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.

LGBTQ+ Poem: Dosage Loop, by Siobhan Dale

Pleasure lopped, I
Stuttered the axis
Of a line. If I can
Tell you where I
Am what shame of
Yours will find me?
I tend you line of
Ivory loops and
Wean myself on
You – my beauty
Butcher. Threshing
Stash of sweet denial.
What happens if
Deny becomes our
Healer?

When I denied the
Ivory floor I lost
Your hands, swoll
And blood-burst
With accumulating
Color. Orange light.
You lay work to my
Hands and said.
Three bags of
Salt will scorch
The earth.

What will be left
After I confess you
Stole into my folds
A patchwork of
Pleasure light?
Your orange set
Decors my mason
Jars. I fear the blade
Is safe but not the
Butcher.

We began the lop
Goodwell. Brought
Our glue guns to the
Funeral and forgot
The words I am who
I’ve felt inside me.
Your two finger-gun
Hot and heaving detox.
The orange set of light
Reminds me too. I am
Who I have entered.
And you, the butcher
Always begged my
Blades.

All blades beg hurt
Lopped off. All hurt
Lops off sunlight and
A swollen thirst. I asked
Your salt bag to please
Bear with me. A body
Swells one mason jar
With blood. The rest
Is debt in detox. I asked
You hold me through
That dose. Please
Caress the skin of me.
Find me one day as your
Form.

Our form folds
On an axis. Our
Axis folds our
Shame.

Axis our overdose
I suture the narcotic.
If you keep my blades
Embedded we’ll be
Fine. I found you salting
Lines and said please
Seal the earth around
You. I have bodies we
Might rewound inside
Closed doors. The shame
Doored. Not lopped.
The stitch still seals itself
Together. I didn’t want
Butcher as the regardless
Of what blades you left
I still repeat your name.
I still repeat the orange
Gun in wait, the recharge
At the funeral. The salt
Gull bags and axis wanting.
I am still wanting.

The want sicked itself
A pleasure. If I can find
Her I’ll beg the pleasure
Off. Lopped off three
Hallucinations, still
Played survival verse.
Please wane yourself
The dose and bladed
Words.

All we are is
Words in dose.

Every day my dose.
Every dose lops blood
behind a mouth and
finds me. Please
come find me. I am
your body in overdose
of bleeds.

ENVIRONMENTAL Poem: History’s Future, by Zachary Garripoli

Centuries ago,
when they dismantled Jupiter through Pluto
to construct a sphere around the inner worlds,
no one thought about the consequence
of emptying the sky.

But whales, and certain plankton
necessary for sustaining life,
recoiled in horror.

When those species disappeared,
it was attributed to:
a chemical imbalance in the sea,
El Nino,
and a lengthening of days
in which the clock’s hands slowed.

Centuries ago they extruded a tube
between the Moon and Mars.

In less-than-an-hour you could be breathing
recirculated Martian air,
which smelled a bit like smog at first,
but you got used to it.

They made progress.
They did away with war,
about the time they did away with thinking
for yourself, as well as speaking out,
and dreaming.

The future held the world in awe,
and then contempt. If it was the beginning
or the end, no one dared to say.

Centuries ago things began to change
so fast, they couldn’t stop
to write it down.

They made it easy to forget
the lessons history would never teach.

ROMANCE Poem: Springlight Leisure, by Nirvana Samsara

Let’s bloom together on a spring day,
where silence speaks what words won’t say.
Let your smile bloom in soft array,
beneath the shade, a mellow sunray.

All the words we forget to speak,
soft as cherry petals on your cheek—
where laughter lingers and time slips away,
let pearls fall free when you laugh that way.

Spend time with me on the meadow’s bend,
where Heidi and Peter let childhood mend.
Let sunlight kiss your dream-lit gaze,
lost in a soft and honeyed haze.

I will pick you flowers, one by one,
and yell to the mountains, “You are my only one!”
Listen—my voice in echoes replies,
when rain starts pouring from my eyes.

GRIEF Poem: Cenotaph, by Melanie Bryant

Needing you still, I come when I can,
this time to the labyrinth
to share this circular path.

There’s no one on the trail today
as I make my way
a shroud of fog settles in.

These trees were strangers
stark with winter their bare limbs
bearing a striking silhouette; pilgrims bent in prayer.

But now I know them well—
a weeping cherry, a slouching yew;
three graceful cedars standing tall.

Weather has erased the names from their plaques, but there remains:
In memory of; In memory of; In loving memory of
a beloved husband; now six years gone.

Listen. The cedars whisper vespers
as I make my way around the outer edge;
the bricks are slick with moss and sound beneath my feet.

When I pass again, a rotting bench where no one sits and
through the trees, a flicker of neon yellow; hulking husks—
empty school buses, lined and waiting in a vacant lot.

I tell you; it’s still as a graveyard—
the enduring quiet of this liminal place.
Alpha and Omega.

At the still point, I pause to rest;
everything slows, quiets even more, but
nothing stops; nothing ebbs my ache for you.

Still needing you, I come when I can;
again and again, back to this labyrinth.
Look. I am the yearning woman circling this path.

ODE Poem: An Ode To Hugging The Ones I Trust, by Aiyana Ramos

Walking into a building that i’m forced to be in
Headphones over my ears as thoughts brim my head
Were they good?
No.
They never were
At least until you run up to me
Light grey sneakers leaping as you’re suddenly in my embrace
I can’t help but blink in shock
I missed you!
You’d say, that goofy stupid smile on your lips
Glasses slightly tilting from the leap
I can’t help but hold you tighter, smiling myself
I remember growing up and not knowing who to hug
The old me wasn’t used to affection that wasn’t from my father or my mother
But now
I wake up and crave your hug
Warmth somehow found in your cold hands
I’d remind myself that you looked at me
And somehow
Chose me
Out of all the people
It was surreal
But instead of questioning you
Or protesting
Or even yelling
I let you hug me
And in the end
I hugged tighter.