POETRYFEATURED POET FEATURED ARTIST CONTRIBUTORS GUIDELINES ABOUT TIMELINE
Casey FitzSimons


Turn on the porchlight

Turn on the porchlight.
Bring forth a tune to hum.
Imagine who will come.

Fetch a pen to write.
Sit in the kitchen mum.
Turn on the porchlight.

Pray it is tonight.
Curse the luck of some.
Wait for who will come.

You know how to incite
the circling moths to come:
Turn on the porchlight.

Forsake your love's delight.
To wretchedness succumb.
Despair of one to come.

Lace your girdle tight.
Let your womb grow numb.
Turn off the porchlight.
Yearn. No one will come.




Redbuds

They bloom before they leaf, the redbuds do.
Into tiny crimson flutes the sun
curls orphaned petals. Girls pinch them into

little moccasins in case the fairies
need new shoes, come visit on the stoop
for tardy-falling pyracantha berries.

Boys tramp the ebbing snow banks that the cars
slurry gray with exhaust and tire grit,
and pock their impish faces with red scars.

































AUTHOR BIO

Casey FitzSimons is host of a reading series in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poems have appeared in Red Wheelbarrow, Midwest Quarterly, Sand Hill Review, Newport Review, and many other print and online journals. This year she placed first in Ina Coolbrith Circle's "Poet's Choice" competition. Her chapbooks include The Breeze Was Mine: Poems in Form (2013), Riding Witness (2012), and No Longer Any Need (2011). She has a master's degree in Fine Arts from San Jose State University. For more info, see www.pw.org/content/casey_fitzsimons.

POETRY CONTRIBUTORS

Melissa Adamo
Sylvia Ashby
Jane Blanchard
Patricia Bollin
Cathleen Calbert
Maryann Corbett
Eleanor Cory
Casey FitzSimons
Nicole Caruso Garcia
Claudia Gary
Edith Goldenhar
A. J. Huffman
Cambria Jones
Tamam Kahn
Jean L. Kreiling
Fiona Marshall
Holly Painter
Zara Raab
Andrea Witzke Slot
Linda Stern
Anne-Marie Thompson
Doris Watts
Holly Woodward

NEWS

Mezzo Cammin will celebrate its tenth anniversary at Poetry by the Sea: A Global Conference, on Thursday, May 28, from 3:15-4:30, Mercy by the Sea in Madison, CT. Please join us!

FEATURED ARTIST
Candy Chang: Meant as a singular experiment, the Before I Die project gained global attention and thanks to passionate people around the world, over 500 Before I Die walls have been created in over 70 countries, including Kazakhstan, Iraq, Haiti, China, Ukraine, Portugal, Japan, Denmark, Argentina, and South Africa.
ARCHIVES
LINKS
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32 Poems
The Academy of American Poets
The Atlantic
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Favorite Poem Project
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The Iowa Review
Light Quarterly
Modern American Poetry
Measure
The Poem Tree
Poetry
Poetry Daily
Poetry Society of America
Poets House
Raintown Review
Slate
String Poet
Valparaiso Poetry Review
Verse Daily
Women's Poetry Listserv
The Yale Review

CONFERENCES
AWP
Bread Loaf
Poetry by the Sea
Sewanee


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