Read Poem: I Need a True Friend, by Patricia Dorian

If I begged you on my hands and knees
To split my head open
Would you refuse or would you agree?
If I were drenched in gasoline
Would you strike the match that would set my free?
If In the middle of the road I stood
Would you run my down if you could?
Or would you slam the breaks like a good boy should?
If I held a dagger upon my heart
Would you push my hands to tear it apart?
Or would you take away the dagger right from the start?
If I had a rope around my neck
And I’d be standing on a wooden stool
Would you push the stool and give a heck?
Or would you be a spinless, stupid fool?
If I gave you a loaded gun to empty inside my head
Would you laugh at me and run?
Or would you use it ‘till I’m dead?
After all, all I need is a true friend
To help me end my End

Read Poem: The uninvited guest, by Alex Hai

I am an immigrant

of my own premiere .

The cinema is full

of empty whispering chairs

Covid 19 is the uninvited guest

filling all movie theaters for now

I wish I could beam a few years back

so exciting

to see people taking their seats

The mumbling and cheers

in the pockets of my jacket

i would keep my empty hands

full of expectations

watching from the comfort of my sofa

Makes me feel uncomfortable

Read Poem: wanting the want, by D. Clontz

so late
after the fact there is fiction to this biography:

stained

like an October cheerleader i praise the shadows of summer

frosted

holographic wedding gowns

slip

across landscapes cooing the bark bare trees

leaves

like handprints on charcoal the bark bare trees

leave.

cordial gentle-people all they are – too late for the 19th century

i bid each adieu

like those summer mornings glistening
atlases of dew
eye drops

do. & not forgotten

i bid each adieu

like snowflake fingerprints etching
sketching

a digital sky i so want the warmth

a tear on
a blade of grass

Read Poem: Daddy, by Zaric Reed

Sitting here in the darkness, thinking about your darkness and how it turns from purple to pink in subtle increments and how some of the most poignant times in my life were me on my knees, praying to your pot of honey and you looking down at me whispering, “Oh, Daddy.” I thought I was the dominant one, but you knew how to wrap me around your middle finger and how to make me orgasm mentally, even when fully clothed and or milling through a crowd, knowing that you were there.

‘First time you called me, “Daddy.” It was said with such emotion and conviction that I was frightened and taken aback and although I’d been called “Daddy” before, the way you whispered it to me, made me know that those other women were simply pretending that Daddy was me. “I been bad, Daddy,” you said. “Punish me,” and I damn near went limp, ’til you smacked your own ass, showing me what a slave perpetrating a master must do for pleasure of both.

You called me, “Daddy” thereafter when you wanted or needed to get me to stay when I had to go, crawling naked around my legs like a kitty, rubbing your naked flesh against mine. You called me “Daddy,” just to stroke my ego and then you withheld the title, if I pissed you off by not doing what your pouty-ass wanted.

How can one word could be so powerful? And I though that “nigger,”held so much weight and was the most Herculean word invented, but oh no.

You don’t call me, “Daddy, “no more and it’s killing me, rotting me from the inside out and I die every time you call me friend, when I think of the energy that we generated, even naked sticky and entangled on your living-room floor or while sitting across the room, pretending that we don’t know that the other was near.

It’s more than mere dick or pussy, or tongue, lips or assholes it’s deeper. Much, much deeper.

When you call me, “Daddy, ” it’s visceral—it resonates in my soul, a word with such power to be wielded like Excalibur or the spear of destiny and it weakens any army of man, whom it’s directed towards.

You don’t call me, “Daddy,” anymore, weakens me near more than you calling me “Daddy,” but the fact that you may call another man such, kills me and in my arrogant mind nobody’s gonna love you like me.

Read Poem: HOME, by NIY

They say the same thing that can kill you
Could probably even heal you
Oh but what do they know

When it comes around
Their eyes begin to lie
Creating a world only they can see

But is that so bad momma
A world true to my eyes
A world where emotion resigns
Serving us all some sort of potion
Hoping we’ll never get lost in the commotion

How come we haven’t seen it yet
How come you don’t believe in it yet

Sometimes its in the air
Waiting for you to gasp for it
Waiting for you to ask for it

Filling up the lungs
Looking for a place to cure
Getting lost just to find a home that’s near

I can feel it in my heart now momma
Do you think it’ll stay in the dark now momma
I think its found its home now momma
Will it ever leave me alone now momma

Read Poem: GRANDMA FANNIE, by DMaria Woods

Smothered fried chicken, mustard greens, and black-eyed peas.

My grandma’s stockings rolling beneath her knees.

I hear her shoes, scrubbing the hardwood floors

as she shuffles through the hallway and out the backdoor.

Pockets full of clothespins, and a threaded needle on her apron.

Sun is shining on brown aging skin, a

Southern woman old and thin.

Born in Little River County, Arkansas

Fannie’s a long way from home.

One man and 14 children later, only six survive.

Spit’en Garrett snuff, and singing gospel hymns,

I can only imagine where she’s been.

As a child I’d think, did she ever have friends?

Grandma Fannie up at dawn

faithfully singing her gospel songs,

My mother’s mother and both are gone.

Read Poem: Death by Ferris Wheel

From her seat in the gondola a woman
who might be me watches roller

bladers with supple bones, toddlers with careless
balloons far, far down on the pier. She opens

the doors—mini saloon doors of purple—or
she crawls over acrylic barriers. Either way

she hesitates a moment. The lurch
of the wheel as it stops at the top finishes

the job. No scream. Even the plane floating
a campaign trail of plastic behind it, silent. Soundless

waves, too, that far up. She floats as if posing
for her close-up, delicate fingers, poised toes,

her red sunhat a Frisbee against
sky of pulled taffy clouds on blue.

Sea like scallops of Alençon lace below,
sand stretched away toward the Palisades,

the smell of sugary churros her last sensation.

Read Poem: The Epiphany, by Peter D. Bové

The elegance of his faults challenged only by birds singing in nearby trees
The ghosts of poets from days gone by come to haunt him
Who is this troubled soul lost in a world of cumbersome awakening?
In shadowy inquisitions of the mind?
Of the heart?
Of the soul?
The heart of all mankind weighs on him now
As he considers the epiphany that has just occurred
Where should he go?
Whom should he tell?
So, he walks along the path he has found in the desolate woods near the crazy stream
A stream that never appears to slow down but rather crashes and crumbles rocks to the bottom
of the sea many miles away
There was a time many years before when he would have stopped and listened to the crazy
stream
Gushing by in torrents of energy from high above the hills of time
When he could hear it speaking to him
But no more
Now he is floating in a sorrowful reverie not even he, in his wisdom could fathom
Much less explain
Words begin falling like a torrential rain in the Congo
His shoes now soaked with puddles of thought as he marches to the rhythm of free form jazz
Clamoring from the speakeasies of his mind
Like wild trumpets of angry angels in the sky
Soon he will be drowning in them and he knows it
So, he runs
Runs like a thief in the night bullets whizzing by his head
Then he leaps
Leaps with all his might high into the air like an acrobat of wonder
Making children scream soaked in popcorn and sawdust
But still the words keep falling and now the wind begins to howl
Causing the raining words to smash hard against his face
So, he runs ever faster
Runs till he can run no more and stops
Stops to catch his breath his heart pounding in his chest
Long uneasy moments pass
When he opens his eyes to find that he is alone
The demons have left him for the moment
But he knows they will return
They always do
No more can he hear the birds singing in the trees, but the stream…
The crazy stream rushes forth relentless, so he chases it
He has to catch it and ask it what it knows
He has to know
Tell me, he screams at the top of his lungs
Still heaving by his escape from the darkest demons he has yet to encounter
He falls to his knees and weeps
Weeps like a child whose puppy was squashed by a train
Now a collection of the fondest memories in blood that he cannot remember

Read Poem: Hibiscus by Kishawna Peck

I don’t think you know me sir
I take calculated risks
You were examined, measured, observed
Before I proceeded
Love to me is one of the greatest risks
Constantly watered
with luxe conversations,
dreams of happiness,
acts of chivalry
I bloom
To bloom out of my bud and expose my petals to the elements I need to be sure
Sure that you won’t blow me over
with your ego or starve me of air
Sure that I’ll feel your warmth
and our troubles never drown me
But wow… I seem to never be able
to outsmart love
He always comes dressed differently, finds a way to creep in and disguises himself as ideal
And I open and I fall
I try to retreat back to my bud
Instead I feel each petal leaving me slowly
Leaving me bare
I can’t undo opening up
I fall apart instead