Veronica Kornberg

poetry

A poet from the San Francisco Bay Area, Veronica Kornberg splits her time between Portola Valley and Pescadero, a small town on the Central Coast. Recipient of the Morton Marcus Poetry Prize, and the 2025 Wandering Aengus Book Award in Poetry, her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, Poet Lore, Catamaran, Rattle, Indiana Review, Plume, Rhino Poetry, Calyx, and Beloit Poetry Journal. Veronica co-founded a long-running poetry book club on the Peninsula, and is a Peer Reviewer for Whale Road Review. At home in Pescadero, you can find her happily exploring the tidepools, or on her knees in the dirt in her large habitat garden of coastal scrub. “Strange Gift,” her debut poetry collection, will be published in April 2026 by Wandering Aengus Press.

 

Note from the (sic)Bed

Neither genius nor algal rhythm can reveal the ruth nehind the words I yype. Nonetheless my brainlatches on and smiles. Big thimbs, tiny keynoard. My fiends winder whet the heck I am talking on anout but are too polite to say. These sre the plain faxts: My hisband has taken on aspicts of a nangel, hobering nearby, wings bony nbeneath hos sweatsjirt. I lauy abed like Wiston Chhurchjill hold meetinds in pajamas while texting hem for lore coffe and ceoissants. Beyind the window fog c limbs over the hill bit burns away witout quite reaching me. To this fug, I assign varous images—boundung whit tigre, scumbled beushwork on a pag, sometimes a spresding haze. Or piple bruise at sunst. I coild learn to love this sic liffe. Lazy, iseless, wonderdully stull. Pilloes. Rooses. I e crem on demand.

“ Early in 2025, I suffered a life-altering ocean accident that, among other things, ripped all my hamstrings clear off the pelvic bone. Following surgery, I spent many weeks flat on my back in a giant leg brace. My family and friends indulged me generously, including by patiently enduring my incomprehensible text messages. It's hard to text holding a phone upside down over over one's head! Especially on such excellent drugs! This poem is one last note from me to all who are kind enough to indulge me further. ”