Author: poetryfest

Submit your Poetry to the Festival. Three Options: 1) To post. 2) To have performed by an actor 3) To be made into a film.

CRIME Poem: After All, by Cori Steinberg

He was never
Coming back
She could accept that
Now

The fights, the love
The joy
Despair
Had gone their final round

She let the calm
Flow over her
Unable yet
To miss

No mental checks
Of what he’d do
Her thoughts began
To drift

Who was she
Before him?
She never really
Knew

What was she
Without him?
She could learn that
Too

So much she never
Noticed
Living
As she had

She vowed to become
Mindful
To think and act
And plan

A sense of wellness
Filled her heart
Her life would now
Be good

And with a smile
She would begin
By cleaning up
The blood.

NATURE Poem: The Ocean Didn’t Ask, by Melba Morel

The ocean didn’t ask
why I came crying.
It just opened—
wide and salt-skinned—
and let me break.

No permission needed.
No diagnosis to explain.
Just waves
rushing in
like they already knew
what I had lost.

I stood there,
ankles buried in grief,
hands full of
nothing
but the ache of what never came.

The seagulls didn’t pity me.
The sun didn’t pretend
to fix what was broken.
They just stayed—
present,
still,
true.

I whispered names
I was never allowed to say out loud.
Let the tide
carry them somewhere soft.
Somewhere holy.

This is what the earth does—
it holds us
without needing a reason.
And still,
we call ourselves barren
instead of beginning.

But I have bloomed here.
In salt.
In silence.
In the soft rhythm
of being
alive anyway.

FREE VERSE Poem: #3, by Frances Stevenson

Born broken,
forced into braces,
they said I didn’t walk right.

I move too fast
for greedy fingers.

Tip toeing through the garden —
or was it through life?

One year,
two?

I lost count of
the sunsets.

Rising light filters through east windows.
I can’t help but think of

You.

Your fingers weren’t greedy
but I ran anyway.

Wet grass hits my feet
and I’m on my toes again.

FREE VERSE Poem: Apology, by Anthony Mattison

The decision was not mine to make,
but I committed anyway.
Blistering heat cooked my senses.
It was my mistake.
(watching as night became day)
The sudden rush left me defenseless.

When night has fallen, we’ll find me at your step.
When the crackling fire has given way
(and the cooled embers lay) beneath me,
I will (I do) long to change the words I said into a secret I kept,
but that’s impossible. I can’t take back the things I say,
and your open wound (I created) is all too plain to see.

I beg you: Let me make it right!
But (like wind to a mountain)
I can’t make you budge.
The chance I deserve is the dimmest light,
the smallest stain,
a desperate lunge.

The fire I once knew to ignite your eyes for me
has given way to the blackest midnight chill
like summer days give way to autumn nights.

RHYME Poem: Hotel Confessional, by Alicia Daggs

As a girl I wanted to be

A movie beauty queen

The star in a centerfold

From a pin up magazine

Down in the ditches

I was raised up so clean

But things I learned on the internet

So obscene

Some things I found out

I wish I never knew about

But, if you please

We can play cat and mouse

In a blissed out fantasy

Just between you and me

I got a feeling

Someone’s gonna bleed

In this hotel confessional

There’s no room for privacy

We’re so close

Skin to skin

Bedroom eyes and bloody knees

And if you confess your sins to me

I’ll show you just how much it means

HORROR Poem: Rot Beneath Roses, by Shana Kor

I kissed a coffin
Disguised in skin
A grin stitched from promises
He never meant to keep

He entered like velvet
Dripping charm lik candlewax
Down my spine
I welcomed the burn

He fed me sugared glass
Called it devotion
I bled with tears in my eyes
And a smile

Now he lives in my sleep
As a shadow
As a phantom
In the shape of desire

Every mask anew
Peeling at the edges
Smelling faintly of him
Rot beneath roses

RELIGION Poem: ESCAPED THEIR REALMS, by CJ Huntington

Lady Capital sings her lilting lullaby
softened by the low hum of the engine
and the light pollution in the parking lot off the highway.
Her arm straining to uphold white supremacy
Keeping a finger to her lips
Slowly methodically and
very effectively
pointing ours at each other and
weeding out the ones that
could be trouble.
Lady Capital gave me a bottle when I was nineteen and I
haven’t been able to put it down since.

I seek the gatekeeper.
Up in his kingdom of repenters having died too young from
diseases they couldn’t afford to have treated.
Clamoring over each other
Counting rosary beads in
frantic uneasy Spanish
uno dos tres
Uno, dos, tres.
I seek the man who
calms him with the
touch of his hand
who weeds out the unworthy
the man formerly known as Simon
the man who got the headrush
the man who became the bedrock of the place that
taught me nothing more than [crushing guilt and] a fear of sex
I seek the denier.
He comes to me,
brandishing his stigmata
his seasoned white flag,
and I

lay him out flat.
He was never on our side.
He’s been fucking the lady the entire time,
even when she was
just a girl.

Lucifer and God have
escaped their realms.
They loom about in
well lit parking lots
off of highways and they’ll
shoot the shit with you at your
local mechanics.
They cloak themselves well
but it’s sinister,
and you can see it in their eyes.
They sneak into hospital waiting rooms
They’re actually quite cordial with each other.
Every morning I wake up and my
crucifix is facing a different direction,
and my father coughs until he’s
hacked Them all out.
And they linger,
in your medicine chest,
the backseat of your car,
the space you’ve hollowed out behind the drywall.
Always cordial
always playing cat and mouse.
The wise are still building
churches,
temples,
traps.
The paranoid are having alternating
exorcisms and
seances in their living rooms.

My long descent is a
trek through fiberglass.
Barefoot,
scantily clad,
and I do feel joy for the
Catholic immigrant women.
The gatekeeper does not bruise,
nor does he lay a hand back,
and I have no interest in
inciting a mob.
I don’t have a list.
I have their names memorized.
I say to the women,

“Uno Para Ahora y once Para levar.”