poetry | inner art journal

Upcoming Summer Issue

April 30, 2013 Comments Off on Upcoming Summer Issue

The summer issue of Inner Art Journal will be published on June 15th. We are looking forward to reading your tanka and other short form poetry. The submission deadline is June 1st.

tanka by nelima

March 1, 2013 Comments Off on tanka by nelima

when I think of ridding myself
of the objectionable
I lose momentum
the need to rid myself – weighty evidence
of the very problem I want to erase

physically bigger
yet I feel psychically smaller
having slipped from the lead role
to supporting actor
in my own play

my ambivalence
made the perfect blind spot
unable to name what was in plain sight
I kept blowing air
into a leaky balloon

Featured Poets 1.1.2012

January 1, 2012 Comments Off on Featured Poets 1.1.2012

allie marini batts

I never wore a wedding band

nonetheless

my ring finger feels too light

now that we are no longer

married

allison miller

noticing how I

get caught

in my own web

I marvel

at the spider’s feat

anne tourney

a forgotten lake

retreating from the valley

left its name in the sand

along the empty basin

where I make a fragile home

anthony ward

I’m spending my time

trying to keep up with it

forever falling short

ellen pratt

stopping myself

before I regress

flashes of blue and white

blue jay pulls up just in time

to miss my windshield

eric muller

he waits as she cleans

dreading when she’ll stop to talk

about what happened

a finch bumps against the window

and falls dead out on the deck

jane blanchard

How I envy the marsh

accepting and releasing

whatever flows its way

season after season

year after year

joan mcnerney

an outdoor concert

which is sweeter, the flute

or bird song in the woods?

Dusty children hack earth with shovels, sticks, property stakes. One saws at a problematic root with a pilfered steak knife. Dirt tossed carelessly from the void. Silent concentration, broken occasionally as gritty, negligently tossed particles are spat aside.

Carefree afternoon

China can’t be far away

Knee-deep but gaining

kileen gilroy

She taught me how to catch a firefly

using a glass and small hands

sitting on swings at dusk

I remember now

how good it felt to be next to you

holding light

laurie dehamer

I am becalmed

in the middle

of a lake

my boat

filling up with tears

mamta madhavan

eyes hold

silver trinkets

unsold

on racks

fridge magnets lie

in stacks

but my

hands pick you a

blue eye

michelle russo

every smile

frozen in time

we never see

the outtakes

of our somber selves

sara backer

At the mowed margin

of a dying field of corn

I spot the pointed

black ears of a kitten

crouching in wet stubble

sebastian rimehaug

stalk-still

buried in spray

heron douses its beak

hitchhiking

for fish

susan hogan

You speak the softest words by heart,

So soft I cannot hear-

Then look up at me with a start,

You speak the softest words by heart.

Your face is coming all apart.

You cannot hide the tears.

You speak the softest words by heart,

So soft I cannot hear.

tom clausen

a little red

begun in the crown

of the maple…

that reserve of love

I still have left

valerie rosenfeld

I dreamed

I remembered

how to fly~

what freedom

to challenge gravity

Masthead

September 19, 2011 Comments Off on Masthead

editor: Leslie Ihde assistant editor: Nelima Gaokar GUEST EDITOR: ESRA SARIOGLU

Leslie is a writer, artist and psychotherapist. She developed Inner Art Journal as an online journal devoted to seeking and sharing direct insight. Writing poetry to mark moments of perception and gratitude, her work can be found in the Buddhist Poetry Review, Haibun Today, Atlas Poetica, Lynx, Ribbons, Prune Juice, A Hundred Gourds and Notes from the Gean. She studied with John Gardner and Liz Rosenberg at Binghamton University where she obtained her BA in Creative Writing and Literature in 1981.

Nelima is a poet and psychotherapist living and working in upstate New York. She writes gorgeous, minimalistic tanka poetry some of which can be viewed in this journal.

Esra is a Ph.D. candidate at Binghamton University. Currently, she lives in Turkey and teaches sociology at Yeditepe University in Istanbul. Her writings on art and politics have appeared in Radikal Newspaper, Demokrathaber.net and JGCinema.com. Some of her tankas can be viewed in Inner Art Journal.

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