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Posts Tagged ‘Brillig’

Cloud and Moon – Brillig

Posted in Imagery, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 26, 2026| 3 Comments »

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[ 4 poems from Brillig ]
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Mooned
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Moon at my window wants to come in.
She has a beautiful black gown,
silky dark tresses gemmed with stars.
Moon-faced and pale with longing
she whispers with the tide
that slides up silent estuaries
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I’m lonely up here all by myself.
Your astros came but wouldn’t play.
Frightened of my beauty they flew away.
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What will I tell her, that my falling
silver hairs are mooncoins,
that my gray unkept robe is wolfskin
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just right for me to howl her praises?
But, oh, she’s wise to me, too many
faded lovers already to take another on.
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She slides a fan of cloud over her eyes
but just before, she winks at me.
Hey, poet, stay open for me another night.
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Bradley R. Strahan
from Brillig, Winter/Spring 2026. Created by Deborah Doolittle.
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❀    ❀    ❀
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An Elegance of Swans
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The predawn green-grown lawn filled with swans,
snow-soft swells or so they seemed. Subtle
as first fall of frost, wings wind-weathered,
the flock massed on the grass. Moon-tethered,
they began to glow. Feathers supple,
at home here as if they’d never flown.
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On this bright cold night,
one goose across the full moon.
Are we both alone?
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Paul Jones
from Brillig, Winter/Spring 2026. Created by Deborah Doolittle.
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❀    ❀    ❀
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Interior Gear
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Travel before light.
Keep maps
of trails to overlooks
palm-sized, folded,
creases smoke-blackened.
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By firelight,
get around to writing
those letters to people
who like you,
but you refused to believe.
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Tell them absolute darkness
does not exist.
Everything moves.
Our bodies give off
infinitesimal radiation.
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Rob Merritt
from Brillig, Winter/Spring 2026. Created by Deborah Doolittle.
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cloudbound
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an imagined collaboration of Lafcadio Hearn and Matt Snyder
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the place
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business trip
the departures board lists
my hometown
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of the issuing clouds . . .
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alma mater
I chat up the beggar
about his t-shirt
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graves on a mountain
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stones
in the fog
in the potter’s field
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Matt Snyder
from Brillig, Winter/Spring 2026. Created by Deborah Doolittle.
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IMG_9468
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Brillig is created twice a year by Deborah Doolittle. Not only does she gather the poets and poems into a small universe where the lines can speak each other from dream into reality, but Deborah also prints and cuts and folds and glues to fabricate each small booklet that will become that season’s offering of Brillig. Each edition is a different theme, each episode is a different style of small hand-crafted booklet. Each creation of wordly imagery also joins with artistic imagery – woodcut, line drawing, collage – to unfold into the final amazing artifact within your hands. Marvelous!
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❁
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Hold a limited edition copy of Brillig in you own hands by using this order form. And consider submitting your own poetry for consideration: 3-5 previously unpublished poems, any subject, any style, 20 lines or fewer. Submit as a single .DOC attachment to brillig.mlm@gmail.com, or mail to BRILLIG: a micro lit mag / 103 Jean Circle / Jacksonville, NC 28540. Include a 3-4 sentence bio and postal address. And visit this earlier post featuring Brillig.
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Additional poetry at Verse and Image by:
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Matt Snyder
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Thank you for visiting Verse and Image:
. . . . . every Friday I present one or two poems I’ve read this week that particularly speak to me;
. . . . . some Saturdays I present one or two poems submitted by YOU, my readers.
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If you would like to offer a poem for consideration, either by a favorite author or your own work, please view these GUIDELINES for Saturday Readers Share:
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If you would like to receive an email each time a post appears, please SUBSCRIBE to Verse and Image using the button on the Home Page.
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If you have a hard time finding the SUBSCRIBE button on this WordPress site, you can send me your email address and I will add you to the subscriber list. Send your request to
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COMMENTS@GRIFFINPOETRY.COM
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Thanks again for joining the conversation.
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– Bill
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2020-11-03a Doughton Park Tree
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Enter the Circle

Posted in Imagery, tagged , , , , , , , on July 4, 2025| 5 Comments »

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[poems from BRILLIG: a micro lit mag]
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Ghazal for sunrise
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Wrens are first out of bed at sunrise. Their sharp warbled song suits the sky’s deep red at sunrise.
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Down the hill a deer slips out of mist. Then her fawn, ready to be fed, at sunrise.
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Then a fieldmouse, light as a wisp, climbs a spent coneflower with most careful tread – at sunrise
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The night’s winds are done. Above, only a last fading star, and a few clouds sill ragged at sunrise . . .
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I join this pause to which all things have led (at sunrise), I close my eyes on what he last said, at sunrise.
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Matt Snyder
from BRILLIG: a micro lit mag, Winter/Spring 2025
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Gravity is an illusion, a charade played out behind the scenes by matter as it warps spacetime. The illusion is complete within my deep never-spoken sense that somehow the universe ponderously orbits me. Where is my wider view? Long lens and tight focus blur everything except the center where for one moment light falls.
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Thoreau sits beside the pond for hours so long and so still that the otters have come to consider him simply a natural element within the universe they inhabit. They pursue their plashy play all about him unperturbed. When the otters finally leave for elsewhere, Thoreau walks to town to buy a pair of socks.
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Oh Mr. Lennon, my beloved, my idol, is life really what happens while you’re making other plans? Or is life the plans the universe has made for you whether you subscribed to them or not? Evidently the universe is not a bus you can hop off at the penultimate stop before you reach the bad side of town.
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I’m trying to figure this out. The mockingbird doesn’t shut up when my neighbor fires up his Terrafirminator and attacks the clover. Just sings louder, it seems. And me? An hour walking in the woods, sweat and deep cleansing breaths, but driving home I hear again that last snarling conversation and begin another rehearsal of its next installment in my head. I thought I might have hopped off that bus, but no.
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The titmouse perches above the peanuts I’ve laid out and squeaks and scolds with his head thrown back, ten iterations. Then he swoops down and pecks the hell out of them. What was he saying up there? “These are mine, bug off!” – or – “Hey world, good eats here!” What am I saying to the universe? Scratch that – what am I saying to myself?
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Vim
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Your clay pots are stacked into towers.
Stakes propped in the garden shed corner.
Out-of-use stuff claims off-season place:
a montage of tools ready to oblige.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Regret
drops by every day, helps leisure select midwinter
pastimes. Our most-recent waltz only a twitch
in the calf on gray afternoons. So much
overlooked when we busy ourselves.
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I rake leaves wedged into fences. Sharpen tools
in case we plant again. Zest fallen out of favor,
the Almanac forecasts weather cycles, but desire
for a new garden is shelved.
++++++++++++++++++++++++ Verve fastened
behind the shed door, our pursuits dwindle.
Intuition must carry us through seasonal tedium,
and each loss it festers. You stare at me and ask,
+++++++ Tell me again where do seasons go?
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Sam Barbee
from BRILLIG: a micro lit mag, Winter/Spring 2025
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❦ ❦ ❦
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When Deborah Doolittle first placed in my hands a copy of her hand-made lit mag BRILLIG, all I could say was, “O Frabjous Day!” The slim booklet is delicate yet solid with surprising heft; it is simple in its turning pages yet subtle and complex with its interlockings and interweavings, concealing treasures, revealing them. But glue and ink and color are not enough to create treasure. The words, the lines, the flow, the side-steps and juxtapositions – these poems by ten authors link arms and pull me into their circle.
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If you were to step into my office and attempt to calculate the mass of processed printed-upon cellulose that surrounds you, you would intuit that I have a thing for words on paper. Oh yes, most every day I read from my bright paper-white monitor the poems the internet offers up to me, but if you were to step onto my back porch today when it’s 85 degrees and 85 percent humidity and discover me there with a book nonetheless, you would intuit that real creative thought requires an adequate escape velocity from computer gravity. And if a print journal’s appeal is an order of magnitude greater than poems online, then art and quirky originality, BRILLIG, is an order greater yet.
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I unfold the pages, read backwards and forwards, turn and return. These poems surround me as if I am an element of the universe they inhabit. While they pursue their plashy play, I will abide in their circle. I have all the socks I need.
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❦
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Deborah Doolittle contrives and creates BRILLIG: a micro lit mag with the help of artist friends and submissions of poetry. Each issue is published in a limited edition, but she no doubt has one she would like to send you and will make an extra copy if you subscribe.
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Onions
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I think of you prepping risotto,
stirring the pan while you add
onions, red wine and broth.
you wore a red-striped apron.
I have it still. Should have worn it.
My shirt is dotted with oil.
Oversized sweet onions
roast in the oven, ready
to add life to a sandwich.
My eyes leak. Nose drips.
I yank a paper towel off
the rack and remember.
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Patricia Joslin
from BRILLIG: a micro lit mag, Winter/Spring 2025
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❦ ❦ ❦
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Doughton Park Tree 2021-10-23
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