erotic love
had begun to unfurl –

and me tightening my arms
around my children and finding there’s no
flying back to the Columbine
of a sun-warmed couch
and baby seeds beginning to sprout –

before a chorus of pale pistils hardened
into artillery of lead and steel,
before we cut our tongues
against the lost innocence
of vowels and consonants:

Sutherland Springs
Sandy Hook
Orlando

Columbine –

Columbine
a flower, a fancy,
sweet milky breath

weight of a baby,
still safe on my chest

(Please note, the online format of this poem is left-justified where as the print version dances on the page with more creative indents, etc.)

The post Columbine by Linda Ferguson appeared first on The Poetry Box.