The HyperTexts

Featured Poems

These are featured poems of The HyperTexts in reverse chronological order, starting with our most current issue...

OCTOBER 2024

Forever
by Martin Mc Carthy

We are way out here on the edge
of town,
and a breathless, gushing ocean
clings to your tidewash of shards.

We are way out here on the edge
of darkness,
and your smile assuages
all the graves on the hill.

We are way out here on the edge
of tomorrow,
and other lives return to us
from the spindrift of another time.

We are way out here on the edge
of love,
and you have been forever the wind
that carries all my songs.



SEPTEMBER 2024

We are saddened to report that Ann Drysdale died on August 16, 2024. Ann was an accomplished British writer and editor, and one of the best poets published by The HyperTexts over its three decades of existence.

She Writes Her Own Obituary
by Ann Drysdale

One dark night in the middle of December,
the long, thin hour between midnight and morning,
back came the fairy* in a pinstriped costume
on her way home from visiting her agent:
Just popped in to suggest a small assignment—
How about taking this great opportunity
to put your words in the mouth of posterity?

Then she vanished, to return a bit later,
just like the angel to Abou Ben Adhem,
but the house was still and the poet silent,
slumped on her desk with her chin on her keyboard
in front of a screen that was full of nonsense,
apart, that is, from the following sentence.

Aye, spry she was, too, for such an old woman;
could still turn a phrase like a chit of a girl...

* The word-fairy, who has long served this poet as a muse.


AUGUST 2024

Bob Zisk is, in my opinion, one of the very best poets writing today. — Michael R. Burch, editor-in-chief, The HyperTexts

Love among the Ruins
by Bob Zisk

Come down from your lightning-struck tower,
My love, come play with me.
Step lightly on broken stem and flower,
Salute the rough debris.

Tarry longer than an hour
In the smoke of this burned-out tree,
Tarry longer than an hour
And play the while with me.

Come down from your lightning-struck tower,
My love, come play with me.
Step lightly on broken stem and flower,
Salute the rough debris.



JULY 2024

Eric Beidel has written hundreds of poems, stories, and essays, most of which he has kept private until now. He has worked as a reporter, night janitor, editor-for-hire, speechwriter, and bureaucrat. A native Midwesterner, he now lives in the shadow of the Santa Catalina Mountains in Tucson, Arizona.

Homecoming
by Eric Beidel

I will come to rest under the red oak,
In the shade at the end of the dirt road.
Between the corn and the factory folk,
They saved me a place according to code.
I have washed these stones with soap and water,
Stopping to trace the names with my finger.
I have been away yet still they offer
To let me lie with them here and linger.
Who will remember the name you carried?
Blood will run and dry but never transgress
Upon the ground where its past is buried.
Their offer is order, my answer yes—
When the harvest returns with the reaper,
Lay me down and let me be the keeper.

Amy L. Smith is a professor of English and Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Kalamazoo College where she shares her love of words (and The Oxford English Dictionary!) with her students.

ODE to The OED
by Amy L. Smith

I love the Oxford English Dictionary. It is my bae.

Now according to the Urban Dictionary, that could be the shortened version of baby or it could stand for “before anyone else."  And according to the Oxford English Living Dictionary, it’s the shorter version of baby or babe and was first used in 1983.

But I wanna go way back. So I look at the old school OED. And it seems at a loss. Until I find the old French bae. Which was a jocular word imitating the action of an infant’s lips in a kiss. Feel it. Bae. And there i am in 1529 singing a ballad called “My Darling Dear”: “with a bae bae bae and a bas bas bas she cherished him both cheek and chin.”

But then it can also mean a mouth agape. Which mine often is when I open my dictionary. So I ask the Oxford English Dictionary to define itself. But it can’t define its whole self. Who can really? Can your bae?

So I say what is a dictionary? And my OED says it started in English with a dictionary that didn’t even know it was a dictionary because it invented itself.  Robert Cawdry called this self-inventing book exactly what it was is. “A Table Alphabeticall of Hard Usual English Words.” Who needs easy words?

He didn’t spell alphabetical like we do. Which might make you think Cawdry made a mistake but he didn’t. Because it was 1604 and spelling hadn’t been regularized. Hell, Shakespeare spelled his name Shagspeare sometimes. Have you read his sonnets?

But sometimes a typo is still a typo. So I mean to start in the a’s because it’s a table and it’s alphabetical. But I flip open to ocean. Which IMHO is not a hard word. But go ahead table, lay it on me. Ocean. Maine sea. He spelled Maine with an e at the end like the state. Maine is by the sea. But Cawdry didn’t know. Cause it didn’t exist.

And back in 1604 Cawdry did that awful thing that dictionaries who aren’t my bae do. He defines offensive as giving no offense. Definitions like that give me offense. So I ask my OED bae what offensive is and she says it’s hurtful harmful injurious. And I remember I love the word injurious because it takes 4 syllables to say ouch.

And I’m really going to flip to the a’s, but on my way I see intercourse and I think ooh tell me more table alphabetical table, feeling a little guilty about my OED. But I like that “table”, that’s what I call her now, says intercourse is mutual access. Cause it’s all about consent. And it says consent means agreement. Mutual agreement sounds good.

So I flip again getting closer to the a’s and I see collusion and I say do tell. And table says it means deceit and cousanage. But it turns out cousanage ISN’T a hard usual word.

So I go back to OED, like I always do. And she says table is a liar. Cousanage isn’t a word. Maybe it’s a synonym for deceit she says. Cause you know you can’t count on table. In fact, why don’t you read table’s full name? Go ahead, read it. So I did.

“A table alphabeticall containing and teaching the true writing and understanding of hard usual English words borrowed from the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, or French with the interpretation thereof by plain English words gathered for the benefit and help of ladies, gentlewomen, and any other unskillful persons.”

Fuck you table! I say. How dare you link me, a gentlewoman, in manners if not in land and status,...How dare you link me with unskillful persons? I’ve got skills. I’ve got word skills. Mad word skills. So mad that the OED puckers her lips and calls me bae.



JUNE 2024

Gasp
by Martin Mc Carthy

I did not expect to find you here,
among these little shells and things
skittering from shore to shore
in a vast eternity of sea-foam;
but here you are, light years
from when I met you,
seeing the sea with eyes
still open to astonishment.

I did not expect to see you,
with your face lit up in eager joy,
nor to feel the fading day being charged again
by the sudden voltage of your touch;
but here you are, as the night undresses
in an alcove of dreams and moonbeams,
uttering the long tidal gasp
of a longing echoed from every shore.

Originally published by The Madrigal Press



MAY 2024

fossils
by Anaïs Vionet

In a lattice-lit dorm room sits a writer.
A discarded chemistry book lies beside her.
because ideas are hitting off her, like a collider.

Why does writing make her feel alive-er?
Cause it helps sort out the feelings inside her?

Repose is something grinding study denies her.

Now, rhyming isn't her primary desire,
the connections form, almost, despite her.
Poetry’s at its best when it comes unaware,
“Oh,” she thinks, like we’re going there?

What she writes might eventually be shared.
With that awareness she vowels with care,
picking words when they seem the ripest,
shaping phrases like some sort of stylist
- she may be less of a poet than a typist.

Her default is to narrative - like you read in novels
cause let’s face it - cold-poetry is as dead as vaudeville,
as buried as silent moves, letters and opera,
have I come to dig Caesar up, like a fossil?

cold = straight up

The HyperTexts