A Mormon literary backcountry where words and place come together.

 

 

 

 

Whispers of Dawlish by Karen Kelsay

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

Beside the bank where black swans often lie
in twos, beneath wild fruit trees near the stream
where Chinese geese move single file across
the water like a strand of flags that gleam
with little angled feathertips of light,
I heard her speak. It was a quiet voice,
like summer clouds that weep along low hills
of poplar groves then peacefully rejoice
in [...]

Mi tierra y mi hogar (with translation) by Gabriel Aresti Jr.

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

Déjame que te cuente cómo me compré esta casa
Verás
Habíamos visto ya cuarenta y nueve pisos en dos meses
Algunos vacíos
Otros recién abandonados, con frascos de colonia
Aún expuestos en el baño y un añejo olor a tabaco
En las paredes desconchadas.
Otros seguían repletos de vida, con fotos enmarcadas
Mientras tú intentabas prestar atención a la chica de la inmobiliaria.
Era [...]

Victorian Violet Press seeks poetry

Monday, August 16th, 2010

Victorian Violet Press editor Karen Kelsay, a frequent contributor to WIZ, sent this announcement:
Victorian Violet Press, an online poetry magazine, is seeking submissions for the December issue. Please check out the magazine to get an idea of what type of poetry is published. You can find the magazine here.
Guidelines: Our taste in poetry is eclectic, [...]

WIZ Kids: Floral Spring by Jenna

Monday, July 26th, 2010

April’s beauty carries with it rain
Wet tear drops falling from the sky
Its premier today, showing up shy
Sliding into slits in buds
Mixing itself with different muds
Slipping down my forehead
Touching my eyelashes ahead
I close my eyes to nature’s gift
While they were closed I did drift
To the month of May’s sweet, sweet scent
To view flowers and green is [...]

Summer Haiku

Monday, June 21st, 2010

Summer’s here.
Where snow petals blew
From winter orchards swallows’
Wings fledge summer light.

“Closing Time” (rewrite) by Patricia Karamesines

Monday, May 17th, 2010

(for Dad)
Late afternoon came floating down the creek.
Appalachia’s air chilled gradually,
The valley’s likenesses on deeper pools
Shivering as mayflies burst the watercolor
Skins, and theirs, taking to air, trailing
Papery past selves after them in flight.
Brown trout missiled the sylphs, arched and slapped
The surface, falling back, while I cast toward
A trembling pool, slowly wound my line in,
Looked up. [...]

Winners of WIZ’s 2010 Spring Poetry Runoff Contest

Monday, May 10th, 2010

As everyone probably knows, the winner of the Spring Poetry Runoff’s Most Popular Vote Award is Karen Kelsay for her poem, “Waiting for Spring.”  In fact, Karen’s fans filled the top three spots with her poems, all of which, as I’ve noted before, have lovely minstrel qualities.  “Waiting for Spring” exhibits not only Karen’s trademark [...]

Vote for your favorite Spring Poetry Runoff 2010 poems

Monday, May 3rd, 2010

Thanks to great participation, WIZ’s Spring Poetry Runoff Celebration ran halfway through spring.  Now it’s time for followers of and participants in the contest to make their preferences known.  Here at WIZ, we all get to be poetry judges for five days–part of the informal nature of this contest.  But rather than restrict each judge [...]

WIZ’s Spring Poetry Runoff Winds Down

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

In one of my favorite haunts, Crossfire Canyon, the creek is flooding as at the lake upstream water jets from the dam’s spillway for the first time ever.   The spring runoff is not even halfway through as a record snowpack melts from the Abajo Mountains upstream and runs down into the desert.
But here at WIZ, [...]

“The Morning View” by Travis Burnham

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

At five in the morn I gaze upon the Earth
Holding my little one so innocent and mild.
Hoping that I might have a chance
To feel her trails of glory
The midnight rain ended soon,
Leaving clean the outside world
I glanced through a crack to catch a glimpse
Of  Nature’s hallowed view.
Crisp, Clean, Calm the scene lay before my eyes.
Each [...]