Jacob Minasian: Twentieth of March

The equinox will end with a snow
storm, eighty percent by ten
in the evening at thirty seven
degrees. Through the night
it will continue to deconstruct
specific colors, all into one,
and by eleven the next
morning there will be
feet to march through.
Even now, the gray
squirrels disappear, the
geese are abruptly gone.
Roots scramble
around their trunks
like some warming
self-embrace against
the ever-dropping air.
Institutions will close,
postponing, perhaps
preventing tragedy
similar to the one
in the news today.




From American Lit (Finishing Line Press, 2020). All rights reserved.

This poem was featured in Poetry Society of America

NC resident Melanie Tafejian wins the William Matthews Poetry Prize

Poet Melanie Tafejian was recently awarded second place in the William Matthews Poetry Prize hosted by The Asheville Poetry Review. The final judge was Ilya Kaminsky. Melanie will receive $250 and her poem "On Occupation" will be published in The Asheville Poetry Review (Vol. 26-27, Issue 30, 2020) which will be released in December 2020. 

Melanie Tafejian is a poet and educator based in Raleigh, NC. She recently graduated from North Carolina State University with an MFA in Creative Writing. Melanie is at work on her first book manuscript. In addition to her first book, she is working to translating the poems of her great-great-grandfather, Armenag Arekian, who was a survivor of the Armenian genocide and also a poet.

More can be found at melanietafejian.com.

CONGRATULATIONS Melanie!

Shahé Mankerian's recites his poem

Click here to view the author's video

This poem appears in the FOOD Anthology available here: https://www.flyonthewallpoetry.co.uk/... Poet Bio: Shahé Mankerian is the principal of St. Gregory Hovsepian School in Pasadena and the poetry co-director at Rockvale Review. His manuscript, History of Forgetfulness, has been a finalist at the Bibby First Book Competition, the Crab Orchard Poetry Open Competition, the Quercus Review Press Poetry Book Award, and the White Pine Press Poetry Prize.

Katherine A. Hagopian Berry: Springback

It is the nature of crisis to pivot,
like a magnet seeking iron.
I start sewing by hand
you buy your first pair of work gloves
trade suits for pants with hammer straps
briefcase shoulder creased and faded, edging past forty
you leave it the trunk of our old jeep,
drive past derelict farms, scaled and fullered camp roads.
Your gloves are new, smooth like bright bar stock
pale wood of your handle, tongs you borrow.
I watch sparks like geese returning
on the sharp March wind
they settle on leather, feather ruffle, and fade.
You learn to roll axial, extrude backward
the breakdown, the buckle, the harden, the quench.
Inexorably, we become used to it
burns overtake the virgin brown
you search for anvils on the internet
I tell you I am drawn to one with runes and stars
the whole world open to making yourself
like nails you forge and forge again
it takes two hundred, you say, to get it right
round the heads from unsteady cubes,
the stalks from jagged twigs
into something that can hold us all together.


Katherine A. Hagopian Berry’s poems have appeared in The Café Review, “Balancing Act II: An Anthology of Poetry by Fifty Maine Women, Glass: Poets Resist,” and “A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis.” Her collection “Mast Year” is forthcoming this spring from Littoral Books.