Top 10 most read poems of 2024

In the first year of Poem Alone, since we launched on 1st January, we've published over 200 poems! That figure has only been achieved due to the great submissions received across the year - to everyone that sent in their work for consideration, many thanks for letting us read your work.

To celebrate our first year, here is the ten top most read poems from the blog in 2024:

1. ‘A Cardiac Cold Myth’ by Kushal Poddar

2. ‘Silence’ by Petar Penda

3. ‘Poetry is dead’ by Howie Good

4. ‘Wild Roses’ by Jacquie Bryson

5. ‘The Worst Part of Being Past 65’ by Jacqueline Jules

6. ‘untitled’ by Katerina Stoykova

7. ‘Great Uncle Harry’ by Lesléa Newman

8. ‘Spring Day’ by Maurice Devitt

9. ‘Mr Casey’ by Peter Adair

10=. ‘Bear Hunt’ by Jacqueline Jules

10=. ‘Reasons to choose a hotel’ by Emma Lee

In the number one spot, Kushal Poddar was the very first poet we published on the blog, so it's fitting that we also close 2024 with another poem from him.

As always, submissions are open, and we look forward to more great work in 2025!

Kushal Poddar: Rugged Velvet

We find the amethyst 

on the backseat of the bus. 

We lost it there one 

humid night ago.

Why didn't anyone find it, take it?

Why don't you show any surprise?

At home a rustling in my pocket

becomes a bee, dead, rugged

and raw like a crystal.

Instead of the usual blue

tonight blooms a pink neon dot

on the mind's strip 

Mood wears a translucent bedsheet.

Without reason I fall

in love with you again.

Kushal Poddar is the author of A White Cane For The Blind Lane' and 'How To Burn Memories Using a Pocket Torch' has ten books to his credit. He is a journalist, father of a four-year-old, illustrator, and an editor. His works have been translated into twelve languages and published across the globe. 

Jeff Burt: My Daughter’s First Recital

Cheeks filled with powder

like fingerprints lost in wax,

dimples smoothed, wrinkles contracted

as shallow lakes in summer—

the audience see themselves in her,

and thus, she enters them.

Thickened lengthened lacquered

lashes beat largo, butterfly

fanned wings to an older song.

Parisian decoration, adornment,

fluttering in the wink, she opens

a picture-window over clear still water.

In bright lights, glossed lips reflect,

project, appear to hover in front of her face,

an invitation to the world to pay attention,

fuchsia pink, fez-red,

add and sum like layers of paint,

she speaks through lifted leg,

phrase in thrusted wrist,

like mist over a morning river,

lifts a flat canvas to a new dimension.

All the world a stage.

Clown one time, phantom the next.

She has an argument with the world,

tears colouring cheeks like creeks

over flattened land, gloss thinned

by the tongue wetting lips

heated by a war with motion,

dance done, curtain drawn,

needing another’s comfort,

mask removed, phantom vanished,

enamel worn, looking for her mother’s face.

Jeff Burt lives in California, and contributed to Sheila-Na-Gig, Williwaw Journal, Rat's Ass Review, and many others. More work can be found at www.jeff-burt.com

John Grey: Leo and the Boiler Room

In your clammy dungeon, you check

the water level, the pressure gauge
over and over and over.
In clammy heat,
your breath is a dark wet thing
that crystallizes down the overflow pipe.
You’re paid to
suffocate in peace,
fastened to the one chair,
the one torn magazine.
It hits you like the hiss of vents,
the sigh of safety valves...
your job is making sure
no one ever knows you're here.
All day, you reconcile how
up there, the heat is almost weightless
while here, its heaviness straps
itself to your lungs like a suffocating vest.
That's what you drag around with you
as you validate the taunting numbers,
check the water level, the pressure gauge,
their equivalent in you.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, New English Review and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”, ”Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Amazing Stories and River and South.

Marie Studer: Sunday Rights

We sip tea, relish our once-a-week

second helpings of gold buttered toast

despite out-of-sync cholesterol scores.

 

My husband quotes snippets of conflict 

from newspapers spread on the table,

says he misses the acuity of Robert Fisk,

 

repeats, listen to this and this…

I offer assent or a slant before

the bugle calls radio’s Sunday Miscellany.

 

He ceases commentary other than

an occasional rustle or tsk.

I top up my cup to the medley of ritual.

Marie Studer is widely published in journals and anthologies She is a past winner of the Trócaire/Poetry Ireland Competition. Her poems have been placed in many competitions, most recently in The Francis Ledwidge International and The Denis O’Grady International competitions. Her debut collection, Real Words, was published by Revival Press (2023).

Paul Dickey: Unbearable Dailiness of Being

Awakening to a morning light,

the night again forgets its ignorance

where the dailiness of being

is a full occupation.

The wall clock comprehends

fifty years ago more vividly

than anything today

which it must display.

But even more than this,

I pity that mortal light

which selects its images only

to show us what it knows,

but will not allow

us back into the darkness

to create ourselves

like once the morning would.

Paul Dickey lives in Omaha, NE but he wrote poetry in Wichita, Kansas in the 1970’s. He published then in Kansas Quarterly, Mikrokomos, Nimrod, Karamu, and Quartet. Now in 2024 after many years, Dickey has now published for his early poems with a new book, I Forget I Live Alone.

Kieran Beville: Summer Then

With hurleys tied to the bars of our bikes

we sped to Foley's Field to play poc fada

until the cogs of hunger turned us

homeward for midday dinner.

In the afternoon we slapped handball

against a sunlit gable-end on Quarry Road,

our palms, red and sore.

In the evening we went skinny-dipping

in the high tide at The Point

beyond the Metal Bridge.

Day after day we spun the chain of time

while the spokes of the sun shone.

Kieran Beville is an Irish author, poet and journalist. He is author of Write Now – A Guide to Becoming a Writer (Limerick Writers Centre, 2019). Beville has had a substantial number of poems and articles published in various newspapers, journals and magazines and five collections of poetry (Revival Press). 

Mark J. Mitchell: Mourner #51

(From the Tomb of the Count of Burgundy)

His book, wrapped in cloth, drags

down his right hand, holds it

still as the rock it is.

A cowl shadows his face—

though that was carved—shaped just

to hide in this white shade.

His left hand clutches cloth,

precise disarray falls

from his feet to his face—

Cool stone folds, white with tears

shed beneath a real corpse

constantly. His shoulders

can’t vibrate. This grief can’t

breathe. His sorrow’s frozen.

This mourning is eternal.

Mark J. Mitchell has been a working poet for 50 years. He’s the author of five full-length collections, and six chapbooks. His latest collection is Something To Be from Pski’s Porch Publishing. A novel, A Book of Lost Songs is due out in Spring of 2025.He’s fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Dante, and his wife, activist Joan Juster.

Patrick Deeley: Wicker Man

Old lank nexus of brooms, old

purple-black loft of leafage,

old rib-cage with thickened gams 

and stiff-stretched arms,

old frightener at the garden’s end,

you become a wicker man

in my imaginings. And although

you contain no sacrifice,

no penned cattle, pigs or goats,

no trussed-up hens or geese,

no captive human being in panic

or forlorn beseechment –

with only insects and songbirds

flitting among your twigs,

nurtured, maybe even charmed –

still there is the haughty

towering buoyancy you possess,

the grim, glowering look

you throw that hooks me deepest

at sunset or by moonlight,

when the smudge-mark

of sadness feeds off your outline,

and I see nature funning

with itself and with us, in one place

a firestorm ravishing

the forest, in another a torrent

breaking its sides laughing,

the world no less a grief than a joy,

and, in your wicker dance,

the light tangling with the dark.

Patrick Deeley is a poet, memoirist and children’s writer from Loughrea.  Keepsake, his tenth collection of poems, appeared from Dedalus Press in 2024. www.patrickdeeley.net

Alyssa Curcio: A Death in the Family

When our family rabbit died, it was the doldrums of January, 

All grey and biting and spitting down snow. 

A cold year for Virginia. 

The ground was still frozen, too hard to dig him a grave deep enough

To keep the rain from turning him up again. 

So we tucked him away in a shoebox, decorated with hearts and stickers, 

And folded our thoughts of him delicately away 

In the industrial freezer we kept in the garage

While we waited for spring to thaw the red clay. 

Eventually, the sun broke through and the daffodils sprouted, 

And a shovel could finally cut through the baby grass. 

The red clay loosened, unfolding itself to make way for

Shoots and blooms. 

Out came the box. 

Out of some morbid fascination, I opened it and peeked inside. 

Trick lay there on his side, 

His tufted spots sparkling slightly with frost. 

You may not know this, but because of the shape of bunnies’ spines, 

They have to flop over on their side before they can rearrange their 

Little bones into a laying position. 

That’s how he looked—mid-flop, ready to snuggle up 

Once his frame was flush with the ground. 

But instead, he was cast in perfect stillness. 

Suspended somewhere between life and death.

No longer with us, but corporeally tethered to us still. 

I can’t put you in the freezer and delay your departure that way. 

You wouldn’t fit, for starters. You don’t fit anywhere now. 

Not at the empty kitchen chair you used to haunt, 

Not rattling at the other end of an unstable phone line. 

Not by the window folding the yellowing pages of your Bible

Again and again and again. 

I find myself in some liminal space, defying July’s fiery sun 

With the permafrost that holds me here, 

Sunken into the tundra of your laughter 

And your smile lines

And your puttering around a holiday kitchen. 

I’m left banging my fists on the cold, hard ground, 

Wondering how to hold on to you

Now that you no longer exist.

Alyssa Curcio is a reproductive justice activist and lawyer. Her scholarship has been published in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law and the Duke Environmental Law & Policy Forum. A Virginia native, Alyssa currently lives in New York City.