Poetry goes viral!  Check out YouTube for poetry. Search Taylor Mali, Speak with Conviction, or What a Teacher Makes. Search the Dodge Poetry Festival to find clips of Sharon Olds, Coleman Banks, or  Lucille Clifton reading poetry.  Celebrate poetry  in cyberspace!

Two more poems from our writers…

In The Name Of

written by Barbara Straus Lodge

A story of mine came out in a book.

I couldn’t believe it, wanted to hide in a nook.

I used a fake name, protecting from shame

But then I wondered, at what cost comes fame?

Opportunities presented and even more as well.

My work was recognized and I felt swell.

Some readings, a radio show, even a New York literary award,

Suffice it to say, my inner critic was floored.

***

Pieces of me float everywhere “out there” and beyond.

But wait. Who am I? Am I lost, or am I found?

Is my pen name really me, or different as syllable and sound?

My words upset, shake down, maybe even more.

But still they’re my truth, born straight from my core.

As a writer, I think, my story should be pure

I must present the truth and not be demure.

The time has come to reclaim my name.

Leigh Stuart will retire; she will suffer no pain.

Barbara Straus Lodge is here to stay.

She’ll say goodbye to her pen name,

come whatever, what may.

Radiant 100

written by Laura L Mays Hoopes

Radio, radium, rays, radioactivity. Quaint, quiet, quick, quashed. Roseate, russet, radiant, rusted. Energy, enlightenment, evasiveness, entombment. Plutonium, Pluto, plumb-line, poison. Iodine-laden, invisible, inaudible, invidious. Wind, water, wildness, winter. Icy, inclement, iridescent, indecent. Human, hubris, hint, hollowness. Promising, pellucid, pallid, porous. Trembling, towering, trumpeting, trampling. Dubious, doom-laden, disastrous, dismal. Murmuring, muttering, mastering, moaning. Mutation, misery, mystery, mockery. Authority, augury, agony, anger. Politeness, pragmatism, pontification, procrastination. Tradition, trust, tsunami, tragedy. Handful, hope, heaviness, horror. Rushing, running, rowing, raving. Dim, darkness, drama, downfall. Trees, trucks, trains, tables. Cars, cables, clothes, children. Traveling, traipsing, trailing, tumbling. Regular, rocking, roiling, rickety. Walking, wandering, wasted, wailing.