The Ontario Poetry Society

Guidelines

All styles welcome.
No foul language, no lewdness and
no heavy slant on religion, please.

Poems to be no longer than 24 lines
Spaces between the stanzas count as lines.
No more than 6 long words or 8 short words on a line.

Please remember we have limited space and need
to give everyone a place in the newsletter for their poetry.

Previously published poems accepted as long as you, the author, hold the copyright.

If the poem has been previously published
and you would like a credit to appear with the poem,
(First printed in...) or
(from Book Title, publisher & year)
please include the details under the poem
and we'll include it in the newsletter.

Please include your name on the front page with the poem.

Deadline for the Next Issue is
March. 15, 2012

Poems/Recipies may be sent in the body of an email (no attachments please) to:

email contributions to Bunny

or by regular post to:
I.B. Iskov
Verse Afire Editor
#710 - 65 Spring Garden,
Toronto, On M2N 6H9.

Melanie & Joan's poems came late for the current issue of Verse Afire and there was no room left to include them... So here they are.

Unity

There is a unity, a oneness,
With regard to place and time.
We are a part of it
And it a part of us.
The seas, the sky, the universe,
All make us sublime
And all those we come
In contact with
Affect us,
As we do them,
In ways we can't define.

This dovetailing can be easy
Or we can fight it tooth and nail
But no matter how we struggle
This connectedness prevails
If we draw on it,
It can support us
In times both glad or sad
When we recognize its presence
To our life it surely adds.

Joan Augustin

Another late poem for Verse Afire from Tania Bongelli

The Daily War

Person after person
run by me,
dropping off charts
like little grenades.

Should I take cover?

Here comes another!

Hit after Hit.
More info to process.
More data to enter.

I need camouflage to hide
until the bombardment passes.

Ode To a Fallen Lilac

Why am I driven to this verse
to lament; as if my words
might be grouped
as this anthology, 50 yrs later
and if so reader , what good comes of it?
Woe still unquenchable
passed now to you.
And can you comfort? No
Heal ? No
So why compelled to the telling
but to keep myself
and this lilac tree still dying
held always before
the final breath.

Was I ever as sweet
as your bloom this dawn
before the ax
before the betrayal?
Will I look so small
when horizontal in my grave,
at the point of no return
when life yet clings?
Wait, I must get some water.

Melanie Lever