POETRY LIBRARY

In the future (SafeBots)~ By Gregg Dotoli

10/14/2020

Every cell is hashed
All thoughts filtered
Activities assessed
Weight watched
Eyeballs rolled
Every nanosecond event
gently placed with timestamp
Into our Bigbot
BigBrother’s wunderkind

Author Bio:
Gregg Dotoli studied English at Seton Hall University and enjoys living in the NYC area. He is a white hat hacker, but his first love is the Arts.

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Breath~ By t.m. thomson

10/14/2020

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The field we plow
under a cloud-heavy
sky is rowed and ripe
with broken toys--
baby doll heads
with missing eyes
Barbies from the chest up
hair impossibly-tangled
an arm here & there
cracked tops
chipped marbles
the grungy seat of a tricycle
torn tassels from ballet days.

That’s one truth.

Here’s another--
you can still plant
in this field of fragments
& filth.

Kneel and drop seeds--
magnolia zinnia dianthus
allium whatever--
into the empty heads & torsos
turn the tricycle seat upside down
& sow something soft & low into it
like moss or even the plainest
of grass.
Throw marble & tassel on top
for adornment.

Make use of the shattered
& severed & collapsed--
this is breath.

~inspired by Lisa Lach-Nielsen’s “Gardening”

Author Bio:
t.m. thomson has been in love with poetry since she was very young; her first poem was about colors. She draws much of her poetic inspiration from nature and art, both reality and artifice. Often poems occur to her while she takes walks or while her hands are immersed in soil. She refers to herself not as a “gardener,” but rather as a “player in mud.” Her work has most recently appeared in Wild Roof Journal and Whispering Prairie Press: Kansas City Voices and will be featured in Blue Ash Review and mutiny! magazine in the upcoming months. Three of her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Awards, and she is the co-author of Frame and Mount the Sky, a book of ekphrastic poetry, and author of Strum and Lull (2019) and The Profusion (2019). She has a writer’s page at https://www.facebook.com/TaunjaThomsonWrite

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A Love Letter For The Soul~ By Ashley Virginia Matthew

10/13/2020

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Poem
A Love Letter For The Soul
By: Ashley Virginia Matthew

Dear soul, your love is true.
Blessed soul, your love is strong.
You love in all you do and your love can do no wrong.
Perfect soul, your love is brave.
Kind soul, your love is giving.
Your patient love came to save and it gave a reason for living.
Pure soul, your love is gentle.
Beautiful soul, your love is humble.
Your love stays non-judgmental even when I take a stumble.
Angelic soul, your love is genuine.
Innocent soul, your love is free.
Your love forgave all my sin and your love you gave to me.

Author Bio:
Ashley Virginia Matthew is a graduate of Cedarville University. She majored in Journalism and has two minors in Creative Writing and Bible. She currently lives in Fairfield, Ohio and enjoys writing fiction and poetry. Ashley has been writing as a hobby since childhood and enjoys writing on a variety of genres, from fantasy to romance. Her writing is influenced by a vast majority of topics, including sports, personal life events, historical figures and more.

In her spare time, Ashley also enjoys traveling, exercising, shopping, reading and listening to music. Some of Ashley's previous writing experience includes being a staff writer for KayfabeKickout.com, an intern reporter for The Pulse-Journal, a reporter for two collegiate student newspapers and a reporter for her high school student newspaper. Ashley also writes the bi-monthly newsletter at the company she works for. Ashley's writing goals include someday being a published novelist and to always strive to improve at her craft for writing.

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Floating Embers~ By Robert L. Martin

10/7/2020

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Skyborne magic approaching
from the corners of the east,
embers drifting in space
in the wake of the journey of the sun,
the daughter of the blazing sky,
a rendezvous with the
tides of yesterday,
when she ventured forth,
racing along the firmament
in a fiery chariot,
cursing the sting of the darkness
and chanting hymns of the Sun Gods
on her pilgrimage to the western lands,

her adorning the clouds
with colors of a deep crimson,
an artist with sensual strokes,
turning herself into a
cool globe of orange
before she dove through
the cracks of the earth
into the bowels of its home
in search of the lava field,
the same one she found last night,
to thaw her frigid hands and feet
and sleep in its comforting warmth,

as morning came and her eyes opened,
she rose again through the cracks
of the eastern corner of the earth
with her fiery body igniting
the wooden clouds that formed above,
peeking through the smoldering embers,
the charred sky riddled with
pink and yellow holes,
the beauty of the new day,
the journey of the daughter of the skies,
the dancing with the winds of time,
and the way she chose her colors
that embellished the face of the firmament,
her handiwork of the earth and sky.

Author Bio:
Robert L. Martin's writings have appeared in "Universal Oneness" anthology book, "Charles Carter Anthologies," "The Voices Project," Mature Years," "Poets' Espresso" among others. He won two "Faith and Hope" poetry awards and publish two chapbooks. He is also a pianist and the organist at First UMC of Wind Gap, PA.

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Burkhart~ By Gerard Sarnat

10/7/2020

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-- Headline [with addendum] of Françoise Girard’s article in the 25November 2018 New York Times

1. Pistol-Perfect Paean To Julie Burkhart On Murder’s Tenth Anniversary

She founded Trust Women
after her boss, George Tiller MD
was assassinated in church
for doing abortions in Wichita.

Undeterred by her own risk,
Ms. Burkhart expanded services
to Oklahoma City that had
equally severe TRAP* law hurdles.

Since local physicians were
too scared or couldn’t be licensed,
others (rarely men) got flown
in for short locum tenens stretches.

When women say, “I won’t
give up. This is something we take
seriously – violence won’t
daunt us” -- take them at their word

whereas males -- nothing
against my sex, typically demonstrate
a lot more bluster but less
stick-to-it-ness when life gets tough.

*Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers

2. Stick By Your Guns Proposal: Purchase This Citizen A Bourbon

Say hey howz bout our government treats each and every man
who fancies having a handgun
equal to some random woman
desperate to get abortion pills?

Start with 48-hour waiting periods, parental permission,
doctor’s note documenting
understanding what them he-men
want to do, that mandatory video

explaining effects of violence, an ultrasound wand up the ass
(just because) then close all but
maybe one shop per state, make him
take time off work, travel hundreds

of miles, stay overnight in a strange town, walk through gauntlets
waving bloodcurdling pics of loved
ones shot to death, folks screaming Murderer
begging me not to buy no assault rifle.

Author Bio:
Gerard Sarnat won the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for a handful of recent Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published in academic-related journals (e.g., University Chicago, Stanford, Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Harvard, Pomona, Johns Hopkins, Wesleyan, Penn, New Mexico, Oklahoma, University of San Francisco) plus national (e.g., Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, MiPOesias, American Journal Of Poetry, Clementine, pamplemousse, Red Wheelbarrow, Deluge, Poetry Quarterly, Tipton Journal, Hypnopomp, Free State Review, Poetry Circle, Poets And War, Wordpeace, Cliterature, Qommunicate, Indolent Books, Snapdragon, Pandemonium Press, Boston Literary Magazine, Montana Mouthful, Arkansas Review, Texas Review, San Antonio Review, Brooklyn Review, pacificREVIEW, San Francisco Magazine, The Los Angeles Review, Fiction Southeast and The New York Times) and international publications (e.g., Review Berlin, Voices Israel, Foreign Lit, New Ulster, Transnational, Southbank, Wellington Street Review). He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016). Gerry is a physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO. Currently he is devoting energy/ resources to deal with global warming. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with three kids plus six grandsons, and is looking forward to future granddaughters. gerardsarnat.com

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Dear Children~ By Gabrielle Balot

10/5/2020

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I’ve loved you with my horizon’s
kiss, its streaks of amber and turquoise and
lavender, reminding you of tomorrow’s promise

I’ve cooled you with my cinnamon
breath and my downpouring of kaleidoscopic
leaves, renewing you with peace and calm

I’ve rocked you with my waves
of tears that washed your feet at my sandy
shores, caressing you during your journey

but you’ve ripped the oil
from my depths, suffocating me
with your carbon greed, dropping
me deeper, leaving me
vulnerable, erasing my past

now you cover your ears
you refuse to hear me
cry. now I cannot
carry you, for you
are no longer
mine

unless

Author Bio:
Gabrielle Balot is a 17-year-old writer and visual artist from New Orleans, Louisiana. She is an 11th-grade Creative Writing student at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. She enjoys writing poetry and short stories to make sense of her place in the world. Her writing gives an essential voice to topics that are hard for her to explain in any other way. She likes to explore issues of emotions and relationships - especially anxiety, rejection, and identity - which are issues that most teenagers deal with.

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The Garage Sale Queen~ By Ben Westlie

9/29/2020

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She sits on her porch
among the junk-
the once important things.
She waits for buyers, strangers-
soon to be acquaintances.
They’re her currency
for the second-hand treasures
transforming into magnificent clutter.

She in the morning light
as it makes it way above us all.
She gets the stillness of the soundless world
before the buzzing cars, the monotony
of corporations. Before the stilling
plainness of the small-town zombies.

She gets to view it all.
The grandeur of her junkyard.
This posh role of seeing the fragments of her
past lives.

She’s out there on her porch
because her youngest son is shit with money
and his visions, his dreams
were more than him.
She still smiles at every buyer.
She gives discounts and deals
on every piece of past
because she’s the mother, the queen.
She can’t allow one of her own to become
A mindless wanderer who once dreamed.

She’s selling our old lives
At any price to ensure her kin
Is something of a star,
Not a destructive supernova, burning out
destroying it all too soon.

At the end of the weekend
she calls me and I can hear
how raspy her voice is from shouting
the deals, from the thirty cigarettes she smoked.
I hear something else through the raspy chords,
I hear this giddiness, this child-like chime
like when someone tells you’re the winner
among all the other hopefuls.

Author Bio:
Ben Westlie holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is the author of four chapbooks of poems, most recently UNDER YOUR INFLUENCE all published by Finishing Line Press. His poems have appeared in the anthology Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25 selected and edited by Naomi Shihab Nye and in the journals The Fourth River, Third Coast, Atlas and Alice, The Talking Stick, the tiny journal, Trampset and ArLiJo (Arlington Literary Journal).

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Yvette~ By Isabelle Stillman

9/29/2020

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There is a Nurse Practitioner named Yvette. When people come into her office, she asks them to sit in a small black chair and place their things on the desk. Then she sits at the desk facing away from the black chair toward the computer and asks them things like, do you use tobacco, do you have family members with heart disease or cancer or respiratory trouble, do you have a safe sexual relationship, do you think you might be pregnant, do you have regular bowel movements, do you wear your seatbelt, do you share needles, are you allergic to any medications, do you have any friends, and inputs the answers into the computer. Because the computer software in which she inputs the answers is slow and because Yvette does not like when the room is silent and the person is looking at her from behind and because Yvette has a habit of whispering instead of talking, Yvette repeats the person’s answers in a small voice until the next question loads on her computer screen and she can ask it. And so the people sitting in the black chair hear over and over, “normal bowels” “normal bowels” “normal bowels or “cancer” “cancer” “cancer.”

Author Bio:
Isabelle Stillman is a writer, teacher, and musician from St. Louis, Missouri. She began writing as a young girl, studied fiction through college and graduate school, and taught creative writing to high schoolers. Her most recent writing endeavor has been that of writing songs – Isabelle released her first full-length album, Middle Sister, in July of 2019. She then quit her job to go on tour. Her fiction and songwriting both explore ideas about coming of age, gender, mental health, and religion. In the classroom, she teaches writing as a vehicle for students to see the world in all its realities and to carve their individual space within it. Isabelle’s music is available on all streaming platforms; this is her first published piece of fiction.

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A Woman is Not Home (In Memorial)~ By Letitia Six

9/29/2020

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I think about the time. She moves. “I
need to buy butter. Real butter.
Not margarine.” I bring her back the butter,
but it’s unsalted. She says, “I need salted.”

I sit with her watching the news. She cries
during Dancing with the Stars. The pattern
on her dinner plate is from The Pioneer Woman
set. I take it from her manicured fingers.

Her drapes hide our figures from the darkness
outside. Candy Crush chimes on her
Kindle. She smiles. Her body shifts
below her throw. She covers me. I close my eyes.

I dream she leaves every window open. Scents
bristle space. Outside, the dirt is purple.
She laughs from somewhere behind a wall. I hear
thumping; soft, rhythmic motions. She steps inside of me.

Author Bio:
Letitia Six is a native of Appalachia and began writing when she was nine-years-old. While she has obtained her education as a single mother, her work has been inspired by the ideological institutions that have haunted her sex throughout history. She currently holds a BA in English, a MA in English, and a MA in journalism and mass communication. She is a member of AWP. Her work has been published in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Vol V, the literary magazines, Et Cetera and Whetstone, and her campuses newspapers.

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Strength~ By M. West

9/23/2020

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I wear a thin gold band on my right third finger.
It’s tenuous, hand-hammered, strong despite
its femininity. The band is harmony of fortitude
and finesse, the subtle art that I haven’t yet mastered,

Knowing how to be strong, to do the hard
things, to be the person everyone always
needs me to be without feeling and being a
lumberjack walking through a garden
of teacups, crushing delicacies.

I wear the wispy, ardent band, coping with
my unrefined identity, running my finger over it
each time I feel uncomfortable, drawing it near
my palm, falling in love with the cultured consistency.

Author Bio:
M. West, an Arkansas native raised on southern sunshine, expresses personal but universal truths on love, heritage, struggle, and survival. As a first-generation college graduate, the granddaughter of fruit pickers explores, through her creative process, her blue-collar heritage and its impacts, both desirable and undesirable, on her identity. Her love of poetry is largely credited to her father who kept worn collections of poems scattered around the family home and read novels aloud to her at bedtime. M. West, currently pursuing a graduate degree in counseling, observes and relays human behavior, along with its quirks, normalcies, and outliers. M. West enjoys drinking black coffee at sunrise, traveling, walking with her shepherd dogs, and spending time with her family. She appreciates Sunday brunch, collecting local art, and performing poetry and music.

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<<Previous

In the future (SafeBots)~ By Gregg Dotoli

Breath~ By t.m. thomson

A Love Letter For The Soul~ By Ashley Virginia Matthew

Floating Embers~ By Robert L. Martin

Burkhart~ By Gerard Sarnat

Dear Children~ By Gabrielle Balot

The Garage Sale Queen~ By Ben Westlie

Yvette~ By Isabelle Stillman

A Woman is Not Home (In Memorial)~ By Letitia Six

Strength~ By M. West

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