Tag: Poetry About Fall

Steve Brisendine: “Notice Served”

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine 
Notice Served

Low sky, gray beneath gray,
thin dim sun loitering behind
without noticeable intent;

aging summer drags beat-up
sandals at autumn’s order to
pack up its things and move on
	to the next hemisphere – 

but clouds above and bluster
below, orange leaves eddying
in gutters and entryways,

foreshadow the inevitable: a fall
of highs and lows, woodsmoke
perfuming dawns and dusks, 

frost’s hungry fingers tracing
windowpanes, cupping cheeks.

About the Author: Steve Brisendine – writer, poet, occasional artist, recovering journalist – lives and works in Mission, Kansas. His most recent collections are Salt Holds No Secret But This (Spartan Press, 2022) and To Dance with Cassiopeia and Die (Alien Buddha Press, 2022), a “collaboration” with his former pen name of Stephen Clay Dearborn. His work has appeared in Modern Haiku, Flint Hills Review, Connecticut River Review and other journals and anthologies. He holds no degrees, several longstanding grudges and any number of strong opinions. Write to him at steve.brisendine@live.com.

Image Credit: Andor Dobai Szekely “A Summer Landscape” (1910) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee

Ruth Bavetta: “A Year Turned Upside Down”

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine 

A Year Turned Upside Down

Almost all of fall evaporated
in a flurry of sun. Mayweed’s stars 
immobilized by an embarrassment of heat. 

Come January, gardenias shot into scent,
clivia burst into a conflagration 
of orange. With winter annihilated,

spring spiraled into the disingenuous 
sugar of summer, sage withered, 
chaparral seethed in a flash of flame.

About the Author: Ruth Bavetta’s poems have appeared in North American Review, Nimrod, Rattle, Slant, American Journal of Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies. She likes the light on November afternoons, the music of Stravinsky, the smell of the ocean. She hates pretense, fundamentalism and sauerkraut.

Image Credit: Chase Dimock “California Mayweed” (2022)

Leslie Dianne: “Pumpkins”

Posted on by asitoughttobemagazine

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Pumpkins 

Let’s search for flawed
pumpkins this fall
go to the field
and find those
that rolled away
were pushed away
slid on the mud away
from their vines
let’s gather up the
shrunken ones
the shriveled up ones
the nobody will want them
ones and let’s want them
let’s give them some
reason for having broken
the soil, lost their flowers
sucked up the water
and fought to live
because if only for a minute
their orangeness
brightens the field
and our gloomy day
they’d teach us that
everything is useful
even the dying
fruit if it is
given a reason
to live

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About the Author: Leslie Dianne is a poet, novelist, screenwriter, playwright and performer whose work has been acclaimed internationally in places such as the Harrogate Fringe Festival in Great Britain, The International Arts Festival in Tuscany, Italy and at La Mama in New York City. Her stage plays have been produced in NYC at The American Theater of Actors, The Raw Space, The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and The Lamb’s Theater.  She holds a BA in French Literature from CUNY and her poems have appeared in The Lake, Ghost City Review, The Literary Yard, About Place Journal and Kairos and are forthcoming in Hawai’i Review. Her poetry was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

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Image Credit: Carol M. Highsmith “Pumpkin stand in Southington, Connecticut” (2011) The Library of Congress