Mike Maggio

Two Sleepwalkers

On the night she first sleeps with him a back door 
fills with stars. Out of night-shadow and floor-creak 
she steps barefoot onto dew-damp grass. The night's 
breath frisks her gown. She's six, then! She lived this dream.
Except that now into its nave of streetlamps
he comes also: the small boy the man once was, 
who last night at dinner, laughing, confessed how
he too used to sleepwalk—one night, in his Hulk
pjs, two blocks! Asleep, haloed in half-light, 
their two palms reach. Their four hands broaden and they
clutch. Their eight limbs sleepwalk them into turned arms.

Copyright © Derek Kannemeyer 2022

Bio:

Derek Kannemeyer’s recent books include an international poetry chapbook contest winner (Blue Nib 1, 2018), a play, (The Play of Gilgamesh, 2019), a non-fiction/photography hybrid about the fall from grace of Richmond’s Lost Cause statues (Unsay Their Names, 2021), a novel (The Memory Addicts, forthcoming, 2022), and a big old poetry collection (Mutt Spirituals, 2021).

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

A Midnight Sonata 

When one by one all the shops have closed along
and the night is a muslin turning blue anon

There’s a misty air that says it's getting late 
The town has gone to sleep and the stars have left 

But the dew on lips is yet so sweet and wet 
And passions heave with a force of glee and haste

And the urge to find the Shangri-la is great
The moon is a forlorn watcher at the gate 

Witnessed by time, oh that lonely passer-by
This revelry, nay this beauty rises high
But who wants to part away and say goodbye?

Copyright © Anant Dhavale, 2022

Bio:

Anant Dhavale writes poetry in English, Marathi and Urdu.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

Dionysian Dreamscape 

Meander along a geometric path.
Tetrahedrons sprout from rectangular prisms, 
each triangular side equilateral.
Enter this abstract fantasy world, follow
curvilinear lines, concentric circles, 
a natural purple geode agate slice.
Skate the coping, drop in to an amethyst
geode bowl with wheels designed to navigate
the topography of amethyst crystals
and still maintain the momentum to launch a
fly out and land clean on polished purple stone.

Copyright 2022 by Cathy Hailey

Bio:

Cathy Hailey is Northern Region Vice President of The Poetry Society Virginia and organizes In the Company of Laureates. Her chapbook, I’d Rather Be a Hyacinth, is forthcoming in 2023. She was a Skateboard Mom in another life.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

On the Boulevard  

This is not London, Vilnius or Athens.
Nothing is new or old among the mistimed
traffic lights, or the neat sidewalks that crumble
along rows of rezoned apartment buildings.
An on-ramp curves and banks. Vehicles sputter,
then lurch around pedestrians, just missing
the median while we, in a gazebo,
drink percolated coffee out of bright cups—
mid-century perfection, hand-glazed china—
and speak of promises, fond expectations.
How can they possibly attack this city?

Copyright 2022 by Claudia Gary

Bio:

Internationally anthologized, Claudia Gary teaches workshops on Villanelle, Sonnet, Natural Meter, etc., through writer.org. Author of Humor Me (2006) and chapbooks including Genetic Revisionism (2019), she is also a health/science journalist, visual artist, and composer of songs and chamber music. See pw.org/content/claudia_gary; follow @claudiagary.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

Inamorato

Once, in front of the house, cardinal on a wire 
before dawn. He, red, the color of danger,
anger, or iniquity, thinks of perhaps
leaving for lower heights, some widowed female
on an old tree branch, both browned by the dull hope  
of finding new company late in life. Dim 

whispering in the street keeps him grounded, though, 
staring until sun drops a hint of daylight. 
And there sits his old mate, beak pointed at him
in quiet recognition, clouds switching on
like a change of mind, golden at the edges.

Copyright 2022, Katherine M. Gotthardt
Mike Maggio has permission to share this work electronically.

Bio: While catering to her spoiled rescue dogs, award-winning poetry and prose author Katherine M. Gotthardt works full-time+ as a writer and volunteers, all in a variety of capacities. Learn more about Katherine and her mission at www.KatherineGotthardt.com.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

Poem as Nature Walk

Those aren’t scarlet berries on the willow leaves; 
they are parasitic wasps in camouflage.
Pine trees prune themselves to get rid of branches
that fail to find enough sunlight to survive.
Bees see green as gray; flowers seem fluorescent.
According to a study, Rush Limbaugh’s voice 
had disturbing effects on native beetles.
Orographic clouds fill mountainous skies.
When doing the erotic dance called lekking,
male flies like being backlit; it’s dramatic.
Birds risk their lives to sing, to be ecstatic.


copyright 2022 by Bonnie Naradzay

Bio:

Bonnie Naradzay’s poems have appeared in AGNI, New Letters (pushcart nomination), RHINO, Kenyon Review Online, Tampa Review, Florida Review Online, EPOCH, Pinch (pushcart no0mination), Potomac Review, and others.  Her essay on friendship was published in 2020 in the anthology, Deep Beauty.   For many years she has convened poetry salons with homeless people and with residents of retirement communities in the Washington DC area.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

Love and a Reimagined Mill Swamp Road

Some wit with a Sharpie has turned the traffic
sign’s yellow spot into a Pac-Man gobbling
up the incline. Real lights can’t play the game. Go, 
stop, yield—nothing left to chance or judgment. Run 
and risk a ticket, a remedial class. 
Out west, some cops let it go: terrain, weather, 
the blueness of the sky. The world needs rules and 
also wildness. But no winners. It’s a game.
Inky Blinky Pinky Clyde: swallow the ghosts.
Let this road, unlike Frost’s, converge with itself. 
Imagine infinite plays. To yield: to win.


Copyright 2022 by Pamela Murray Winters

Bio:

Pamela Murray Winters is a poet living in Maryland, where Mill Swamp Road is a winding, wooded stretch near Davidsonville, a connection between two bigger roads.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

Threshold

This grass so rainlacked I can hear the ghosts of
my selves step with me. Splintering blades echo.
snap my neck again and again. The distance 
between myself and my front door has never 
been so vast nor strike of snares this deafening. 
I don’t feel pain. I am afraid of being 
hurt by someone I trust or should trust. My mom. 
The dentist. God who I also call weather. 
Wind in the form of tornado. Hurricane. 
Lights out. Roof gone. I know how to swim but does
that mean we need to be so ready to kick? 

Bio:

Angie Dribben is an Autistic Appalachian artist and writer. Her debut collection, Everygirl, finalist for the 2020 Broadkill Review Dogfish Head Prize, was released with Main Street Rag. She is a past poetry contributor at Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference and holds an MFA from Randolph College. Her most recent work can be found or is forthcoming in Los Angeles Review, Orion, Coffin Bell, Split Rock Review, and others.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

Swinging in the Big Easy

The neon looked like lipstick on the wet street
the streetcar rattled and sang rattled and sang
somewhere a trumpet and tuba sing sweetly
there she was expectant not waiting heart full
on Frenchmen Street she danced full of sazeracs
the Jackson Square fortune tellers sip coffee
laced with chicory eat beignets and tourists
too near the Mississippi on the levee
still she sits in the Spotted Cat eats okra
at 2 on a Monday like Paris but not
the humid scent of rain its kiss on pavement

Copyright 2022 by Susan Notar

Bio:

Susan Notar has flown over Iraq wearing body armor and makes a mean beurre blanc sauce.  She is a Pushcart prize nominated poet whose work has appeared in a number of publications including Artemis, Bourgeon, Burningword, Gyroscope, The Forgotten River, and Joys of the Table:  An Anthology of Culinary Verse.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review

Love on Imaginary Boulevard

The chicks are chicking in the rays of the sun.
Bees being scatter inside the deepest flowers.
The people are peopling among the daisies,
sleeping in offices with gardens of dreams.
Later, the moon is mooning through perfect clouds,
and stars starring in the sky are twinkling.
Nobody nobodying sees anything else.
On the boulevard boulevarding people cross
the crosswalks, breathing breathing in the darkness.
The lights lighting make everyone feel they’re real.
Mouths mouthing, hearts hearting, eyes eying their lives.


Copyright 2022 by Donald Illich.

Bio:

Donald Illich has published poetry recently in The MacGuffin and Okay Donkey. He won Honorable Mention in the Washington Prize book contest. His book, Chance Bodies, was published in 2018.

30 for 30 is sponsored by Potomac Review