California State Poetry Society

Haiga by Eric Oswald, with poem by Kimberly Kuchar. Published in Prune Juice Issue #49, 2026.

In the third issue of the CSPS Poetry Letter of 2026, the year of the 250th Birthday Celebration of the United States of America, our readers find the list of winners of the 39th CSPS Annual Poetry Contest judged by Dr. Mary Langer Thompson: Susan Wolbarst (First prize), Jeff Graham (Second Prize) and Katheryn Howd Machan (Third Prize), with a special 250th US Birthday Prize awarded to Michael Shoemaker. Their poems will be published in the California Quarterly in December.

This issue of the Poetry Letter presents haiku, haiga and haibun by Eric Oswald, of Sherman Oaks, working in collaboration with Kimberly Kuchar of Austin, Texas, and Daria Valevskaya of Krasnoyarsk, Russia. Two other featured California poets are Charlene Langfur of Palm Springs and Joe DeCenzo of Tujunga (a part of Los Angeles). With so many fantastic poems, we did not have space for book reviews, so these will be included in the next issue of Winter 2026.

~ Maja Trochimczyk, CSPS President

WINNERS OF THE 39th ANNUAL POETRY CONTEST, 2026

The 39th Annual Poetry Contest of California State Poetry Society was adjudicated by Dr. Mary Langer Thompson. There are three main prizes that include publication in the California Quarterly, a small cash prize and a certificate.. Poets winning 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes receive $100, $50 and $25, respectively. The judge also selected ten Honorary Mentions and recommended eight additional poets for publication in the California Quarterly. This year, the CSPS Board decided to add a special 250th Birthday Prize for the best poem celebrating the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States in 1776. The prize .consists of a certificate, publication and $76 in cash. We will see all awarded poems in the Winter 2026 issue of the California Quarterly. Congratulations to all winners!

WINNERS

FIRST PRIZE: "Quilting, Still" by Susan Wolbarst of Gualala, California

SECOND PRIZE: "No-Road Road" by Jeff Graham of Walnut Creek, California

THIRD PRIZE: "I Tell My Students to Write About Soup" by Katharyn Howd Machan of Ithaca, New York

SPECIAL PRIZE FOR THE 250th U.S. BIRTHDAY: "Valley Forge Echoes" by Michael Shoemaker of Magna, Utah

HONORARY MENTIONS
1. "How I Now Keep Time" by Edward Garvey of Chapell, North Carolina
2. "Morning Papers" by Claire Scott of Oakland, California
3. "Promise" by Suzanne Bruce of Fairfield, California
4. "Time Breathes through Rustling Trees" by Gurupreet Khalsa, of Mobile, Alabama
5. "Meandering to Heaven" of Gurupreet Khalsa of Mobile, Alabama
6. "The Gordita Woman Speaks" by Peter Ludwin, of Kent, Washington
7. "Circles Within Circles" by Joanne Holdridge of Devens, Massachusetts
8. "After Frost" by Joanne Holdridge of Devens, Massachusetts
9. "Things Shift in Transit" by Joanne Holdridge of Devens, Massachusetts
10. "Nomenclature" by Katharyn Howd Machan of Ithaca, New York

SPECIAL SELECTIONS FOR PUBLISHING IN THE CALIFORNIA QUARTERLY:

poems by Charlene Langfur, Brian Cronwell, Donna Emerson, Laura Grevel, Gurupreet Khalsa, Richard T. Ringley, Claire Scott, and Susan Wolbarst.

CONTEST JUDGE - MARY LANGER THOMPSON

An award-winning poet and writer who currently lives in the high desert of California where she opened a public school as principal, Mary Langer Thompson was born in Illinois and traveled to California on Route 66. She credits her bi-weekly critique group with helping her to transition into writing fiction and children’s stories. She has been a secondary English teacher, adjunct professor, and elementary school principal. Thompson is active in the California Writer's Club, High Desert Branch, and was California's Senior Poet Laureate in 2012-13. She won the Jack London Award in 2019 and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2020. She has given poetry and writing workshops in schools, colleges, and prisons. Most recently she was the featured poet, along with Pat Connors, on Saturday Afternoon Poetry. She edited From Silence to Speech: Women of the Bible Speak Out in 2015, published Poems in Water in 2014 and wrote two children’s books, How the Blue-Tongued Skink got His Blue Tongue; and The Gull Who Thought He Was Dull, both illustrated by Samantha Kickingbird. She also published several chapbooks.

FEATURED POET ERIC OSWALD

A resident of Sherman Oaks, California, Eric Oswald has published poetry and short fiction worldwide, as well as his work being translated in multiple countries. Sample journals: Modern Haiku, Frogpond, Heron’s Nest, Presence, Wales Haiku Journal, Hedgerow and The Living Haiku Anthology.

His photography has been featured in multiple publications and galleries in Southern California. His artistic practice complements his literary work, often exploring similar themes of nature, stillness, and human connection. Website: www.ericoswald.com

Haiga publication credits: poetry by Eric Oswald, paintings by Daria Valevskaya (Krasnoyarsk, Russia). Three haiga (the moon cries, the stars blinking, tree stands alone) first published in Akitsu Quarterly, fall/winter issue 2026. Two haiga (hydrangea sky, the clouds blow away) first published in Hedgerow, issue #152, 2026.

a bee
desperately laps
sugar water
all the week’s
three o’clocks

Tanka by Eric Oswald, published in Presence #84

a few of her hairpins
still here
and there
the piercing fragrance
of an august lily

Tanka by Eric Oswald, published in Presence #85, 2026

MAKING PAPER

Sheltered from the sea, in dusky brambles in a hedgerow unkept, a wood lean-to shed warped and worn and greyed near a live oak. This year again, a wasp queen untucks herself from winter and begins to chew and spit the ledger board.

wasp nest

papering the walls

in the nursery

Eric Oswald, published in Frogpond 48.2

and in Reluctant Mermaids 2025 anthology

short sharp staccato
shiver of a violin
winter, evening

Eric Oswald, Wales Haiku Journal, winter 2025

draped cobwebs
her fabric still
at the sewing table

Eric Oswald, Frogpond, issue 48.3

quiet night
the sound of stars
spooned into my tea

Eric Oswald, Heron’s Nest Dec.2025, Vol. 27, No. 4

this long autumn —
my shadow has moved
more than me

Eric Oswald, Presence #83

deep breath
the tide
recedes

Eric Oswald, Presence #83

the candle flame
still against
the frosted window

Eric Oswald, Presence #83

water gazing
the first snow falls
up from the depths

Eric Oswald, Modern Haiku 57.1

after rainfall
again the scent
of marigolds

Eric Oswald, Akitsu fall/winter 2026

THE DELICATE PROCESS OF ECLOSION

The dealmaker as we choose our new house is the backyard garden. Boxwood, rhododendrons, lavender and peonies with a young lemon tree at its center. While getting settled in we discover our weather. The storm leaves us only our tree, weak and thin, a couple branches and a few leaves. As our first daughter is born, our garden is returning in petal and branch. The tree stands weak, basic, never producing more than a small basket of lemons.

withered leaf
the luna moth secretes
her womb

Starting kindergarten, our daughter loves counting the lemons on the tree because the number is low enough for her to understand. Three! with a bright smile showing as many teeth. She names the tree Pearl after her stuffed dog and gradually learns to take care of it. We install a separate sprinkler near the tree that she can control herself. As she grows, she prunes the branches she can reach, telling the gardeners which of the rest to cut and how much. Laughing, they do as they’re told. She helps fertilize in spring, screwing up her nose, spreading the ugly manure thick and full. Today she leaves home to go to her college dorm and for the first time there are too many to count. Everywhere you look there is a lemon.

pearl necklace
each year
another added

Pearl’s Lemonade (suitable for selling at a front-yard stand):
o 1 part fresh squeezed lemon juice
o 1 part granulated sugar
o 9 parts water
o mint and strawberries for garnish, and added flavor

Eric Oswald & Amir Hayek (Haifa, Israel),

published in Presence, issue #85 2026

FEATURED POET CHARLENE LANGFUR

Charlene Langfur is a green and LGBTQ writer, an organic gardener living in Palm Springs in the southern California desert. She was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, and was a Syracuse University Graduate Writing Fellow in poetry where she was mentored by poet W.D. Snodgrass and other of the confessional poets writing at the time. She has publications in poetry, essays and short stories over the years and she has many published poems over time - from writing a poem about bears alongside Ursula Le Guinn, to the present in a recent special issue for Poetry East on Monet’s gardens.

SIT LIKE A MOUNTAIN

This is never as easy as I think no matter
how many times I do it. Hold steady and in
place, sitting still and breathing deep and long.
Counting one breath at a time. I am slowing down but
thinking about everything imaginable at the same time,
about how the black crows talk over the nubile little dates
on the palm tree in the back yard, this is date country,
thinking how I need to sweep the back porch. It is time
to tidy up again and today on this day when the sky
is as blue as my summer shirt, ironed and ready to wear.
I’m out into the world, today on this day when I have a list
of images I want to put into my new poems, all of them,
including the roadrunners and the wrens, and the pink poppies
in a gully in the deep grass, the flowers that never give up,
that keep coming back like in the beginning, like the first time.
This is how busy I am in a quiet time. Full of ruminations.
Enumerations. Living out loud all over the map and standing
still at the same time even as the mind is trying to slow down.
This is why I have stopped. To touch the still and the small,
the nothing and the now, to learn how.

Charlene Langfur, Weber-The Contemporary West.

Alexandria Thompson, ed. 2018

THE ADDICTION

My father drank until he could no more,

drank in the Bowery, slept on the cobblestone

streets after work, he drank in bars, he drank in his car,

anywhere, he drank anytime, he told me life was sweet,

he drank until our house was gone, all the song in it gone,

until the bank owned it and not us, you know

how that works, the big addiction, the big kahuna of it all,

until the family almost died in a car crash in Paramus,

a head-on collision on the way home from a birthday party.

I was seven years old and crushed in the front,

seat, who knew we could go so far and still

live, survive the cascade of words, accusations,

recoveries, living in motels and apartment complexes,

talk of AA meetings, of enablers, of disablers,

stories from Prague and the farm in New Jersey,

stories about a past that was okay or so it seemed,

isn’t it always the way, myth taking center stage

before everything else, as if it really can, he said

he picked strawberries for 5 cents an hour in the

meadowland marshes, I remember they tasted like heaven

is what he told me.

Charlene Langfur, Citron Review. Antioch College, CA,

Edward Steineger, ed., 2013.

ANALYSIS OF THE BEST POSSIBLE DAY

No material theory involved. Only light. Everything’s all right.

Amino acids, lipo-proteins start off the day like any other.

Early on, a few pied warblers warble. The dog croons.

I’m dressed in a cotton shirt, cleaned, ironed,

a shirt the color of the sea at noon.

I give a class in school on advancing a single thought.

How to hold an essay together

in any weather or difficulty.

The mind likes maps.

In the newspaper, articles about gene pools, buried artifacts,

war in Asia.

Four soldiers died today in Afghanistan.

I think they are lost in the mountains, and I picture the steel grey

rocks where they were found.

The war is like air.

It is always there in America now.

We do not talk of it as if it has a beginning or an end anymore.

I think of the soldiers

when I pass the giant sunflowers in front of my house.

All in all, today is like other days and what’s new sticks to it

early on. The clock on the wall keeps its steady little beat.

Its eternal numbers. The rhythm of the stars and heavens.

At eleven I’m ready for a hot meal,

organic pasta, organic olive oil from Spain.

I have game.

I have what counts. Even at the end with no one to smile at me

on my way back but a black dog, tail wagging,

I am not lagging.

In the east light turns crepuscular, catches at the shadows.

The long float of loss, recession, unemployment,

the color

of your leaving.

Ideas for a solution on a pad of paper to hold a small

world together as it passes. Flower doodling. A draft of a poem

on a good day, the poem holding the day together,

a place in it for the soldiers, the dog’s path, the lack of love,

in the west—the lilac-colored sky.

Charlene Langfur, Stone Canoe—Journal of the Arts.

Robert Crowley, ed. Syracuse, New York. 2011

Blue Sky Palm Tree by Maja Trochimczyk

WITH MY FATHER IN THE HOSPITAL

I am sitting with my old father as he sleeps.

He’s in a coma and won’t wake up but still, he breathes,

slow shallow breaths, hardly traceable.

Today he is innocent, childlike, young again.

At first, while I sit with him, I doze off, wake, stare out the window

at the busy parking lot.

Cars are parked and people are walking and the wind’s blowing

strong pushing the trees to the right.

And I am thinking about the history of the world.

Nothing specific but the whole big deal of it, the history

like the history of a family or a relationship, full of details,

but also heavy, the bulk of it, the time, it has weight.

I think my father is too light for this now. I try to be as light as that too

and sit in the chair buoyantly, light and blue as the sky out the window is.

I think about how he taught me to throw a baseball, grabbed

the stitches with his thick knuckles, perfectly as

any of us would hold an egg between two fingers.

And I remember the look on his face when he told me the first thing

I knew to be untrue. His eyes twinkled a little and the salesman in him

paused him to pinch the edge of his hat as he smiled.

This is how later I knew he had a good hand at cards,

why I always wanted to be his partner because I knew

if he was bluffing and when he was true as he could be.

I could see in his eyes what was up. The shine. The glint.

An ancient man now with an old round head. He’s true blue.

I’ve spent so much time trying to save him

and now I let go, lighter than I imagined I could

all the heaviness of the past floated away on its own.

I lean over, touch his hand. I’m glad to say goodbye on such a good day as this.

Charlene Langfur, The Adirondack Review, Volume 2: 4, 2005.

THE SEASON OF THE UNEXPECTED

Luscious, delicious, this time around

the scent of the blossoms in early light

is all over the place,

the flowers opening every which way,

wild as it gets, you know what I

mean, all the flowers

from the tip of the branches to the trunk,

an embarrassment of petals,

as if optimism has to have a place

and this is it, in the sky and the air,

everywhere the scent,

the first of the flowers

before the rose blushed peaches

come full blown, the first of the season

of unexpected plenty,

so many white flowers small as pennies,

and what comes next, the first taste of the summer,

of the peaches.

I remember my father waited for them,

smiling in anticipation as if he was still a boy,

the heavenly smile, the one we all have,

the smile that happens when we

are open enough to be fully alive,

so he waited on them,

the peaches

all of them ripening in the sun and growing in the night

and later, cutting them up into

the dish and later, I am holding a single peach

in the palm of my hand up into the light to see

the crazy miracle close up,

an earth jewel,

irresistible, nothing short of

delight.

Charlene Langfur

Cold Mountain Review, Vol. 42, No. 2 (2014): 53.

ORGANIC GARDEN

The garden’s full of cans now, used slot machine buckets,

old tools with tapes around the handles,

whatever works, seeds drying in the sun on slate blue rocks

from up north, big desert high mountain rocks,

the seeds of dried-up marigolds, 1,000s of them

with their thin seeds ready to plant, reedy things,

miniatures, formidable little ones, birthing pods

ready to break through for new life.

All familiar. Other things that have been here for years.

All I need to do is to wait for the right time to plant.

What’s difficult is the rest.

How I’m looking for love to mend here,

this year as I press my smooth white shoulders

close to the dirt

and the rich black soil sticks to my body in the heat.

Here I chase the familiar, the steady,

what seems dead but is ready to come back again.

I look for the familiar

in a knowable place, a constant place where I am constant.

The smell of the soil late in the day,

the scent of flowers on a hot night. Ancient dirt.

Without litany or broadcast.

The blue jay chased off a rattlesnake again this morning.

I am not surprised any longer how they keep the place safe.

Social beings, scouts, the smart birds warn of danger.

Plastic bowls filled with calendula petals are everywhere,

thousands of petals, silk to the touch, for ointments in jars,

the petals are the start for each jar of salve, and pieces of fruit,

apricots, peaches, apples, all of them drying in the sun.

The garden has me tied to it so I can’t forget any parts

of it that work, so going back to a job is easy, decipherable,

my own part in it is easy, loading up the trees with lady bugs

from paper buckets, sprinkling dried sea-weed around the tree

trunks and over the empty beds before winter.

So I know how to do everything even when I am not sure why.

All this I know will work. In the winter sweet peas bloom like crazy

under the winter covers but sunflowers grow there now,

giants ten feet tall, suddenly the first thought of winter

in the middle of the deepest heat, the winter when I’ll prune

with abandon, wait with it in my mind, night after night in the full moonlight,

days of sunflowers bending low, red-yellow peaches sweet as heaven.

Charlene Langfur, Blueline. Vol. XXIX

Potsdam College of the State of New York (2008): 79.

Lone Palm Sunset by Maja Trochimczyk

SOME SAY ALL THERE IS FOR SOME OF US IS MAKING DO

But there is more than this to it,

the incredible lightness of less

the delight of stars and the moon at night,

making up for what’s right

the glowing and the deep,

the heart adrift returning,

and the still small voice, how it never leaves

even in the snow with no place to go,

finding home,

the happiness of losing and starting over anyway,

all about what trembles and flies

the tintinnabulation of the soul, bliss over a single kiss

but more than this,

wanting a life back

even when it does not want us,

flying out wide over a fat dark,

landing where it seemed impossible before,

finding a smaller simpler home,

vegetables in a tiny garden, giant sunflowers,

a bower of little white ones, sweet berries

in the morning,

the old problems gone off like little birds, wrens come spring

off and away, the moon’s shine

glow in the night

all the way until day breaks, how the sweet-big wild blue sky

comes on like never before

a big sky come again, giant with so much life under it, completely luminous.

Charlene Langfur, Weber-The Contemporary West.

Alexandria Thompson, ed. (Fall 2015).

THE LONG OF IT AND THE STEADY

We all have our way of getting through our lives.

These days I slowly count each hour on an app assessing

sentences in English digitally. Forty hours every week.

Patience is at the heart of what I do now as I keep

trying to find a way to do what I must do for work

in a world of climate change in which I am getting older,

on a planet increasingly oriented to the young.

My stamina remains the same year after year and

each day I eat oatmeal for a good breakfast, and

take a hardy walk with my golden rescued dog Grace,

and always plan to read some of what I think matters

so I am always learning and discovering what is new

and always, I sit in my small garden with a book.

Each day I come up with a plan for the order of things,

how an hour in each one of my days feels right.

Today I will work for a flat eight hours of the day,

and I will assess 160 sentences spoken out loud.

On my walk later in the day my dog will be leaping

in the tall wild desert grass and she is all in.

I learn to live in the moment from the way she lives

as if there never can be a half-way point in a full life.

Later, I will plant more seeds, parsley and nasturtium

and sit in the garden where the lavender blooms like crazy.

My garden is a small world coming back again and again

and in need of tending as I and my dog are also,

like all of us women living alone in a difficult world

writing poems about flowers blooming in the night,

talking about keeping faith no matter what happens,

about making things right, loving long and being kind.

This is what I’ve learned to do then, know who I am,

know what I can do, tack boundaries, all the width and the depth,

the long of it and the steady, all of the day

Charlene Langfur, Rejoinder. Rutgers,

The State University of New Jersey, 2026.

BLUER THAN THE SKY

Letting go of love. Well yes, I mean something other

than to say let go. I mean to fill a glass with water.

Or work. Or hang up my clothes for the day.

Blue pants and a blue Italian silk shirt. The blouse, well,

I say it is blue, but I mean it is like the sky really

or it is the sky. I put it on for luck, fill up my black bag

with books and papers and head to work on the freeway.

What is inside the bag is a life, a history, years of lessons and hopes and

lost love. I remember how my father talked to me about the briefcase

before he passed on. “Such a heavy case for a woman,” he said.

“Such weight. Your hair is so long and shiny and the bag?”

Order. Order. The universe takes to an order, and I am ready to go again

with the measure of the day—to make it new, blue—today

I will buy a new one then, let’s say, a new dress, a new glass,

a blue one that stays forever or longer than I can imagine and maybe,

yes, I see it was all about loving all along, or loss too large to carry

in a bag or under the sky, blue or otherwise, or for a woman beautiful

or measured, or what is or what isn’t left of the poem, or what I imagine

is lost as opposed to what is actually lost itself. But today--this is

what I am about. On my way to work. Dressed like the sky. Dreaming of the moon.

Charlene Langfur, Room Magazine.

Vancouver, Canada. Issue 32, 2009/2010.

FEATURED POET JOE DECENZO

Joe DeCenzo is an L.A. native and graduate of the Los Angeles City College Theater Academy. His education in music built the foundation for his appreciation of the poetry of lyrics. He was elected Poet Laureate of Sunland-Tujunga and served from 2004-06. While Laureate, he produced the “Shouting Coyote” Performing Arts Festival and was a Department of Cultural Affairs grant recipient. It was renowned for drawing local writers, musicians, dancers and artists together in prominent festivals that celebrated the creativity of the foothills. His published works include The Ballad of Alley and Hawk and the Study Guide and Poetry Primer. Since 2004, both are being taught and performed annually at Vineyard Junior High in Rancho Cucamonga by his collaborator, Jenna Vandegrift.

He has been published in several anthologies: Meditations on Devine Names (Moonrise Press 2012), We Are Here: Village Poets Anthology (Moonrise Press 2018), and Crystal Fire (Moonrise Press 2022). The latter earned him a Pushcart nomination. He was inspired to pursue creative writing as a child after hearing a recitation of Rudyard Kipling’s “If.” His greatest influences were the playwrights he studied and performed e.g. Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and Harold Pinter. For 10 years he served as the chair of the Sunland-Tujunga Arts Recreation and Culture Committee helping artists and organizations connect with funding, venues and volunteers. He regularly emcees the Village Poets monthly reading at Bolton Hall Museum. His proudest achievements are the connections he’s made with the foothills communities and the programs he’s worked to build and maintain.

BETWEEN THE LINES

Somewhere between darkness and light

Lies a band of color so vivid its intensity dazzles the mind

Somewhere between silence and chaos

A symphony of unequaled splendor plays

Somewhere between inaudible whispers and deafening screams

A rational voice sustains the air

Derailing unbending dogma and passive objectivity

Finding compromise for all

The space between the porous and the impenetrable

Is filled with degrees of resistance and acceptance

The realm between transparent and opaque

Is rife with fear and intuition

Between obscurity and celebrity

Are feelings of family and oneness

Within the fields of victory and surrender

Are rolling meadows of peace and contemplation

Beyond invincible walls and vulnerable flesh

Nature’s passion poem reaches for the surface

To interlace the blackish ink and whitish page

Revealing the expanse between “yes” and “no”

To breach the rigid lines that comprise our daily walks.

Joe DeCenzo, in anthology Crystal Fire, Moonrise Press 2022

OF THINGS I CAN’T REMEMBER

Like what I had for breakfast or what I wore the night before

Who won last year’s World Series or what I needed from the store

The names of all my nephews, where I left my writing pen,

My freakin’ cell phone number…what the hell was that again?

Did I forget to hit the lights or lock the door on my way out

The title of my favorite song or what that movie was about

I can’t count the misplaced items, errands I’m supposed to run

Or times I walked into the party with my trouser fly undone

I forget, I can’t recall, some days I haven’t got a clue

Yet that never interrupts the steady thoughts I have of you

The vivid recollection of the savor of your hair

The taste of praline kisses on my lips is always there

Holding hands and holding on to you was daily medicine

Like stoking embers in a fireplace that calm the storms within

Such comforting encouragement through all the pounding stress

The sound of your sweet voice is at the front of my success

With dates and places fading and the details falling through

I don’t remember much, but I remember all of you

I remember you were with me at the time I came to be

I remember life’s true value now for you’re my memory

Joe DeCenzo

THE VALUE OF NOTHING

Vacant cares, deserted doubts, benign suspicion
Nothing hinders our tendrils from coiling

A quiet night when nothing interrupts
The sound of your breath in my ear

The absence of fabric lets nothing prevent
The binding contact of our skin

A perfect time to elevate life
For nothing stands in our way

Nothing between us
Nothing to regret

Nothing to hold back an insoluble oath
With nothing left to say

Sometimes, nothing can be everything
And nothing you do can ever change my mind

Joe DeCenzo

Big Tujunga Wash by Maja Trochimczyk

BEAUTY AT THE BARRE

Small cloud of rosin dust
Around a battered wooden box
Rises beauty from hellish pain
A half-used roll of KT tape
Supports the inflamed hamstring
Cracking calluses, the only shield
For a bloody sock
Blisters ripped of skin
Plié - tendu
Plié - tendu
From 5:00 am until the school bell rings

Torment to the limbs
Aching, soreness, spasms, cramps
Tedium at the barre building
Strength, alignment, balance, beauty
Relevé - en pointe
Relevé - en pointe

Body dysmorphia, eating disorders
Stay thin, stay thin
Keep your fingers from your throat
Need it be this ugly
To reach the height of grace?

The x-rays say you’re ready
Determination leads the charge
Bind reptilian feet
In satin covered toe shoes

Sauté - en pointe
6 inches of elegance
The added line from hip to toe
16 years of training
For the Black Swan pas de deux

Joe DeCenzo

WISHFUL THINKING

Suppose we’d met at winter’s end
When blocks of ice show signs of thaw
And hibernating lives awake
So dormant hearts can beat again.

Suppose the ramparts fell that day
And we could see beyond the walls
Concealing what we hoped inside
Confessing what we hid so long.

Suppose the army of distrust
That held suspicion’s tower strong
Forever toppled in defeat
When love’s battalion came in view

To march in pity through the stones
Where passion’s corpse laid in decay
Reviving what was dead of breath
Confronting what we knew was true.

Suppose that Time forgave our sins
And let us walk through youth again
To flower in a different light
Amending all the choices made.

Imagine that your arms uncrossed
The day I offered you my hand.
If that were likely, would I then
See love reflected in your eyes,

And would my children share your face
Created from intense desire?
Can penance live where feelings grow?
Just wishful thinking, I suppose.

Joe DeCenzo

WEEKEND RINGMASTER

Even through the rolled-up windows of a ’68 Plymouth

The kaleidoscope of sounds surrounding Beverly Park filled our ears.

The ringmaster hardly stops the car before the doors fly open with an eager fling

Spilling a circus of excitement onto the gravel covered lot.

Tiny tigers tussle with elation while a festival of dust grips the sky.

His fingers snap with the crack of a whip controlling the chaos

As he parades us into Kiddieland where the caramel coated aroma

Hits us in the face like someone swung a cotton candy bat at our heads.

In a day, we pilot our own helicopter, pull the bell chord of a locomotive,

Vanquish the demons in the haunted house and ride the pony express.

Dad conducts the circus by keeping us plied with tickets.

We walk by the concession stands for now;

Dad’s made enough concessions for one man.

Kiddieland, where music and laughter drown out the clamor of urban sprawl.

Kiddieland, where all of life’s lessons are learned on one fantasy filled acre.

We learn to stand in line and wait our turn;

others may want the same things we do.

We learn to share our peanuts

from the red and white striped bag.

We learn the value of a ticket;

the more adrenaline you crave, the more you will spend.

We learn honor by turning things in that we find

to the lost and found.

And when our favorite rides break down, we learn patience

knowing that someone will soon come along to fix them.

Even the ringmaster learns empathy while sharing small talk

with other single dads on the food park benches

Where remorse and guilt fade behind the calliope

as the carousel spins ‘round.

When the last ticket is spent, the ringmaster takes us back to the zookeeper

for proper feeding, a general scrub down and clean bedding.

They never learned why their merry-go-round broke down

or why they couldn’t fix it.

And when it was time for the circus to leave town,

we’d see the tents come down in his eyes

As he walked back to the Plymouth

where fatherhood would have to wait another two weeks.

Joe DeCenzo

Sunset in Burbank by Maja Trochimczyk

MY TOTEM

With balance and cohesion
My totem rises from a grade
Of uncultivated land and simmering dreams.

Brick by brick, stone upon stone
Each layer fixed in the mortar of hope
By those who came before;
A father’s promise of a cobbled path
To those who will follow.

Lured from the jagged shards
Of an oppressive shore,
Guided to the burnished plains
Where bounty swells,
Their only guarantee,
A life of endless labor.

Wallowing in ambition
Drenched in perspiration
Inspired by their achievements
Taught from their failures,
I walk in sweat and saliva
That pooled in the impressions of their feet.

Ancestral blood
Ancestral bone
Ancestral name
My totem grows

Joe DeCenzo

DECLARATION

I’ve got all the wrong “ations”
Resignation, indignation, constipation

And none of the good ones
Motivation, concentration, fascination

With questions streaming from my mind
In rampant ovulation

I’m searching for the answers
In a vat of fermentation

With doctors prescribing
An endless list of medication

Advertisers bombing me
With constant titillation

Politicians pandering
Intrusive legislation

Trying to smile through the scarlet shame
Of public condemnation

Constantly crusading for
Religious toleration

While I’m backed into a corner
By increasing population

Feeling the infirmity
Of social suffocation

Smothered by the jackboot of
Oppressive regulation

I’m reaching for the surface
As I gasp for respiration…

…It’s no crime being sentient,
It just doesn’t always work.

Joe DeCenzo

GOD, WHAT A GORGEOUS HOUSE

(Remembering the Eaton Fire, January 7, 2025)

God, what a gorgeous house

Built on the gateway of the forest when land was affordable

By a tradesman trying to raise a family in an era when old growth trees were plenty.

He started with a broom in his hand, graduated to a hammer

Advanced to saws, brace and bits and then chisels;

An apprentice for the Hall Brothers at their mill in Pasadena.

Simple shelves first, then cabinet boxes, paneled doors,

Dovetailed drawers, stair stringers, then finely hewn balusters.

“Show the beauty of the joinery. Don’t hide the joints,” his boss would say.

He learned about the woods, the look of the grain,

How mahogany took stain differently than teak;

The density of maple as opposed to cedar.

He was allowed to take the scraps home for wood was plenty.

Built slowly on a carpenter’s wages with views of the San Gabriel mountains,

Running water from the canyon, no electricity at first.

The entry door faced east. The expansive yard honored the setting sun.

Modest for a young family, but a solid foundation and room for growth.

Their first was born by an attending midwife, so was the second- in this very room.

When the third arrived, they could afford to go to Huntington Memorial.

It was time to add on to the house.

A sweeping covered porch, broad gables and dormers, arts and crafts railings,

A Queen Ann turret for her, the way a craftsman would do.

GOD, WHAT A GORGEOUS HOUSE!

It was never sold;

Bargained and bartered by each sibling for inheritance rights-

4 generations deep.

Scraping, sanding, painting, enlarging the dining room

Adding the bathroom, widening the doorways so walkers could fit through.

The Christmas tree went there. Papa’s chair went there.

The radio and turntable went there. The sewing and hobby room was upstairs.

They never changed the clawfoot tub or hexagonal tile in the bathroom.

I can’t tell what this is.

The top is scorched, covered in ash.

That blackened heap is the kid’s room

It only took an hour.

God, what a gorgeous house it was.

Joe DeCenzo, The Cornerstone. Bolton Hall Museum (March 2025)

Sun Grass Dialogue by Maja Trochimczyk

BOOK PREVIEW:

COULD I HAVE THIS DANCE? BY MARY LENORE QUIGLEY

With her recently deceased husband, Patrick J., Mary Lenore Quigley has written a “Love Story in Verse and Rhyme” entitled Could I Have This Dance?. Their anniversary is coming up on the 15th of this month, so we are honoring Patrick’s memory and their love with this book announcement.

Bob Lundy wrote of the book: “This is without a doubt the most beautiful love story I have ever seen. two people who, almost from the moment they met, wrote love poems to each other for over 60 years…”

FOREWORD

Mary Quigley’s Introduction illustrates the backstory for her title. With a playful-but-candid manner, her presentation predicts the straightforward style that these dual poetic memoirs will follow… even though we may be tracing this couples’ footsteps on an elusive sandy beach. This composite of prose and poetry, first by Patrick and then, by his surviving wife, reveals a story of passionate commitment. It portrays the vigor that propelled Pat to propose and empowered Mary to commit to marriage sooner than either expected.

The Quigleys’ shared manuscript shows courage (p. 16). It talks of destiny (p. 99) where “two souls listened” to “one melody” that became their “love song” throughout life. It speaks of inevitable “surprise” (p. 101) and expands on more than one epiphany along the way. Such revelations include a cartoon disclosing how Mary got her first ticket (pp. 107, 47, 56-7). Both authentic voices illuminate their secrets of 63 years of marital success, arising from mutual support to shared humor and appreciative companionship… all surrounded by inescapable “love” (pp. 112-3, 115) that urges readers to join in their Songs (p. 113) and dances. After all, they’d agreed at their very first meeting that they wanted “fun” on Newport’s beach — “nothing serious.”

POETRY LETTER

The Poetry Letter ((Online ISSN 2836-9394; Print ISSN 2836-9408) is a quarterly electronic publication, issued by the California State Poetry Society. Edited by Maja Trochimczyk since 2020 and by Margaret Saine earlier. The Poetry Letter is emailed and posted on the CSPS website, CaliforniaStatePoetrySociety.org. Sections of the Poetry Letter are also posted separately on the CSPS Blog, CaliforniaStatePoetrySociety.com. The Poetry Letter publishes winners of CSPS Monthly Contests, featured poets, and poetry book reviews, with colorful illustrations by artists from California and around the world.

CALIFORNIA STATE POETRY SOCIETY

Established in 1971, CSPS was incorporated on August 14th, 1985 as a 501(c)(3) organization, so donations above the membership level are tax deductible. Donor and patron support ensure (1) the quality publications of the CSPS and that (2) our mission to promote poetry and art in California and around the world continues to flourish. Information regarding renewal and patron contributions is on the Membership page. The CSPS began publication of the California Quarterly in the fall of 1972. The California Quarterly, published four times a year and accepts only unpublished poetry. Foreign language poems with an English translation are also welcome. Submissions may be made through Submittable.com, email, website and mail (for those without access to the internet and email). Monthly and Annual Contests honor great poets.

CSPS Officers and Board

President – Maja Trochimczyk, Ph.D.

Vice President/Communications – Richard Modiano

Vice President/Membership – Richard M. Deets

Secretary/Historian – Ambika Talwar

Treasurer – John Forrest Harrell, Ph.D.

California Quarterly (CQ) Board of Editors

Managing Editor: Maja Trochimczyk and

Editors: Bory Thach, and Konrad Wilk

Monthly Contest Chair – Alice Pero

Annual Contest Chair – Maja Trochimczyk

California State Poetry Society

Pages

Tuesday, October 6, 2026

Poetry Letter No. 3, Autumn 2026: Winners of 39th Annual Contest, Poetry by Eric Oswald, Charlene Langfur, and Joe DeCenzo