Poetry Breakfast is thrilled to announce our nominees for this years Best of the Net.
Congratulations to:
Gabriel Muoio for “Mother’s Glasses”
Mark J. Mitchell for “An Aging Goddess Starts Her Day”
Laurie Kuntz for “Self Portrait”
Tricia McCallum for “Just for Today.”
Ekta Somera for “yellow paint”
Max Reif for “College”
Where I Ache is more like having a friend speak kind words, offer comfort and relate to you rather than just a collection of poems. Megan OKeeffe writes in a natural voice. It’s clear. It’s want you want to hear in the dark times of your life.
I chose this one for its open and straight forward approach. It hits mental illness head on without bothering to skirt around the reality of it with fancy and flighty words. It speaks directly and with love to those who are suffering.
The words want you to know they care and they want to be the friend that’s there for you through thick and thin.
Book Description:
This collection is broken up into six chapters ranging from themes such as depression, jealousy, grief, and strength. These delicate subjects can be difficult to talk about and most people avoid them because of the uncomfortable vulnerability. This collection features content that can be triggering for some. I’ve always written and shared my poetry with the hope that readers would relate and feel less alone. I hope you feel a sense of community to all of those connected throughout this collection.
Book Details:
Available in Print and eBook through Amazon.
Print Edition: 156 pages
Publication Date: May 31, 2019
Sample Poems
Everything You are Makes You Perfectly You
I don’t need you to have the smallest waist
There’s not a single part of you I would ever want erased.
It’s perfectly fine that your curves don’t look like hers.
Don’t go worrying about where my eyes are looking
I’d love you even if I was blind.
There’s no need to be self conscious
when you speak your mind.
Smart and funny, you’re the whole package honey.
Caring and sweet, you make my heart skip a beat.
Everything about you makes me want to stay
And I wouldn’t want to love you any other way.
The Mind’s Maze
I fill my head with words
from a tv or radio
to drown out my own.
Otherwise I get lost
in my own mind,
losing direction
of how to find the way out.
Thoughts anchor to each other
weaving a web over any exits.
An endless loop entrapping me
from Sleep’s comforting silence.
About the Poet: Find out more about Megan OKeeffe at her site https://debatablydateable.com/
Assertion
—after Ben Lerner
by Pamela Joyce Shapiro
Sometimes, I lose my pronouns pondering the possibilities of we.
Your she, diffident among peacocks and catastrophes, must
always please. Pinned beneath the weight of verbs, she asks if you recall
her noun, the long nights reading blind, some meaning in the hours of our.
Yours is a possessive without apostrophe. Fractured lines
blossoming across limb and mind, cloying adverbs in search of
passive phrases. Are you you outside of me? Persuasive verse
unravels uniformly, a fallen nest of morphemes like
promises forgotten. Syntax deceives, meter is faulty.
If it is any consolation, the reader never tires.
About the Poet: Pamela Joyce Shapiro is a cognitive psychologist intrigued by memory and language. She teaches psychology in Philadelphia and writes poetry to capture thoughts and moments otherwise forgotten. Her work has appeared in Poetry Breakfast, Better Than Starbucks, The Ekphrastic Review, Unlost, and One Sentence Poems.
Thin Spaces
by Karen Fox
There is a place
in each life
where we stand
with naked souls
and open minds.
Where time
has not been
discovered,
rocks turns to
crystal,
sky becomes
earth.
The veil is thin
there,
where shadows
of past and
future waltz
together becoming
our truth,
our very breath.
I touch them both
and am
grateful.
Karen Fox
The Edge of Memory
by Randal A. Burd, Jr.
His laughter still infects across the years,
Long absent since the days he was around–
The video conserves the cherished sound–
Distorted by effects of time and tears.
He occupies the edge of memory.
His ghost still haunts me when I least expect.
Yet, when I pause and try to recollect,
He hides in haze devoid of clarity.
So different than the person in my mind,
The one who now appears upon the screen
Objectively preserved, but seldom seen,
Is more authentic and far less refined.
I cannot trust my head to hold what’s dear;
My heart and time are sure to interfere.
About the Poet: Randal A. Burd, Jr. is a married father of two and an educator working on the site of a residential treatment facility in rural Missouri. Randal’s poems have recently been featured by The Society of Classical Poets, Vita Brevis, the Amethyst Review, and Nine Muses Poetry among other publications.
Blog – http://randalssanctuary.wordpress.com
Twitter – @ColonelRandal
Facebook – @awesomecopy
Letting Go
by Doug Bolling
Rather the flight of the bird passing and leaving no trace. . . .
–The Keeper of Sheep XLIII, Fernando Pessoa
Sudden a winging in of sea gulls
Out of the blue early evening clouds.
They land on the beach, peck among
The sea spawned wrack as sun and shadow
Weave their stories of this hour brief,
Subject to sea’s roil and music roughened
By a moon’s long distance wooing.
I have come here to heal and begin
Again, whatever selfhood of me
Left after so much loss and words
That were aimed and found
Their target.
To disappear from yourself is the
Gateway to wisdom the Zen master
Had whispered on that long ago
Mountain top in its largesse
Of snow.
Now the gulls are lofting toward
deep sky, their erudite wings
brilliant in the billowing air.
The tide drifts out and I
With it, mind numbed
In such silence, this
Vastness, this
Beautiful nothingness.
About the Poet: Doug Bolling lives in the greater Chicago area after teaching At academic institutions in his native Kentucky and the midwest. He has Been published in many reviews including Posit, The Aurorean, Albatross, Earthshine, Illya’s Honey, The Missing Slate (with interview), and Birmingham Arts Journal among others. His poetry has received Best of The Net and Pushcart nominations and several awards, most recently the Mathiasen Award for his poem “Body and Soul” published by the University of Arizona’s Harmony Magazine.
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