Tuesday poem #697 : Janice Colman : this morning while I was hammocking

 

 

on my grandmother’s sofa while foraging for words rare     
as a Ghost orchid     I thought wait:  let words
find each other   alert as a Rottweiler
at watch on the front balcony   and, the first word is¾      

it could be a phrase
       caught
and the second [word]         oh, a game show!
        come
third word
        heart   
like what?          

then what?
        we used to watch TV in the basement
        it had a linoleum floor
and?
        humming
was it the white-throated?
        sparrow. yes, the same.
and did it sing its full song including?
         the final four notes? yes, yes, and held 

it held onto the last, didn’t it?
         how I flew into, between 
         and around, it was as if
         my heart flew, filled 
         the space inside, if you could see, 
         the notes, quarter some
         waiting, eighth notes too 

this is not working, all posing
and answering, all this posturing   forget: 
the walnut, the sparrow, smooth
basement floor, I’ll sit and scowl, I’ll sink  

into this old couch, my hands with joints wide-
around-the-waist      in the back-
ground    a TV like an ocean wash swells 

sharp-edged the operculum seals    
            its mollusc’s tender nacre      
            once I heard my mother sigh    

& pressed my child-ear to
their bedroom door
            again & again nightly 

I thought if I held
my breath    but her sigh had
found its wings            So: what is a sigh to do? 

What you’re saying is?

A sigh is a fledgling. Did you know I once had a yellow budgie?
            One day I left the cage door open     we were summering
            in the Laurentians and the living room window was half 

open, the neighbours searched & whistled      after all,
the budgie was cadmium yellow     but there’s something alluring
about the Laurentians in the summer, its mirrored lake 

& forest filled with blueberries   
you could live for days

 

 

 

 

Janice Colman is a Toronto-based neurodivergent poet and interdisciplinary writer. Her chapbook playing cello for a dead bird was published by Turret House Press (2025). Janice’s writing has appeared in filling Station, The New Quarterly, FreeFall, Arc Poetry Magazine, The /tƐmz/ Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. She has received fellowships from AIM Higher and Brooklyn Poets, and her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2022, 2025) and Best of the Net (2022).

Janice is the mother of two powerful daughters and a service-dog-in-training named Emily.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #696 : Alexander Hollenberg : Two ghazals

 

 

Ghazal, with Rabble-Rousing Leftist Minke Whales

Twenty yards out minke whales whisper in the sound
and we eavesdrop, camping mugs of cowboy coffee in hand. 

I heard orcas train their calves to attack billionaires’ yachts.
We’re disconnected, tough and free, no phones in hand, 

so we can’t confirm this beautiful new fact: we imagine a movement
like Alice’s Restaurant where all the sea creatures raise a hand 

in solidarity and sing in four-part harmony, and there are meetings
to attend and potlachs with four-cheese dips. This is getting out of hand. 

The driftwood fire licks fog off the Northumberland Strait
while we wash our mugs at the shore, licking sea salt off our hands. 

How many chatbots would it take to empty this sound, minkes and all,
you ask. I could count them on one hand. 

How many poems would it take to build back the ocean?
Power is a whale that’s born when you squeeze my hand.

 

 

Ghazal, with Common Terns
 

Black-capped terns lampshade the shore,
common as salt and stone and the grey waistcoat of light. 

They search for stitches in the break,
the shimmer of herring, the quick bloat of light. 

A lumberjack’s boot drops from the sky—gunmetal spikes
driving through the surface, rooting out the light. 

I don’t want to suggest the need to bear witness:
the terns will dive without this mote of light. 

The shore will shore after all, and the herring
always scatter. A throat full of light 

is common. Scales that slip the ocean into silver
are common. The trawler’s floating lights 

are common. I want my life to be the sound of water
sloughing off a wing in the low evening light.

 

Alexander Hollenberg, a Pushcart-nominated poet and professor of storytelling, is the author of Human Story will not Consume the Cosmos (Gaspereau 2025). Some of his recent poems have appeared in Best Canadian Poetry 2025, CV2, Arc Poetry, Grain, and The New Quarterly. He is a past winner of CV2’s Two-Day Poem Contest and has been longlisted for several other awards, including the CBC Poetry Prize, the Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest, and the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize. He is from Hamilton, Ontario.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

 

Tuesday poem #695 : Anne F. Walker : nest

 

 

pulling vines from the silver extension ladder. some are tiny-leaved and brown
some still thick and prickly with blackberries in pudges
and the ladder goes up. it's heavy and my son and i navigate it

never too sure about which way might set a rung lock fail
so trying to hold fingers carefully
while managing the weight

using short cut branches from the avocado tree i sweep,
sweep away remnants of fallen pale green buds
that get into roof tile cracks, limning it as if with gold

scooting close to the edge to reach up
and trim the tree away from the roof
before he goes

Anne F. Walker completed doctoral work in American Urban Poetics at the University of California, Berkeley, after beginning her poetry career in Toronto. The Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Creates, the Ontario Arts Council, and bpNichol Memorial Foundation honored her work with numerous grants. UC Berkeley twice awarded her poetry its Eisner Prize. Her sixth book of poetry, Ink and Ink and Flesh and Length, was shortlisted for the Sexton Poetry Prize as a manuscript, and published in 2025 (The Black Spring Press Group / Eyewear Publishing). Walker lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, teaching writing at San José State University.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #694 : Michael Russell : carpenter queen

 

 

carpenter ants slide in
& out of the baseboard 

climb the erect stretch of paneling
soldiers     sisters to the sexless 

fully clothed     i grin
like a basement gremlin with a flashlight 

watch 

how i miss being tossed like an ant
on its back     roughened into a straight man’s 

faggot     legs outstretched     cheeks
jackhammered & pried open 

empress of wood     carpenter
queen     princess of the splinter 

tucked under the desk like a secret

 

 

 

 

Michael Russell (he/they) is the queer, mad mother monster behind two chapbooks, gallery of heartache (845 Press) and Grindr Opera (Frog Hollow Press). He’s the coauthor of chapbook Split Jawed with Elena Bentley (forthcoming from Collusion Books). When not entering the queer Speed Force and walking way too fast, they like long walks in the park and platonic dinners over flameless tea lights. Now, he’s reminding himself a bio is not a Grindr profile. Insta: @michael.russell.poet

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan