Category Archives: Poetry

Knockout, a New Literary Mag

Coming this October, a poetry magazine called Knockout. Co-founding Editor Brett Ortler says “we’re donating half the money we get from our first issue to Sudanese relief organizations. Our lineup for #1’s pretty good — it’s all poetry, and it includes a number of former US Poets Laureate, National Book Award winners, in addition to unpublished writers.”

3 School Girls

THREE school-girls pass this way each day:

Two of them go in the fluttery way

Of girls, with all that girlhood buys;

But one goes with a dream in her eyes . . . (from a poem by Hazel Hall)

Lately, I worry about nurturing the dreams in my little girls. I seem so naturally harsh and distant. I don’t want to be, but it’s like swimming against the current to change.

From “This Morning,” by Charles Simic

I’m just sitting here mulling over

What to do this dark, overcast day?

It was a night of the radio turned down low,

Fitful sleep, vague, troubling dreams.

I woke up lovesick and confused.

I thought I heard Estella in the garden singing

And some bird answering her,

But it was the rain. . . .

Taken from “This Morning,” by

The Six Hundred

Who hath a book

Hath friends at hand . . .” quoth Sherry about a mysterious league of 600.

“Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of Hell

Rode the six hundred. . . .

When can their glory fade?”

We have no shelter from our sin

When penitential grief has wept

O’er some foul dark spot,

One only stream, a stream of blood,

Can wash away the blot.

Lift up Thy bleeding hand, O Lord,

Unseal that cleansing tide;

We have no shelter from our sin

But in Thy wounded side.

(a modern hymn by Cecil Alexander)

A Nursery Rhyme

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.

For want of a shoe the horse was lost.

For want of a horse the rider was lost.

For want of a rider the battle was lost.

For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.