Search

Poetry Breakfast

Serving a little poetic nourishment Monday thru Friday and featuring a Short Play Saturday Matinee to read.

Open Search
Category

Annmarie Lockhart

10 Ways to Write a Poem – A Poem by Annmarie Lockhart

10 Ways to Write a Poem

  1. Reassemble the torn bits of the poem
    ++ he left on your desk in 1989
  2. Listen to the waves wash around
    ++sanded jellyfish and mermaids
  3. Retrace the steps he took
    ++to give you a birthday kiss
  4. Dance with her in post-stroke
    ++and wedding dresses
    ++++and a virtual audience
  5. Feather the skinned knees of every
    ++smooth-cheeked kiss
  6. Drink down wine
    ++turned to water
    ++++turned to winter
  7. Stretch the length of your spine
    ++along his hand and the lined page
  8. Taste the fat of coffee cream lyrics
    ++sung by a burning boy
  9. Lock eyes with clasped hands
    ++across happy hour smiles
    ++++and congenital heart defects
  10. Commit it all to paper
    ++commit to no one
    ++++commit soul to holy hands
    ++++++commit the rest to memory

 

 

About the Poet:  Annmarie Lockhart is the founding editor of vox poetica, an online literary salon dedicated to poetry, and Unbound Content, an independent poetry press. A lifelong Bergen County, New Jersey resident, she lives, writes, and works two miles from the hospital where she was born. You can read her words at fine journals online and in print.

 

Poetry Breakfast accepts submissions of poetry and poetry related creative non-fiction year-round.  See our Submission Guidelines page for details on submitting your work.

Start your morning with a nourishing poem.  Follow us on  Twitter, Facebook, and  Tumblr,  and enjoy a new poem every morning straight to your feed.

Poet’s Lunch and Reading October 8, 2017

Readers here are familiar with Poetry Breakfast.  A morning nibble of poetic nourishment.  But Poet’s Lunch and Reading?

I am not much good at explaining.  Especially when things grow organically.  A seed dropped by the wind.  Planted in my yard.  Growing without my planning.

Over the course of the last year and a half a place now known as the Poetry and Arts Barn has been incubating.  Its final full birth came about October 1st, 2017.  That day, the first Writer’s Brunch and Poet’s Lunch and Reading happened.  And they will continue happening every Sunday.

Brunch and Lunch are the obvious outgrowths of Poetry Breakfast.  Only, these are in the physical realm, face to face, bodies in the same space.  The purpose of them is the same as any meal – fuel and nourishment.

The full growth of the Poetry and Arts Barn has yet to be revealed, even to me, though I am the one with the keys to the building.  What will come, will come when it is meant to be.  For now, we have the Writer’s Brunch and Poet’s Lunch and Reading.

For those who dine with us each morning for breakfast, we don’t want you to go without some poetry for lunch on Sundays.  So, each week we will capture something from the Poet’s Lunch and serve it up the following Sunday.

This past Sunday, we had a wonderful visit from Annmarie Lockhart, a local Jersey poet, who heard about the Poetry and Arts Barn through Poetry Breakfast.

She was gracious enough to be our spontaneous featured poet.  And we caught it on video to share with you today.

Annmarie Lockhart is the founding editor of vox poetica, an online literary salon dedicated to poetry, and Unbound Content, an independent poetry press. A lifelong Bergen County, New Jersey resident, she lives, writes, and works two miles from the hospital where she was born. You can read her words at fine journals online and in print.

We hope you’ll watch and listen.  And while you’re munching on this today, we’ll be at the Barn cooking up something new to serve you for lunch next Sunday.

Part 1

Part 2

And Part 3… The Nailpolish Poems

Blanket Party – A Poem by Annmarie Lockhart

Blanket Party*

I remember:

male faces
+ lost inside kappa
+ sigma epsilon jackets
the blankets they threw
+ out of bedroom windows
+ the day before the party
++ she
never came back
+ from

the smiles they wore
that one boy
+ who stood ready to jump
+ like the unfortunate man
+ who supervised the
++ sewing girls
+ that went to work that day
+ locked behind factory doors
+ and
++ fell
a heap of blankets
+ strewn on the sidewalk
+ below the open
+ workroom windows

* After Walter Sanders’ photo, originally published in the May 26, 1941 issue of LIFE magazine.

 

 

About the Poet:
Annmarie Lockhart is the founding editor of vox poetica, an online literary salon dedicated to poetry, and Unbound Content, an independent poetry press. A lifelong Bergen County, New Jersey resident, she lives, writes, and works two miles from the hospital where she was born. You can read her words at fine journals online and in print.

 

 

Poetry Breakfast accepts submissions of poetry and poetry related creative non-fiction year-round.  See our Submission Guidelines page for details on submitting your work.

Start your morning with a nourishing poem.  Follow us on  Twitter, Facebook, and  Tumblr,  and enjoy a new poem every morning straight to your feed.

It Felt Sinful Drinking Water – A Poem by KJ Hannah Greenberg and Annmarie Lockhart

It Felt Sinful Drinking Water

It felt sinful drinking water
Hot desert nights, when
Humidity was winter stuff,
Breezes were imagined, only,
Temperatures took on sauna
Qualities.

We saw no clouds, just sky, forever
The mirage of a Caribbean inlet
The benediction of belief found in
The abrasions from a sirocco or a
Parching, drought-bidden
Fast.

In such heat, I turned to you,
Your glistening forehead,
Ruddy nose, chafing lips,
Those flowers left on sunlit
Sills; those dry, wind-blown
Memories.

I didn’t know yet which
Of those fading petals would
Wilt onto a scrapbook page
Or wither into the abyss
Of the Unremembered
Or linger, here

Where heartfelt barren lands
More than dunes, khamsins,
Sundered longings, sorrow,
Rendered love akin to glassy
Inversions, unanticipated
Chills

Where seasons come and gone
Forge the fight into an amalgamation
Of light and night, drought and flood,
Torpor and brace, and we find our
Own story whole and
Told.

 

 

About the Poets:
Annmarie Lockhart is the founding editor of vox poetica, an online literary salon dedicated to poetry, and Unbound Content, an independent poetry press. A lifelong Bergen County, New Jersey resident, she lives, writes, and works two miles from the hospital where she was born. You can read her words at fine journals online and in print.

Pushcart Prize nominee KJ Hannah Greenberg’s lightly pert and somewhat exuberant layered writing can be found in North American, European, Oceanic, Middle Eastern, and Far Eastern venues, as well as under select budgies. Her creative efforts are devoted to lovers of slipstream fiction, to second chair oboe players, and to mothers who despair of fining the bottom of Mt. Laundry. Her books are available at Amazon.

 

Poetry Breakfast accepts submissions of poetry and poetry related creative non-fiction year-round.  See our Submission Guidelines page for details on submitting your work.

Start your morning with a nourishing poem.  Follow us on  Twitter, Facebook, and  Tumblr,  and enjoy a new poem every morning straight to your feed.

Stringing Beads by Annmarie Lockhart

Stringing Beads
by Annmarie Lockhart

Beads strung together draw the eye
and the finger; touch the bead and
know the soul, feel the heart of the
one who would wear them.

Little girls three wander into their
mother’s room, jump on the bed,
pile up like puppies. Each takes the
beads in her hand to examine their
texture and color and sniff out the
familiar scent of mama in the bouquet.

One has inherited her curves, two have
her temper, three own her powers of
perception, wit, and expression. None
show her color, none have met her ghosts.

They finger the beads and feel their
way, looking for another chapter, a
half-opened door, a hint at the back
and forth connections that draw and hold
one bead, unknown, to another.

Annmarie Lockhart is the founding editor of vox poetica, on online literary salon dedicated to bringing poetry into the everyday, and the founder of unbound CONTENT, an independent press for a boundless age. A lifelong resident of Bergen County NJ, she lives, writes, and works 2 miles east of the hospital where she was born.

Avatar by Annmarie Lockhart

Avatar
by Annmarie Lockhart

The hat makes a statement heard
differently by everyone who sees it
and thinks they know something
about she who wears it.

Reactions run the gamut from
“I love your hat” to “ha ha, nice hat”
to “I can’t stand that f’ing hat.”
Strangers take liberties, registering
opinions, mostly flattering, sometimes
hostile; familiars take liberties too,
but tend to skew to the opposite ratio.

Why does a hat garner more reaction
than her eyes, hair, cleavage? How
can a hat attract more attention than
her rounds and curves, her easy giggle,
her hand-hold smile, her quick-bared claws?

She fingers the hat, ponders its nature.
It is all personality, but it is still
soft
as skin
and fragile
as her beating heart.

Annmarie Lockhart is the founding editor of vox poetica, on online literary salon dedicated to bringing poetry into the everyday, and the founder of unbound CONTENT, an independent press for a boundless age. A lifelong resident of Bergen County NJ, she lives, writes, and works 2 miles east of the hospital where she was born.

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑

%d bloggers like this: