North of Oxford is open for submissions of poetry, book reviews and essays.  Please feel free to send for consideration of publication. Follow the guidelines on our about page: https://northofoxford.wordpress.com/about ..read more

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Barges on the Seine Pierre-Auguste Renoir, c. 1869 . The barges line up like ants carrying sugar, hardly noticeable on the broad span of river, the swathe of sky roiling above in white clouds, and the hedges brooding in foreground left. . The miniscule protagonists are practically nil, forgotten, a mere footnote to the wind, water and shadows that ignore them as they creep downriver on their plodding journey carrying who knows what to who knows where. . Their black forms dribble upstream, merely an inky line, specks of dark life on a canvas of dense blue, white, and verdure, just doing thei ..read more

Still-Life With Dragonfly Perched on Beer Bottle . And here is a bridge, not unlike a thousand other bridges made of rusted iron and sun-cracked wood, . a bridge that crosses a creek, not unlike a thousand other creeks that wind and weave their way through the raw fabric of the gothic, Midwestern American landscape, . where a lone Blue Heron, maybe, stands patiently contemplating a single gold koi (lazily circling a pink lotus blossom that is just now beginning to open). . And here is an abandoned barn, not unlike a thousand other barns in varying stages of disrepair and un-making, leaning pr ..read more

. Lost Syntax . Worse yet The sentence that goes nowhere . Like a beached jelly fish Flotsam without sting . The ideogram surrenders As the tide recedes . Branched off helter-skelter Lost clauses scatter . Dangling participles emerge What of? . Like an open parenthesis You may become omitted in errata . We scan the crowded page Hunt for a semaphore . We read the cards Argue over whether it’s a that or a which . Like a clean clear sentence You inhabit my shadow . You fill my neat paragraph With exact proportions of joy and sorrow . Our prose glides on a fluttering breeze . Homage to Magritte ..read more

Obsolescence . After 48 years of loyal service and stellar performance, They sent you packing… threw you out on the street… kicked you to the curb. Didn’t even have the decency to throw you a party. . They said you didn’t fit the company’s image anymore. That you were a little dull. That you were too plain for plain M&Ms. . There had always been talk that you were but a pale imitation of Mr. Brown M&M. But for nearly 50 years you had quieted the critics Because under that admittedly lackluster surface, You were just as good… just as delicious as your colorful colleagues, weren’t you ..read more

Charles Carr is an integral part of the Philadelphia Poetry Scene. His poetry has been published widely in the small press and three collections of his poetry have been published. He is the host of Philly Loves Poetry on Philly Cam and is active with the Moonstone Arts Center. A native Philadelphian, Carr attended LaSalle and Bryn Mawr Colleges, earning a Masters degree in American History. He has been an advocate for services for abused and neglected children for 35 years. More recently Charles has worked as a volunteer to promote the cause of the poorest of the poor in Haiti. Charles is ..read more

By Charles Rammelkamp . “How can you not be romantic about baseball?” Sandra Marchetti’s epigraph from the movie Moneyball asks at the start of this nostalgic collection. The “national pastime” is certainly a sport of myth and legend. All sports are, but especially baseball. Among the oldest stories is the one about the Chicago Cubs, the perennial losers, the heartbreakers. The Cubs are Marchetti’s team – the team of three generations of her family of Chicagoans. Divided into two sections, “Losers” and “Winners,” Aisle 228 is a collection with a happy ending. In “Being a ..read more

By Greg Bem “I propose to walk to where you are.” “A global network of thinkers navigating change through ideas” reads top of the Berggruen Institute’s website as I write this. For the last decade and a half, the Los Angeles think tank has been involved in numerous projects historical and contemporary, gaining much attention as a center of conversation and idea engagement in California. One such project of conversation occurred during August of 2021, during the height of the pandemic. Enter UK-based Peter Liversidge, conceptual performer, and multi-disciplinary artist. It was during the heigh ..read more

. By Lynette G. Esposito . The complicated discussion of poetry in The Inventor, A Poet’s Transcolonial Autobiography by Eileen R. Tabios is a wonderful and complex view of poetry from many standpoints.  Published by Marsk Hawk Pess, East Rockway, New York, the ninety-nine- page book is packed with goodies that include definitions, references, examples and personal memories. Tabios guides the reader delicately over the quick sands that pull the poet and would be poet down and she raises the poems and poet safely to shore. . On page twenty, Tablos gives a writing tip: Six w ..read more