The theme for the May edition of Verse-Virtual was gardening (or gardens, or flowers), though the online poetry journal is always open to poems on any subject.

I am a contributing editor for Verse-Virtual.com, an online poetry journal that publishes complete new issues every month. Contributing editors publish poems each mont

h in the journal and participate actively in the journal’s community of writers and readers.

In a short period Verse-Virtual has established a significant presence on line, with more than 20,000 page views each month.
“I wasn’t too sure about the appeal of the FLOWERS theme for May (because it’s so simple and perhaps overused),” editor Firestone Feinberg writes. “[But] the flower poems in this issue are amazing. What a display of pure creativity and profound inspiration.”

After a first sampling of May’s garden of verses some poems have made a lasting impression on me. I’ll plant them in my memory and hope they root.

I published a review of the May issue, citing some of the poems I felt a strong affinity for. Here’s one example:

Connecticut poet Dick Allen delivers an entire flower garden in his three poems. “Homefront” offers us the chilling picture of sunflower heads cut off by a storm and discover

ed by children hanging on wire cages.
“They frightened us  … as if they were children who become
adults too soon, the darkness at their roots/
sensed by other children…”
What an insight! Something eerie but true here. Children’s perception powers of perception differ from their elders’, especially when it comes to sensing the macabre. When we grow up we ‘know better.’ We know the grotesque sensation is not ‘real,’ and we’re unlikely to share it. I think I must have slept through childhood; other people have such interesting things to say about it.

Here’s a link to the full review of some the fine poems in May Verse-Virtual, which I published in my blog prosegarden.blogspot.com.

http://prosegarden.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-garden-of-verse-and-lots-of-verse.html

I contributed four poems on the gardening theme in the May issue, which also published some photos of my own perennial garden at our home in Quincy MA. Here’s a link to these poems.

http://www.verse-virtual.com/robert-c-knox-2016-may.html

Here’s the home page  http://www.verse-virtual.com/ Click on “current poetry” and you’ll find links to all the poets in the current issue.

Verse-Virtual also has e a very lively group page on Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/versevirtual.