Five Poets Recite (Cerid Jones, Lori Rottenberg, Caroline Wellman, Özge Lena, Kenya McDonald)

Tell me again how you do not love me.
Tell me slowly.
Softly....

Excerpt from Tell me Again

Cerid Jones, is a life-long closeted writer only just learning how to be brave enough to share her musings. A lover of folk tales and myth, she hails from Aotearoa (New Zealand). Growing up in a house where there were more books than wall space and fae at the bottom of the garden, she has always been a creature with a passion for the arts and literature. Reading anything that transports her elsewhere or delves deep into the psyche of human nature, she has found a home working in the publishing industry and teaching people how to throw axes.

It is no wonder they clung
to these precise sacraments,

dinners timed not to hunger
but the clock: always at 6...

Excerpt from Meals with Grandma and Grandpa

Lori Rottenberg is a writer who lives in Arlington, Virginia. She has published poetry in many journals and anthologies, most recently in Minyan, Bourgeon/Mid-Atlantic Review, WWPH Writes, Open: A Journal of Arts and Letters, The Jewish Writing Project, and Artemis. She also has work upcoming this spring in december, and her poetry and non-fiction have been shared nationally on the Unitarian Universalists for Jewish Awareness website. One of her poems was picked for the 2021 Arlington Moving Words competition and appeared on county buses, and she served as a visiting poet in the Arlington Public Schools Pick-a-Poet program for over a decade. She is currently a Senior Instructor at George Mason University, where she teaches writing to international students and poetry to students in the Honors College. She is in her final year of studies at the George Mason University MFA Poetry program.

In Spanish, the birds become prayers,
whatever they lift, their trills, their wings, 
a soaring novena. Consider...

Excerpt from The Aves of Morning

Caroline Wellman earned degrees in writing and literature from the University of Arkansas. Her poetry collection Presences was published by Parallel Press in 2014. Her recent work has appeared in AfterHours, Muddy River Poetry Review, Peatsmoke, and Seashores haiku journal. She is the winner of the 2022 Anthology Poetry Award and the 2023 Mary Blinn Poetry Prize. She previously taught writing and literature at colleges in the midwest and south. Last fall she taught beginning journalism to local middle school students; this fall she will teach them creative writing. She works for the US Postal Service in Illinois.

Did you know that carnations smelled of death?
I plucked their petals...

Excerpt from Nameless Things

Özge Lena’s poems have appeared in The London Magazine, iamb, Ink Sweat & Tears, Green Ink Poetry, Verse of April, After…, Sky Island Journal, harana poetry, The Selkie, and elsewhere. Her poem “Celestial Body” was selected for Flight of the Dragonfly Press’ 2023 anthology Take Flight. Özge’s poetry was shortlisted for both the Ralph Angel Poetry Prize and the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition in 2021, as well as for The Plough Poetry Prize in 2023.

How can you build a community from broken glass?
Giving the people plants that won’t last, that won’t last.
Political zebras talking fast cause they ain't up to the task
So how can you save the community covered in glass?...

Excerpt from Broken Glass

Kenya McDonald is an artist/writer who lives in Murfreesboro Tennessee. She has a master’s degree and bachelor’s degree in English. Currently a retired teacher from Randolph Public Schools in Randolph, Massachusetts, she used her poetry and short stories to explore social causes. Her work has appeared in a magazine called the Spectrum, sponsored by Northeastern University and podcast entitled “We All Have a Voice.”