by Susan Bennett My best friend has a secret but she doesn’t know it yet. We play outside for hours till the sun is almost set. She is always Dale Evans, since I’d rather be just Roy. And sweet Patty Ann her sister would never be a boy. I might be asked to join them when the dinner bell is rung, if her mother’s not too wasted and feels kindly toward her young. Up in their tiny studio flat, by the gleam of TV light, we eat chipped beef on toast and make Ken and Barbie fight. She says her father’s busy, flying jets for Trans World Air, or he’d be here every evening sitting in his easy chair. When she’s just a little bigger, He’s promised off they’ll fly so till then she dreams of him when she sees the planes go by. When I return to our apartment to be tucked into my bed, I say I’m glad you’re not a pilot and my Dad just shakes his head. Susan Bennett (she/her) is a poet, activist and ritualist, leading women's spirit circles in Northern Virginia for two decades. Her poems have been published in Ekphrastic Review, Amethyst Review, Gargoyle Magazine, Rise Up Review,Artemis Journal, Cauldron Anthology, Eternal Haunted Summer, Mslexia and the Menopause Anthology, published by Arachne Press.
by Alexa Smith A plump, tan little bird plops onto a berry branch A surprising yellow stripe finishes his tail He is in Oregon during the mid-summer She joins him and touches her bill to his They pass a berry back and forth between their black beaks like tender kisses until she eats it and they start again They begin to gather loose weeds, twigs, and grass Together, they build a nest for the two of them, just until the breeze brings the color change They tend to their nest and nestlings, then all the work is done. She returns to Utah for the winter. Alexa Smith writes autobiographical essays, cultural criticisms, and poetry using her experiences from growing up in Utah, her interdisciplinary academic background, and her travels as muses. Her work has been published in the Kolob Canyon Review and Intern Abroad HQ.
Website: https://alexasmithwriter.weebly.com/ by Claire Frankel Great Aunt Osnia told me a story How she escaped from Russia But mother said (it was) Kazakh And it was real. …So the Russian Orthodox Priest told my Jewish Great Aunt that the cheka were making inquiries about her. Checka was Stalin’s murderers, You understand, darling, Aunt Osnia got her household together packed everything movable and they all got on the train -- east to Vladivostok. Kits, cats, sacks and wives. When the cheka arrived at her emptied manor they asked the Priest “Where did she go?” The Priest said, “North - Into the Ice So they went North, and discovered there was no Osnia there. When they came back, three days later, they shot the Priest instead. Claire Frankel has published two chapbooks “Working Woman Poetry” Finishing Line Press and “Plague Year Poetry,” both in 2020.
Recently, eight individual poems will be published in literary journals by the end of this year (2024). by Nancy Smiler Levinson Great jagged icebergs calve into the waters of Glacier Bay from majestic mountains of compacted ice, unexpected, startling shades of blue brushed by nature’s hand over a millennium, the glassy hues that mirror the clearest sky. I am wrapped in winter wear against the stinging cold on this August morning. How small I am. How infinitesimal, surrendered momentarily to the mercy of a mysterious power. I wrestle, not like Jacob with an angel, but with the ever quivering, hesitant voice inside me. How is it that I exist as I do, as I am? What allows me to drift amidst this grandeur, humbled so in this precise place, this moment? The captain of our tourist boat has killed the engine, asked us to remain still. I do so, yet know that nothing on this earth is static, everything—every body of water, every grain of sand, the air—continuously in motion. In this ceaseless revolution, who can fathom myriad ways our universe might be altered in years to come? We know the course of birth and death. Nancy Smiler Levinson is author of Moments of Dawn: A Poetic Narrative and a poetry collection, The Diagnosis Changes Everything.
Her work has appeared in Poetica, Hamilton Stone Review, Panoply, Fleas on the Dog, Rat's Ass Review, and elsewhere. In past chapters of her life she published some thirty books for young readers. She lives and writes in Los Angeles. by Allister Nelson lately these days, i look like the madonna spindrils gold, blue cloth, white glove. seed of apple inside me, Eve’s spark and a hope in my breast, that grows in the dark. Allister Nelson is a Pushcart Prize-nominated, queer, neurodivergent author whose work has appeared in The British Fantasy Society, Apex Magazine, Eternal Haunted Summer, Luna Station Quarterly, Prismatica, and many other venues.
by M. Heart Mesmerizing flow of River Sudden zigzag lightning flight of Swallow Fluttering Moth caught, instantly consumed Dexterity, speed, hunting prowess Happiness for Swallow, Sadness for Moth But… Moth becomes part of Swallow They are now One. Consciousness too? All of Life feeds one another One Being One Consciousness One One Flow M. Heart, a retired biology and environmental science professor, loves spending time in nature. He writes about nature, nature and spirituality, and the cosmos. He has presented his poems at the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE), and is published in Gatherings: The Journal of the International Community for Ecopsychology (ICE).
Thank you for visiting Nap Lit. I have been blown away by the amazing number of submissions already. I am honored by the number of creative and lovely poets who have been willing to share their work with me. And now it comes time to begin posting the beautiful poems.
Each Friday I plan to post around three poems to this website. Enjoy Nap Lit's inaugural three poems! -Ada |