WWPH WRITES ISSUE 79

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WWPH Writes 79…welcomes our annual TINY POEM special issues in August. This year, there are loads of TINY ODES. We kick off our 50th-anniversary celebrations on Friday, September 13th at People’s Books in Takoma Park with our co-founder Grace Cavalieri and more. FREE. Please RSVP below to join us!

Enjoy our TINY ODES special issue! 

Caroline Bock & Jona Colson
co-presidents, WWPH

ode to lemonade

when air thick with humidity rolls through town,
my mouth, dry and sticky, thirsts for a tall ice-cold
cup of summer’s water. miss me with the mello yello,
minute maid, syrupy drive-thru concentrate, i stan
the tang of fresh-squeezed by school aged hands
swinging signs at the intersection of july and august.

DC-born Michele Evans, a high school English teacher, is the author of purl, forthcoming February, 2025 (Finishing Line Press). She lives with her family in Northern Virginia. Find her at www.awordsmithie.com

ODE TO THE UGLY BRA
So comfortable, the way you fall apart
how you imperfectly cup me.
Your tiredness, your broken elastic
is comfortingly familiar.

Meg Eden teaches and writes poetry (including “Drowning in the Floating World”) and children’s novels like “Good Different.” She lives in Maryland. Find her online at megedenbooks.com.

ODE TO TENNIS
Players leap under burning sun
and lawn gleams like emeralds
against a bright blue sky until net shimmers
and balls bounce in myriad directions.
Referee announces score of winner,
then loser, who has only love.

Fran Abrams lives in Rockville, MD. Her poems appear in numerous journals and anthologies, in one full-length collection, and in two chapbooks. Please visit franabramspoetry.com.

BARNACLES
When surrounded by the ocean, you open
and your feasting feathers find food
too small for the human eye
you harvest – underwater fishing families
casting nets, sifting the sea

Chris Biles lives/works in D.C. where she enjoys playing with the light and dark and losing herself in music, anything outside, and some words here and there.

ODE TO A TASTY POEM
A poem is delicious
flavor comes from details
gratitude is sweet
grief is savory
those feelings of loss
create a thick rich soup

Lois Perch Villemaire lives in Annapolis where she writes poetry, volunteers at the local library, and propagates a colorful collection of African violets.

ODE TO AN ELDERLY DOG
Billions of pixels evince her well-lived life:
Relentless romper and dog park provocateur,
Face-alight adventure-ready roadtripper.
Ancient and ailing, she leans heavy on me,
Gray muzzle twitching, arthritic legs kicking,
Both of us dreaming of days she ran free.

Peter Montgomery lives in Brookland in northeast D.C. with his husband, who he met through their commitment to social justice and love of poetry.

ODE TO PIGEONS
The city’s winged friends strut alongside suited pedestrians
as their feathers glisten brightly like shattered sidewalk glass.
Pecking, pacing, purring – swirling thoughts of peace and nothingness
while perched on overpasses, bridges, rooftops, and fire escapes.
Talons gripped to rusted iron, zero fears of falling to their demise.
When rolling city tapes, it’s as if the beloved pigeons never die.

Kallie Brown is a writer based in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC, and enjoys creative writing as a necessary mental escape from her nine-to-five.

UNREQUITED (Ode to Gladiolus)
You: tactical, endlessly reproductive, a tendency
to overwhelm the zone, crowd out contenders.
Me: so greedy for your long stems, I planted all
fifty corms in the bag and never thin them. Our annual
dance: you grow taller, I await the green promise of spikes,
then drop my guard. Deer sample every bloom by night.

Deborah Wassertzug is a poet, essayist, translator, and librarian who lives in Montgomery County. She is learning to share her garden with non-human life forms.

FOR A DEER
Its eyes were frozen, looking
back at me strange, clouded.
The buzzards had come & gone.
This is the last of the slow staring,
rotten thing, barely
born, buried sloppy.

Nicholas Ritter (he/him) is a poet in the MFA program at George Mason University where he is the recipient of the Thesis Fellowship.

ODE TO SOLITUDE
There it is that other life,
the one you carry with you.
It’s perfectly unpeopled,
full of blossoms and light rain.
It smells of lemons.
There’s often dancing.

Elizabeth Mercurio lives in Monkton, MD. She’s the author of the chapbooks Doll and Words in a Night Jar. You can find her at: www.elizabethmercurio.com

JOIN US for the kick-off of our 50th-anniversary celebrations with our co-founder GRACE CAVALIERI along with Jean Nordhaus, Heather Bruce Satrom, and David Lott at People’s Book in Takoma Park on Friday, September 13 at 6-8 pm. Stop by and learn more about how you can submit to our upcoming anthology America’s Future with Caroline Bock and Jona Colson, co-editors. PLEASE RSVP and let us know you are coming! https://peoplesbooktakoma.com/event/wwph/

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