“She’d never ask you to keep them in a golden cage”
Dearest Pablo Neruda
by Mary Langer Thompson

"I’ve yet to hear a mermaid sing"
Done with Donne 
by Mary Langer Thompson

“ We still hope for the killing of mockingbirds to stop”
Readers are Still Waiting
by Mary Langer Thompson

"Beneath the soil in a foreign land"
Dear Pablo
by Sharmagne Leland-St. John

"In those books she sees an iridescent view"
Rainbows
by MFrostDelaney

"Their hearts knew the best and the worst"
Along the Spoon River With Edgar Lee Masters
by Michael Escoubas

"If I listen carefully in the empty night"
A Realm of Shattered Time
by Michael Graves

"Left to hang aslant on splintered boards"
Unrelenting
by Vaughn Neeld 

"An owl that flies among shadows"
Falcon, Owl, and Dove
by Maralee Gerke

"Gwendolyn takes me to the projects where gray rats skitter into shadows"
I Spend the Day with Gwendolyn Brooks
by Wilda W. Morris

"Heavier than my heart can hold"
Epistolary
by Ellaraine Lockie

"The voice of water in wind"
To Dorothy Wordsworth
by Andrea Potos

"Beached on uncharted shores"
I Remember Twenty-five 
by Marcel Duclos

"Our house was alive … It had a song"
A Very Real Poet
by Gail Denham

"Unspoken fears"
I Always Knew
by Paulette Demers Turco

"Alone within the bower"
Envelope Savers
by Paulette Demers Turco

"Spreading their inky wings across the sky"
Oh, No … Crows 
by Priscilla Turner Spada

"
"Images waiting to rise into view"
Upon the Death of a Poet
by James Green

Ekphrastic Prompt For May 2023

Crystal Fire: Poems of Joy and Wisdom
Editor: Maja Trochimczyk
Art by Ambika Talwar
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas

The Lost Language of Shadows
by David Olsen
Reviewed by Neil Leadbeater

Evidence of Grace
by Candace Armstrong
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas

Ogden’s Proverb
by John McCluskey
Reviewed by Michael Escoubas

Published by The Poetry Box
When All Else Fails 
by Lana Hechtman Ayers

Publisher: The Bitter Oleander Press
Gathering Sunlight
by Silvia Scheibli & Patty Dickson Pieczka

Publisher: Chickaree Publishing
God's Cowlick
by Michael Feld Simon

An interview with Mervyn Linford
by Neil Leadbeater

Light, moist and sweet little dream cakes
Lavender Tea Cakes
from the kitchen of Sharmagne Leland-St.John

A great way to start your morning
Mint Tea
from the kitchen of Sharmagne Leland-St. John

Relax with a cup of soothing tea
Soothing Lavender Tea
from the kitchen of Sharmagne Leland-St. John

Improve your memory with this tasty herb tea
Sage Tea
from the kitchen of Sharmagne Leland-St. John

This cleverly devised  recipe will send you thumbing through the bible to decipher the ingredients 
Easter Sunday Scripture Cake
from the kitchen of Sharmagne Leland-St. John

Pablo Neruda. Public Domain

John Donne, late 17th century copy of a 1616 work by Isaac Oliver. Public Domain

Lawrence-ferlinghetti, photo by Elsa Dorfman; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Ferlinghetti

***

Pablo Neruda. Public Domain

Maya Angelou: Courtesy, William J. Clinton Presidential Library

Edgar Lee Masters: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Young_Edgar_Lee_Masters_2.png

Leonard Cohen: photo credit: unknown

Carl Sandburg: Al Ravenna, World Telegram staff photographer - Library of Congress.
New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection.
https://loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3c15064/

Terry Tempest Williams: Photo credit : Zoë Rodriguez

Gwendolyn Brooks: Photographer  Unknown

Carl Sandburg: Unknown

Dorothy Wordsworth: Copywrited free use

Wendell Berry: Guy Mendes

William Stafford: Christopher Ritter, photographer

Ariwara no Narihira: Public Domain

Daguerreotype of Emily Dickinson, c. early 1847. It is presently located in Amherst College Archives & Special Collections.

Edgar Allen Poe; Unknown photographer. Restored by Yann Forget and Adam Cuerden

Mary Oliver: Fair Use
Robert Frost: Public Domain

Book Review: Sharmagne's Desk; Photo by Sharmagne Leland-St.John

New Book Release: Iliad Bookshop NoHo, CA. Photo by Sharmagne Leland-St.John  

Mervyn Linford: Photo credit Clare Harvey

Recipes: Teapot: Photo by Sharmagne Leland-St.John