Wednesday, August 6, 2025

Absence by Steve Klepetar

If only the wind had leaned in with a whisper,
instead of slamming the door like a judge.
If only the tea had steeped a little longer,
and the sparrow hadn’t struck the glass.
You might have lingered by the stove,
watching steam rise like old secrets.
We could have wandered to the orchard,
where dusk gathers in the branches like sleep.
If only I had remembered what you said
about time, how it folds like a napkin,
never straight. But your eyes were already
turning toward the dark shape of the road.
Now your absence sits in my chair
each morning, quiet as a coat filled with rain.



Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. He is a contributing editor for Verse-Virtual. His poems have received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Saturday, August 2, 2025

Beyond the Frame by Ann Leamon

The woman lies alone in the field—
you’ve seen the painting—peering
over the horizon. The gray, weathered
house looms behind her, overwhelms her fragile
life. Did she really drag herself
out to the field? Why? Maybe for the same reason
my mother dragged the four of us back then:
to pick blueberries.

We packed a lunch, spent the day. Mom
picked berries, we climbed the rocks
along the cove, water cold
and green and clear as our futures seemed to be.

As the sun slipped low, Mom’s buckets full
of berries for jam and winter muffins,
we went to the steep hill
you can’t see in the painting,
above the little graveyard, and threw ourselves
down to roll,
roll,
roll,
arms and legs flying, shrieking
with delighted terror and surprise, to end
at the bottom dizzy, covered with twigs and leaves.

Stumbling, sunburned, sleepy—
Mom piled us in the station wagon for
the long drive home. The berries are still there,
I hear, and Christina hangs in the museum,
looking out of her frame to that hill,
to the graveyard at the bottom,
where she will be buried.



Ann Leamon writes poems, reviews, essays, and technical finance material. Her non-technical work has appeared in Harvard Review, The Arts Fuse, Tupelo Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, and River Teeth Journal, among others. She lives on the Maine coast with her husband and an opinionated Corgi-Lab mix.

Friday, August 1, 2025

Love Song in Silence by Ann Leamon

Four days before Christmas,
          he died.

She wrapped herself
          in silence.

No need for that constant stream
of one-sided
conversation,
explanation,
commentary,
description,
documentation,
the unending, inevitable questions
answered
          and answered
                    and answered again.
How often can you speak the time, the day, your name?

Few responsibilities now
except the fire,
children busy with the farm,
sunlight streaming warm through the
skylight, its bright square trudging
across the tattered carpet with the hours.

Why speak?
No one would answer.

The doctor ordered, “You must speak.” The brain contracts
without words.

Now, she drinks her tea
and reads aloud her poetry
to the husband
who left her one week
before their 64th anniversary,
who waits, not far, with their lost beloveds,
who understands
what she’s saying,
with words and without.



Ann Leamon writes poems, reviews, essays, and technical finance material. Her non-technical work has appeared in Harvard Review, The Arts Fuse, Tupelo Quarterly, North Dakota Quarterly, and River Teeth Journal, among others. She lives on the Maine coast with her husband and an opinionated Corgi-Lab mix.