2026 Anthology!
Call for poetry submissions:
In celebration of dVerse Poets Pub’s 15th anniversary in 2026,
we invite poets from around the globe to contribute to our upcoming anthology,
Krisis: Poetry at the Crossroads.
Submission period: April 1, 2025 to June 30, 2025.
Check it out here!

***Announcement***
Please join us at dVerse LIVE on Saturday, May 24, from 10 to 11 AM EST. Google meet link will be provided at Open Link Night on Thursday.

Every breath is a sacrament, an affirmation of our connection with all other living things,
a renewal of our link with our ancestors and a contribution to generations yet to come.
Our breath is a part of life’s breath, the ocean of air that envelopes the earth.
― David Suzuki, The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

Lisa here. Welcome to dVerse Poets Pub, where you can mosey up to the bar and partake of tasty drinks and eats. Let me know what you fancy, and I’ll serve it with a smile. Today is Poetics Tuesday and I am today’s host, serving up a prompt.

Most of us have experienced intimate moments with partners and/or small precious moments with parents, offspring, and good friends – or even strangers. Many have experienced small precious moments where you’ve interacted with “other” and felt a true connection with it. I remember hugging a ginkgo tree at a tree sanctuary and feeling a distinct energy exchange. Intimacy with one’s higher power may be the most profound of all.

Some philosophers say there is no view without a viewer. Intimacy demands we put ourselves into the scene in some way, if only to document the experience through our own witnessing. For me, it’s what poetry is all about. Here is one beautiful example:

Intimate Detail, from The Mother’s Tongue
By Heid E. Erdrich

Late summer, late afternoon, my work
interrupted by bees who claim my tea,
even my pen looks flower-good to them.
I warn a delivery man that my bees,
who all summer have been tame as cows,
now grow frantic, aggressive, difficult to shoo
from the house. I blame the second blooms
come out in hot colors, defiant vibrancy—
unexpected from cottage cosmos, nicotianna,
and bean vine. But those bees know, I’m told
by the interested delivery man, they have only
so many days to go. He sighs at sweetness untasted.

Still warm in the day, we inspect the bees.
This kind stranger knows them in intimate detail.
He can name the ones I think of as shopping ladies.
Their fur coats ruffed up, yellow packages tucked
beneath their wings, so weighted with their finds
they ascend in slow circles, sometimes drop, while
other bees whirl madly, dance the blossoms, ravish
broadly so the whole bed bends and bounces alive.

He asks if I have kids, I say not yet. He has five,
all boys. He calls the honeybees his girls although
he tells me they’re ungendered workers
who never produce offspring. Some hour drops,
the bees shut off. In the long, cool slant of sun,
spent flowers fold into cups. He asks me if I’ve ever
seen a Solitary Bee where it sleeps. I say I’ve not.
The nearest bud’s a long-throated peach hollyhock.
He cradles it in his palm, holds it up so I spy
the intimacy of the sleeping bee. Little life safe in a petal,
little girl, your few furious buzzings as you stir
stay with me all winter, remind me of my work undone.

Gina’s prompt in 2018 talks about the “magic of ordinary things” that may give you some ideas or spark memories.

Your challenge for today, if you choose to accept it, is to consider what I’ll call magical moments of intimacy you’ve experienced. Choose one of them, and write a poem about it. To open the prompt even further, you may also choose to imagine a moment in the future and what it would look like.

New to dVerse? Here’s how to join in:

•  Write a poem (in any form) in response to the challenge.
•  Enter a link directly to your poem and your name by clicking Mr. Linky below
and remember to check the little box to accept the use/privacy policy.
•  You will find links to other poets, and more will join so please do check
back later to read their poems.
•  Read and comment on other poets’ work– we all come here to have our poems read.
•  Please link back to dVerse from your site/blog.
•  Have fun!