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The place for Epoems

​What is an Epoem? Read this before you submit

Lenny DellaRocca, Editor

This page is best viewed on desktop computer or laptop. Due to webpage constraints not all formatting can be adjusted as per original on Word or other document.     We  publish only 10 Epoems per issue. Witchery  appears online occasionally.

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A Sunday Kind of Room


Tides of meringue & gilt, the grim Palisades smudged
by studio dust. That 
was no weather for the strand
the water wrinkled
high-smelling estuarial lag 
piqued
while light through the struts
froze a green bench. 
The trembling hours begun,
all turned drag & drift.
Someone rolled a cigarette.
On the parapet,
iron rings of life.
I ease a canvas from the frame, such small & loving violence.
The radio is silent
then a thin, pure a cappella 
beads the windowpane.
The river that is not a river 
raises its head 
spits a stone eye back at me. 
A boat like a hospice 
like a graveyard waterlogged 
subsides.
On the wall hangs 
a picture of the last winter,
green bench painted out.
For perspective, the gull sensing snow hovers, a mere mote.

Carol Alexander


Carol Alexander’s most recent collection is Fever and Bone (Dos Madres Press, 2021). Her work has been published in anthologies and journals such as About Place Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, Caesura, The Common, Cumberland River Review, Denver Quarterly, Free State Review, Matter, Mobius, One, Pif,  Potomac Review, Ruminate, San Pedro River Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, Southern Humanities Review, Stonecoast Review, Sweet Tree Review,   Terrain.org, Third Wednesday, Verdad, and The Westchester Review.  New work is forthcoming in Delmarva Review and RHINO. With Stephen Massimilla, Alexander is co-editor of Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice (Cave Moon Press, 2022).

Tears before the Abattoir   

(re: eco sister, knuckle bump farms)

“They were completely innocent. They didn’t deserve to die,” 
wailed the headline. The
article was about
chickens lost
to avian flu after
gate-crashing flocks 
of wild geese did what 
live things do. It was the owner? 
caretaker? that was quoted? 
Of course, I’m thinking this setting must then be a “Preserve,” 
where spent layer hens retire 
after a lifetime of
meritorious service, a 
home for domestics 
never meant for compost, 
pet food, or table. & it is.
& still, I try to unpack “completely 
innocent” & “deserve to die”
while among the feathers sit my dead with their Mona Lisa smiles.


Massacre of the Innocents

While among the feathers sit my dead with their Mona Lisa smiles,
grief passes through like
a sudden storm. Who
among us is too 
good for this world? 
As my dead & past 
selves chatter like 
children & grandchildren 
as I imagine their stories & all I can do 
is apologize for whatever comes next as if I don’t know what comes
next. Never have I ever 
awakened into a life 
where a god did not or 
would not, nor a god’s 
handmaiden’s hands not 
linger, nor their saints' eyes
not mirror the catafalque crying: 
“They were completely innocent. 
They didn’t deserve to suffer & die,”  Rubens had to paint it twice.

​

Michael Mackin O'Mara  Michael Mackin O'Mara, (queer, POZ, poet) works at SoFloPoJo (South Florida Poetry Journal) by day and writes by night. Published in a number of online an print anthologies and journals, their work can be found at www.michaelmackinomara.com @minwpb          

Settlement


First, he conceded to her North and South America and 13 horizons
to either side. No one ever
gave her half the world before.
He took Asia and Europe. 
For now. He took the risk
and felt liftoff but never stayed
aloft. Details pulled his feet
flat to sea level. She loved
penguins but gave him Antarctica.
All their ice too. New trays
are always at hand.
The formal dining set was already 
broken so he got that in a box
to be unwrapped later.
Her tears lit his fuel. The more he hated it, the stronger he grew.
This gave him hope for ascent,
a spark up his chimney.
Because he failed to itemize 
the discovery of fire
she never mentioned it
boxed in the back closet, 
tucked in topsoil. 
She wrote the wet check
and he took it into checkmate.
The star charts are nonnegotiable, 
she said, so he demanded 
the sky and sea. She agreed
to give him anything
he can’t grasp, keeping only earth, the place for building.

Richard Ryal A poet, professor, and editor, Richard Ryal has worked in marketing and higher education. He stops for no obvious reason sometimes and no one can talk him out of that. His recent publications include Notre Dame Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, The South Florida Poetry Journal, and Amethyst Review.

​Confronting Reality
 
I can imagine how you gnaw it, chew the bone to slivers, 
use them as picks
for your teeth, pins 
in the center of your 
heart, the many locks
you have placed around 
it, keeping in (or out) all 
the hungers. 
You think, it’s all 
her fault, bursting 
your dreams like 
bubbles or balloons 
at the county fair 
on opening night.
Maybe it’s just bad luck that steals your happiness, as you
hold each distorted 
slight, sour event,
festered snubs
and scratchy memories
the texture of sandpaper,
which strips then stains
any hint of truth.
Hard as it seems, change 
scatters in the wind, like 
leaves. Watch them swirling, 
falling, imagine them 
salting the ground,
pulling anguish 
out of the barren hard rock you think is your earth.

Barbra Nightingale  Barbra Nightingale's poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, such as Rattle, Limp Wrist, The Liberal Media Made Me Do It (Anthology), Narrative Magazine (nominated for a Pushcart), Gargoyle, Barrow Street, The Georgetown Review, CRIT Journal, Jet Fuel,The Apalachee Review, Calyx, Kalliope, Many Mountains Moving, Birmingham Review, Chattahoochee Review.  Her most recent books of poetry include: Spells & Other Ways of Flying (Kelsay Books, 2019),Two Voices, One Past, Yellow Jacket Press (runner up in chapbook contest, 2010) and Geometry of Dreams (2009), Word Tech Editions, Ohio. She is an Associate Editor with the South Florida Poetry Journal.

My Awe Is Not Your Awe

 (overheard” The awe of battle”)

My awe is a sacred space, a bird flying to the feeder, the shade                                                         
of a tree, berries                                                                                                                                    
in the forest                                                                                                                                      
not rockets                                                                                                                                           
of light                                                                                                                                                
My heat                                                                                                                                                
from the sun                                                                                                                               
flames from                                                                                                                                     
memory                                                                                                                             
switchbacked                                                                                                                                       
to experience                                                                                                                                      
the lashing                                                                                                                                             
of cannons                                                                                                                                        
My awe                                                                                                                                                   
is the clear                                                                                                                                      
path of vision,                                                                                                                                        
the razor straight                                                                                                                             
edge of sky, where water is moved by stone how much has been lost:
​History                                                                                                                                       
shattered to pieces                                                                                                                         
that will not                                                                                                                                          
fit together                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
How do we
​gather it in our arms?                                                                                                                      
After my children left                                                                                                                        
there was a space                                                                                                                                    
I could not fill                                                                                                                                 
When cities                                                                                                                                             
are destroyed                                                                                                                                    
there is a space                                                                                                                                   
that will not fill                                                                                                                                
Now children emerge                                                                                                                         
hungry from sleep’s groove.                                                                                                                   
My awe is milk of the moon                                                                                                                   
shining on these words that come from me and will not return empty.

Grace Cavalieri

Italian American writer, poet, and playwright Grace Cavalieri is the host of the radio program The Poet and the Poem, presented by the Library of Congress through National Public Radio. She is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Greatest Hits, 1975–2000 (2002), Pinecrest Rest Haven (1998), and Poems: New and Selected (1994). Her collection What I Would Do for Love: Poems in the Voice of Mary Wollstonecraft (2004) was awarded the Paterson Poetry Prize; Water on the Sun (2006) won the Bordighera Poetry Prize. Other collections include Sounds Like Something I Would Say (2010) and Anna Nicole: Poems (2008). A selection of Cavalieri’s poems, plays, and interviews, Other Voices, Other Lives, was published in 2017. Cavalieri’s awards include the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Silver Medal, the Columbia Award from the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award. She is a poetry columnist for The Washington Independent Review of Books. Her papers are held in the George Washington University Gelman Library Special Collections.

​Cavalieri lives in Annapolis, Maryland. 

Perhaps at Sundown


Daybreak comes and I climb up to the end of this bending limb,
wide-eyed, unafraid,
see below me cuts
of meat, blood pressed tight
against plastic wrap, 
women narrow hipped
and broad, sashaying,
men grinning, teeth sharp
and lurid yellow,
all the judges fat,
snoring fast asleep
at noon, careless of the world, dreaming of girls and sugar plums,
while across the sea
madmen drop their bombs
on young brides in white
and children at play,
confounding cries of
joy with cries of grief,
and silent, unseen
poisons gather strength
in all the waters,
soil and air, even
in this limb, which will hold me till it cracks, perhaps at sundown.

Carmine Di Biase Carmine Di Biase’s chapbook, American Rondeau, has recently been published by Finishing Line Press. His have appeared in South Florida Poetry Journal, The Road Not Taken, La Piccioletta Barca, Italian Americana, The Vincent Brothers Review, Scapegoat Review and other journals. His reviews and translations appear occasionally in the Times Literary Supplement. Di Biase is Distinguished Professor of English, Emeritus, at Jacksonville State University in Alabama.

What I Found in Translation


To capture the sound of beauty in a language not your own,
would you choose
the word mariposa, papillon,
or schmetterling for a butterfly?
And what is the matter
with schmetterling, the German
asks the Spaniard & the Frenchman,
the emphatic, guttural punchline
to this translation joke.
Butterfly prosody is a Romance language, syllable timed.
Loneliness is no joke,
but my dreamy secret lover
kisses me & I kiss him back.
His deep kisses replenish my
bodily humors after long drought.
For prosody of kisses, see butterfly
above, but note the term for my
cure is Germanic, all stress timed. 
Nachküssen: kisses that compensate for all the kissing that’s been lost.

Jennifer Litt Jennifer Litt is the author of Strictly from Hunger (Accents Publishing, 2022) and Maximum Speed Through Zero (Blue Lyra Press, 2016). Jennifer’s poems have been published in Blue Earth Review, ellipsis…literature & art, Gulf Stream, Jet Fuel Review, Naugatuck River Review, and South Florida Poetry Journal. She lives in Fort Lauderdale. 

Seeing the Low of 12 Degrees on Thursday Reminds Me That December is Coming


As much as I’d love to be a mountain man dressed in the skins
of brothers I’ve hunted,
sparking heat against
the friction of my own
sinews and sweat glands,
walking into the world,
my soundless steps doubling
as prayers of thanksgiving, I am a housewife wearing a poly-fil jacket
on top of a second-hand
sweater, turning up the 
house heater, tying scarves 
around children, salting
the porch steps, marching 
my hairy legs in secret protest
up and down the same creaking stairs all day, my arms full of toys, cleaning.

Amanda Russell Amanda Russell is a poet living in New Hampshire. Her chapbook, Barren Years, was published by Finishing Line Press (2019). Her poems have appeared in First Literary Review- East, EcoTheo Review and the anthology Mightier: poets for social justice. To learn more about her poetry, please visit https://poetrussell.wordpress.com/.
 

Father               


There’s a host of other things I could do in NYC nine a.m. Sunday 
rather than mass with my parents-in-law. 
A walk on the highline, and egg-and-cheese 
and coffee at a half-rusted iron table outside 
my Holiday Inn. Sleeping in. You’ve been 
dead ten years today. Three of my five 
children won’t remember you at all. 
I mumble along with more words than 
I realized I recalled. My in-laws are here, 
alive. Fathering still, and mothering even 
as my husband and I guide them through 
Central Park and past Washington Square 
Park protesters, spotting subway rail rats 
for them to photograph and remember 
when we’re back to tidy Ohio yards. 
The organ starts up. Pews creak like any 
others I’ve ever sat on. These stained-glass stories are all the same.
I doubt it meant much to you—shifting 
from Lutheran to Catholic to marry mom 
like her father demanded, trading one 
white judgement for another. What would 
you have liked if we amateur-tour-guided 
you here? A midnight show at the Comedy 
Cellar? Pastrami on rye? I don’t think you 
could have resisted tossing a buck or two 
at subway sax or bucket-drum buskers. 
Mass would never have crossed you mind. 
Rosary beads clink the pew back, dangling 
from an old woman’s folded hands. The 
organ starts up again. I don’t want to join
 hands with any of these people, though 
I do nod them peace. The host tastes 
the exact same way it did the first time I ever opened my mouth to be saved. 

Kerry Trautman Kerry Trautman (she/her) was born and raised in Ohio. Her work has appeared previously in South Florida Poetry Journal as well as various anthologies and journals, including Slippery Elm, Thimble, Limp Wrist, Midwestern Gothic, and Gasconade Review. Her poetry books are Things That Come in Boxes (King Craft Press 2012,) To Have Hoped (Finishing Line Press 2015,) Artifacts (NightBallet Press 2017,) To be Nonchalantly Alive (Kelsay Books 2020,) and Marilyn: Self-Portrait, Oil on Canvas (Gutter Snob Books 2022.) Her next book is forthcoming from Roadside Press.