Category: Uncategorized

ROMANCE Poem: What’s Given can be Taken Away, by Erin Thomas

My soul was about stripped from me today:
Wind whipped cold air as a car slammed on the gas
Just to cut in front of me. Ice beneath my shoes
Melted from the heat of my rubber soles.
Left me walking on water. Almost tripped.
When I stepped through the front door,
You carried me the rest of the way to my bed,
And didn’t complain when my soles dripped
on the carpet. Each drop landed with a dull thud,
Or maybe that was your heart hitting your ribs
Against the shell of my ear. Oh well. You slipped
Me into bed and renewed my soul stripped
With quick pecks on my forehead, cheeks, lips.

GRIEF Poem: I had a dream about you the other day, by Nora Bonilla

“Hi precious,” you said,
I held back tears, oceans,
for time was running out.

Just like when you left,
wearing a white shirt
baggy, blue jeans
and a white bandage
wrapped around your arm.

Your smile reached your eyes,
your embrace was warm,
I couldn’t remember the last time
you looked so alive.

We joked and teased,
smiled and cried,
I couldn’t believe
you were right before my eyes

“If you would’ve lived,
how much longer?” I asked,
hoping your passing was
random and not set.

You shook your head
and held my hand,
“It was always
meant to be
this way.”

Anchors weighed
on my chest,
as I felt our time
nearing an end,
I asked,

“How will I know,
when you’re there for
the big moments?”

“I’ll let you know,
I’ll find a way.”
He beamed.

Years have passed,
milestones have gone,
I wondered when, if you’d
come.

Yet, when I heard
our favorite song
At my first job,
before my surgery,
And at my graduation.

I hoped that it was you.

GRIEF Poem: Lament, by Shannon St. Armand

When our ancestors grieved
They gathered
Slashed off their hair
Or sang dirges with fire
I want that
I want to bang a drum
As hard as I can
And howl unabashed
Until I bleed and bleed
And every vein is a desert road leading
To my desert heart
Until the sky the grass the highway bypass
Are marked
With my sadness
There is no place
To voice my mourning
But for the ice cold
Internet
Six in the morning
I post a poem to strangers
About a baby
Who lived and bled
And grew and died
Inside of my body
I watch
Reactions tally up
On my laptop screen
Like I watched
Her ember heart beat
On the sonogram screen
My face aglow
And did you know
I spent the first several days looking up
My maladies on Google
Where I finally found what I was
Looking for in various forums
Bombarded by women with
Nowhere else to go and
Questions concerning
Sadness ovaries burial bloodtests sex
We are all
Grieving
I would like now to thank
Sweetpea1048 for what you said
About losing a child and sinking
Hormones
You are my sister and friend
ILYSM
I write this line here
Click click
Go to bed in the dark
Silence

GRIEF Poem: The Echo of Absence, by Laniya Johnson

Silence fills the void of the outspoken hallway
Forgotten names bounce around on the peeling walls
Picture frames start to fall without being embraced
The home reminisces everything that it lost

Morning exchanges are no longer heard
Water drips from the faucets simultaneously
The once warmed home is suddenly cold
The memories of different faces disappear

The air is stiff as shadows begin to reappear
Nightly conversations are no longer heard
No one lives here to call it home
The phone rings, although no one calls

GRIEF Poem: 2014, by David Emeka

The death was too quick,
people complained, it is suspicious,
they accused, faces crinkling, in
hushed whispers, so that my uncle
did not hear. And when the burial came,
it was too small, they said, it was confirmed now,
they agreed, my uncle had killed her…
and for what? Two new cars? Again they
kept this to themselves, maintaining
an artifice of neighborliness.
You’ve got it wrong, I did not say, it is
me, the murderer. And every day after I went
to the room where my uncle had buried her,
his wife, my aunt, to confess. You see,
just the day before, I’d had the first orgasm
of my life. I was 13. When you’re that young,
the patterns are unopposable, there is no
data, no rationale on earth
to defy them. I believed: since I’d killed her
already, since no matter the tears I could never attain
pure remorse, why not, again, once more?

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.