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.

WAR Poem: Saturday Sun, by Lauren Tong

It was a Saturday morning.
Dawn cracked open from the horizon like a ripe yolk,
But all we could see were the planes and their smoke
And the fire raining from the sky.
Kilometers below them was the unknowing earth,
Green and alive like it was just another summer day
Because it was.
And the people scattered and ran
Like ice thrown hard at the ground
Shattering into pieces
Spraying across space.
And maybe it was the most human thing
And maybe it was the most stupid thing
That a girl paused and looked up
And harmonized to the air raid sirens
As the people ran and the planes tore through the air with sound
On that Saturday morning.

ROMANCE Poem: Adieu, by Gloria Okafor

You say you love me but I’m not your dove
You often carry me yet I feel like a rug
You tell me sweet things but don’t give me any rings
Only leave me reeling from your lavish gifts
You hold me so much yet I don’t feel your touch
Your touch I had craved since we met at the bus stop

A touch so sweet it quivered my bones
A touch so bitter it burned through my soul
A touch like fire it roared through my chest
A touch like lava it scorched against my breast
A touch as such is what I always craved
What I craved with a love you couldn’t give all the same

A love that sings like butterflies
A love that leaps like stars in the skies
A love fills the dry, bitter void of abstinence
A love that stills the shrieks of unfulfillment
A love we could have had, had you allowed
A love I would’ve allowed had your heart have had
Your heart, that stauch and static vine!
That plunged mine deeper in its toxic twine

Your heart that once I adored as cherries
That left the overwhelming tang of rotten poultries
Your heart, o why do you have one still
An organ, once gold, now made of steel

A steel that crushes inside my bones
A steel that makes me feel so so
A steel that sets my teeth on edge
A steel that wrecks my romantic pledges
Pledges I made, once upon a time
Pledges you forsake, like it was no crime

No crime, indeed! You’d think alright
No crime, no reason to think on it tonight
So when you sleep, I’d think it alone
With a cup in my hand and the devil within my soul
I’d think it through like you’ve thought of me
And before you wake, I’d have said—

Adieu to this bed we spent our love
Adieu to those times we both felt our pulse
Adieu to the toys that I’d craved at Walmart
Adieu to the dreams of the cradle with little hearts
The dreams of a life that would never be
A life that was defined by only my dreams.

Read Poem: Eye of the Storm, by Amelia Michelle Nicol

Welling clouds part
to grey, fallen atmosphere
Pouring longing, waiting
for your eyes to brim
Or brighten, waiting
to see them again

Fierce grips of wind, word
threatening the blue escapes
at the horizons
Moving ambiguous grey masses
to place

You pour over me
this sky I can’t escape
creating this pressure

Gaps of movement
Memories
Of you makin’ eyes at me

Breaking the storm to center
To calmness that don’t belong
Blue where there should be dark

Unbearable serenity
Pauses, breaking apart
ferocious wind, hail

Storming would be better
than this longing, waiting
blue eyed sky ache

POLITICAL Poem: America, where are we?, by Jasmine Rico

An Open Letter to My Nation

I don’t think you understand the greed.
Behind bombs dropping in the Middle East.
A run for oil and infertile land.

The bottom line,
the end of times

World War 2 never really analyzed

Democratic poltergeist

This conversation is larger than you and me
and I think we could all agree
This is far bigger than the eye can see
This is bigger than Kim Jong-un

Empty threats glamorized,
full-on war, patronized

Overstep of control
constitution, who?

Where are we, America?
Are you awake yet?
Do we see the divide yet?

You let a capitalist take over our office and convince you that the first allies betrayed you
when we took the crown, the Roman states were against you
the natives and slaves took up arms with you
we pushed them back, but you wrote us out
And now you try to wall us in and keep our kin for your kiln
A German American and his Russian wife are set to hover up above the house and shield their
oligarchy while staying fungi-free.
Unlike you and me, we have front-row seats to the Mushroom Cloud Symphony.

Where do we stand, America?
A man who has overstepped his allowance
A house divided
A nation volatile
We let one man with a bad tan convince each other that he is more intelligent than you, and I
and now he’s bombed the Middle East

This will be the 7th war my family has served in
We will lose good old men and naive youngins
but this is his second generation, and they never served
He dodged the draft in Vietnam
He’ll dodge the blowback of his actions

While we blame each other for our accents
I sound like fritters and chitlins when I’m drunk
I sound like Botox and Erewhon when I’m sober
and a-Si, yo soy Chicana when I’m bothered

That has never been a problem before, but this is year 25 of my life, and this season is leaving me screaming
I feel hopeless and dry-aged
I find myself stuck in the middle of AmeriKKKa and America.
Two communities who deny me, too white, too brown.
Just not right.

But right is right,
and wrong is wrong.
Letting our country suffer for the rich,
We might as well hand him a crown.

Tread on me,
I have no say
Our congress sold us on eBay.

In Defeat,
Jasmine Rico

GRIEF Poem: saccharine moon phase, by Korinna C

I never relished something so sweet

brewed on a winter’s night
an elixir uniquely for you and I
emitting sugary perfume
unable to escape indulgence
as it enters inside
intoxicating our gentle minds
to an insatiable hunger

the moon phase remains stagnant
failing to tame our hearts’ eruption
so long as we drink each other
electricity continues to surge
evoking anticipation upon red eyelids
in feeling pleasure once more

but now the remnants
of an entity once full and whole
disappears into a crescent sliver
as the inevitable cycle
refuses us mercy
no matter how great is love
the heavenly experience
breaks into shards
and implants into distant memories

though the effects worn
the symptom falsely exists
when his warmth manipulates me
again and again

DEATH Poem: “Inheritance”, by Vee Clay

I didn’t get much.
A shoebox of old photographs,
two chipped teacups,
a voice in my head
that won’t shut up.

She left me the house
and something under the floorboards
that still knocks at night.

There’s a Bible in every room.
Each one opens to Psalms.
Each one weeps when it rains.

I try to live quiet.
Dust. Cook. Pretend.

But I see her in the corners—
hands on her hips,
lips twisted like she still thinks
I’m not doing it right.

It’s hard to grieve a woman
who never said sorry.
Harder still when her shadow
paces the hallway at 3:17,
muttering scripture backwards,
dragging something that thuds
every third step.
I sleep with the lights on.
She still turns them off.

GRIEF Poem: My Secondhand Memory, by Vesna Prodanovska-Poposka

In this quiet thrift store’s dusty light,
I get a feeling that I can stay and dream night by night.
Like I see a marble with my world held tight,
and your face smiling against mine, shiny and bright.

In those secondhand things, I find you near,
with a smell of the well-known and a voice sincere.
The yearning for you feels so endless,
like a tentacle that I can no longer resist.

Each worn-out piece of fabric full of stories and memories,
and each faded hue,
sends scents to me, quietly saying “I remember you.”
In these thrift store aisles, your shadow remains,
A secondhand love that never wanes.