Iambic pentameter by Patricia Sykes

I watch myself how I use my voice how
much I give away rebellion weighs
against obedience prayer against fantasy
rote against the thrill of words that lately arrive

It was hearing a girl recite Ode to a Cabbage
that made me want to write verse myself
I hide my poems like hoarded love
the taste of secrecy is delicious (Nun-

the-Big-Irish gives the girl curry
when she catches her

Tiferet Writing Contest

Enter the 2014 Tiferet Writing Contest and submit to possibly win $400 for best poem, story or essay. $1,200 will be awarded in prizes.

This year's judges are Alfred Corn for Poetry, Jacqueline Sheehan for Fiction, and Charles Euchner for Nonfiction.

Tiferet editors will select ten finalists to be sent to the judges. One winner and three honorable mentions will be selected by the judges in each category. Results will be announced this coming fall.

All submissions are considered for publication in the journal and your $15 contest entry fee brings you digital copies of a full year's subscription to Tiferet (a $24.95 value).

They are accepting submissions until June 1, 2014

Submit your entry here

Uncoupling by Jac Jenkins

Ice
clasps its thorny cloak with filigreed

brittle
lace against my breast

bone.
The pin sticks my skin when I inhale.

I
stay close to his mouth;

his
heat breathes an early thaw

as
Winter opens its teeth on my throat.



Spring
stitches my scabs to scars, my scars

to
silver. I am bare beneath bridal lace

and
veil. When I inhale, his hands

clasp
me like whalebone; I stay close

to
the

Writing the Day

Writing the Day was the name I chose for a new daily practice I started for 2014. It wasn't a New Year Resolution, and it wasn't totally original.  I want to write a poem each day.

William Stafford is the poet who inspired this daily practice the for me. Stafford wrote every day of his life from 1950 to 1993. He left us 20,000 pages of daily writings that include early morning meditations, dream records, aphorisms, and other �visits to the unconscious.�

It�s not that I don�t already write every day. I teach and writing is part of the job. I do social media as a job and for myself. I work on my poetry. I have other blogs. But none of them is a daily practice or devoted to writing poems.

When Stafford was asked how he was able to produce a poem every morning and what he did when it didn�t meet his standards, he replied, �I lower my standards.�

I like that answer, but I know that phrase �lowering standards� has a real negative connotation. I think Stafford meant that he allows himself some bad poems and some non-poems, knowing that with daily writing there will be eventually be some good work.

I wanted to impose some form on myself each day. I love haiku, tanka and other short forms, but I decided to create my own form for this project.

I call the form ronka � a somewhat egotistical play on the tanka form.

And that will be our short prompt for this short month.

These poems are meant to be one observation on the day. It might come upon waking. It might come during an afternoon walk, or when you are alone in the night.The poems should come come from paying close attention to the outside world from earth to sky or from inside � inside a building or inside you.

People know haiku as three lines of 5-7-5 syllables. But that�s an English version, since Japanese doesn�t have syllables.

The tanka form consists of five units (often treated as separate lines when Romanized or translated) usually with the following pattern of 5-7-5-7-7.

For my invented ronka form, there are 5 lines, each having 7 words without concern for syllables. Like traditional tanka and haiku, my form has no rhyme. You want to show rather than tell. You want to use seasonal words - cherry blossoms, rather than �spring.�

It's hard for Western writers to stay out of their poems - lots of "I" - but ronka have fewer people walking about in the poem.

The poems are just 5 lines, but you can certainly write several on a single theme and chain them together renga style.

For examples, there are some on our main site and all my ronka poems so far are on the Writing the Day website. I look forward to you outdoing me at my own form.

Submission deadline: February 28, 2014

Bogong Moth by Joe Dolce

A Bogong moth

darts out of
darkness
to seize fire -
it�s burned away its tarsi,
yet
continues to swoop,
kiss, careen, sizzle,
fluttering and
candle-banging
like fawn-crazed Nijinski.



I look up from my book

accepting the
immortal,
fatal dance
of life and light,
like Icarus�s
father
resigned to watch
his flying boy
hurl against
brilliance.



When you were a baby

night
crying,
often the

Walt Whitman 2014

Walt is all around us lately.

Did you take note of the Apple television ad for the iPad Air? It quotes Whitman's �O Me! O Life!� to promote the idea of creating and uses Robin Williams from his English teacher role in Dead Poets Society.

�That the powerful play goes on,
and you may contribute a verse.�

Walt is also on the new poster designed by the Academy of American Poets for this year's  National Poetry Month.  You can request a copy online.

The poster uses the closing lines of �Song of Myself,�

�Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged;
Missing me one place, search another;
I stop somewhere, waiting for you.�

If you want to go deeply into Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," you can enroll in a free course offered online by the University of Iowa. This course - known as a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) - will be open to thousands of people at no cost (and for no credit).

�Every Atom: Walt Whitman�s Song of Myself" will take a collective approach to a close reading of America�s democratic verse epic, first published without a title in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass and later titled "Song of Myself" in the 1881 edition.

Eastbourne by Helen Jacobs

1
It is to the island
and the coastlands
that the shifting light
tethers on a fluid line
weaving water and sand
and rock.

The point of going away
is always to come back �
thrice deny, and you
come back

to the shells of your sandheaps,
allow that there could be
an old spirit or two
or simply an old love affair
with the harbour playing you in.


2

Climbing to the houses
you look down to where