One Poem Only

The Season of Returning Lara I fell into winter,a quiet collapse of light.Bare branches above me,and silence heavy as snow.The frost took my laughter,the wind took my name,and I drifted through the cold,like breath caught between worlds.
But the earth-she never forgot me.She hummed beneath the ice,a low song,ancient and patient:even the seed must sleep before it blooms.And I listened,still and small,to her steady heartbeat below.
The rain returned,soft as mercy,washing sorrow from my hands.The wind tangled in my hairand whispered, home,as the ground beneath mestirred with life-shivering, stretching, reaching for the sun.
Moss clothed my sorrow,petals crowned my scars.I did not burst into life;I unfolded.I became.
Rebirth is not thunder.It’s rhythm,a heartbeat beneath soft soil,a river remembering its song.It’s the body learning warmth again,the soul relearning grace.
Now I move with the earth’s own music.I am green where I was gray,river where I was stone,light where I was pain.I have returned,not as who I was,but as everything I was meant to become.
And when the dawn brushes my skin,I do not hide.I open wide, like the first flower of springsinging softly to the sun:
I am here.I am whole.I am light again.

More from Lara ↓

1. @itslarawrites on Instagram

Mentioned in this episode:

One Poem Only submissions are open.

This round, I’m looking for poems about what remains. What stays with us after we experience change? What survives? What do we yearn to carry forward? Send me the poem you wrote and want the world to hear. Also, if you’d like to read your own poem on the podcast, you can. Submit a clear audio file recorded in a quiet space—no perfect studio recording required. And yes, your poem can have been previously published in a literary magazine, a book, or on social media. Submissions close Thursday, October 29. I’ll respond by Wednesday, November 11. Whether I read your poem or you read it yourself, I’d love to hear what you have to share.

One Poem Only Submissions Form

Rooted Shaq Mendes Women are Queens, Men are Kings well -
Along w/ the throne, you needah';
_ Have that Crown _
Take a journey down a path where,the end'll have you feeling like Gold;Gold - ha_ha I know being rich is the goal,this type of Rich, is gonna come from your Soul;So... the Gold _ won't be shinny, nor rectangular shaped,It's gonna weigh the same as you nothing more;
There's a Pulse...
Take your hand place on your chest,do yah feel that?Close your eyes, take a breath,ha_ha , still not there yet;Breathe as if you're a vehicle - approaching,them yellow flashing lights;
A little bit slower...In through the nose,from gut to chest it rose;Out the mouth it goes, a breath so -
Powerful... Meditation - Breath control,Anger, Hurt, & Pain _ The body'll let go,it's on you _ to stay in the zone;Clear the mind - the thoughts,should stop, as if time froze;Go on - give it a try -let your body take a ride,on this road - Personal Growth...
Get Rooted...

More from Shaq Mendes ↓

1. @shackahh_wackahh on Instagram

Mentioned in this episode:

One Poem Only submissions are open.

This round, I’m looking for poems about what remains. What stays with us when we experience change? What survives? What do we yearn to carry forward? Send me the poem you wrote and want the world to hear. Also, if you’d like to read your own poem on the podcast, you can. Submit a clear audio file recorded in a quiet space—no perfect studio recording required. And yes, your poem can have been previously published in a literary magazine, in print, or on social media. Submissions close Thursday, October 29. I’ll respond by Wednesday, November 11. Whether I read your poem or you read it yourself, I’d love to hear what you have to share.

One Poem Only Submissions Form

AloofLuwaAloof poof, jump off the roof as proofThey use the news to deduce and reduce the abuseThrown and blown our way while we moan and groanUnable to table the insatiable desire for the fableThat makes us weaker, bleaker yet we are eagerFor we have aligned, misaligned our brains to malignImages that damages, and abscond our privileges.

More from Luwa ↓

1. @luwawrites on Instagram
2. You can listen and watch me read Beauty Allures by Luwa on Instagram @rembrandts.cure

I Promise Riley Hope McPheters When you are sad-It feels that is who you are.You are not the sad of a hard day,Nor the sad of a loved one gone too soon,You are a sad that is in your blood,Cold and slow.A depression deeper than the depths of rock bottom.Rock bottom becomes your safety net-And when it is not deep enough to relate to the pain within your own walls,You scrape with your nails to get even deeper into the depths of your own sorrow.Days are warped- time is too fast yet manages to be miserably slow.The perfunctory lives of those around you drive you into an underworld of isolation that youfeel as if you don’t want to come up from.And not all do.We lose many from sadness. Inner war that comes with no peace treaty. Anger andtraumas many grow so numb to.An inner frustration with no exit point.Sadness is us. And we are sadness.
However, some of us get cold to the darkness- or curious of the light up above. Some of usstart climbing,Knowing that no fall could be as damaging as the darkness below we once knew so so well.
The lives of routine we once feared became the lives of ambition,Prosperity,Resilience,
And strength we learned to admire the most.
To feel the warmth of the light and know it was never too far. To feel the sadness seep outof the very veins that once held it.
To be full of so much brightness- no darkness could outweigh what is within.
To be ok with the darkness and look forward to the light.
To be so whole. To be so happy.
It is possible.
Find your light. And accept your darkness.
Growth happens there.I promise.

More from Riley Hope McPheters ↓

1. @rileyhmcpheters on Instagram
2. She is a member of @PoetzPortalFW, that exists to awaken consciousness and cultivate liberated creative practice through the transformative power of poetry, sound, and communal dialogue.

Mentioned in this episode:

One Poem Only submissions are open.

This round, I’m looking for poems about what remains. What stays with us after we experience change? What survives? What do we yearn to carry forward? Send me the poem you wrote and want the world to hear. Also, if you’d like to read your own poem on the podcast, you can. Submit a clear audio file recorded in a quiet space—no perfect studio recording required. And yes, your poem can have been previously published in a literary magazine, a book, or on social media. Submissions close Thursday, October 29. I’ll respond by Wednesday, November 11. Whether I read your poem or you read it yourself, I’d love to hear what you have to share.

One Poem Only Submissions Form

Happiness Navya Chaudhary If you are out there chasing happiness,Then I want you to remember this.If you're chasing it,It's definitely not yours.
Happiness is not somewhere out there,It's hidden in those small moments around you.The one you don't notice very often.And sometimes,
You don't even have to find it.You can create it.Why wait for someone else to bring you happiness?When you can be that person for yourself.
Do the things you've wanted to do for so long.Try that new drink before it's off the menu.Watch that movie before it leaves the theatre.Buy yourself the flowers you always wanted.
Go.Now.
Why are you still here?

More from Navya Chaudhary ↓

1. @chaoticconfessor on Instagram
2. Her book, Unfinished Letters, is out now.

Mentioned in this episode:

One Poem Only submissions are open.

This round, I’m looking for poems about what remains. What stays with us after we experience change? What survives? What do we yearn to carry forward? Send me the poem you wrote and want the world to hear. Also, if you’d like to read your own poem on the podcast, you can. Submit a clear audio file recorded in a quiet space—no perfect studio recording required. And yes, your poem can have been previously published in a literary magazine, a book, or on social media. Submissions close Thursday, October 29. I’ll respond by Wednesday, November 11. Whether I read your poem or you read it yourself, I’d love to hear what you have to share.

One Poem Only Submissions Form

Here’s your recap of this week’s poems plus one new poem to carry us into the week ahead.

On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs by Renée Nicole Good. She was murdered by ICE on January 7, 2026. In 2020, she won the undergraduate Academy of American Poets Prize in 2020 for this poem.

Jan 5 - Becoming Again by Reya @moodmakerperson on Instagram. Her book, Teenage Tide, is available now.

Jan 6 - To Fall Is to Begin by Irina Vérène @queen_of_gore on Instagram. They are featured in Haunted Words Press’ anthology, Our Dearest Devotions, which contains their flash fiction piece about friendship, fae magic, and gender transition.

Jan 7 - Transmorphing by Özge Lena @lenaozge on Instagram. You can find her on Substack @lenaozge where she presents her new approach to poetry, Catapoetry. It is a poetic framework about the interwoven and inseparable catastrophes of our age. You can listen to me read luminous girl lullaby by Özge Lena on Instagram @rembrandts.cure.

Jan 8 - Genesis of Her by Kiran Ashraf @kiran_ashraf on Instagram and @kiranashraf7 on Substack.

Jan 9 - Part Oracle, Part Warrior by Aslam @smmaslam on Instagram and @aslammohammed on Substack. His book, Paper Boat in Rumi’s Garden, is available now.

Jan 10 - The Tender Descending by Ellie A @lines_between_living on Instagram and @linesbtwnliving on Substack. Read more from her on her blog, Lines Between Living.

Jan 11

Suck It InMaggie DeversI saw a woman, weak and gauntShuffle slowly up the sidewalkAnd instantly felt protective of my curves
Because we don’t get to keep them.
They leave us in our old age—Only after we forget we cursed themFor the zipper’s slow progress,The marks left by elastic waistbands,The shock of our picture from the rear,The angry bumps between our thighs,The way we learned to suck it in before there was anything but flat stomach.
It’s only when the extra bits are goneDo you realize they made you robust,Proof of a full lifeThat couldn’t be knocked overBy the shock of a car squealing round the cornerOr a plucky robot delivery cart in the intersection with nothing to lose.The paths are paved with chaos, ballast is required.So I’ll shoulder my pack without swearing and find comfort in all I’m able to carry.

More from Maggie Devers ↓

1. My debut poetry collection, For My Daughter, available as an audiobook.
2. Purchase a signed copy of For My Daughter or get one free by subscribing to the podcast: One Poem Only on Patreon
3. Follow me on Instagram for more poetry @rembrandts.cure

The Tender DescendingEllie AugustinThe earth exhales and everything slows.The trees remember what it means to be bare.We gather what warmth remains in our handsand stitch our dreams beneath quiet skies.Each flake that lands upon the skinis a messenger of mercy,a reminder that even in endings,something tender still descends.

More from Ellie A ↓

1. @lines_between_living on Instagram and @linesbtwnliving on Substack
2. Read more from her on her blog, Lines Between Living

Mentioned in this episode:

One Poem Only submissions are open.

This round, I’m looking for poems about what remains. What stays with us when we experience change? What survives? What do we yearn to carry forward? Send me the poem you wrote and want the world to hear. Also, if you’d like to read your own poem on the podcast, you can. Submit a clear audio file recorded in a quiet space—no perfect studio recording required. And yes, your poem can have been previously published in a literary magazine, in print, or on social media. Submissions close Thursday, October 29. I’ll respond by Wednesday, November 11. Whether I read your poem or you read it yourself, I’d love to hear what you have to share.

One Poem Only Submissions Form

part oracle, part warriorAslama crescent moon, hangs like a scaron her shoulder’s silence.her lips sealedby vow or violence.her eyes do not ask.they know.they have watched empires bleedon blades of their own lies.she stands in gray,spine unbent,each scar a sentenceshe never had to explain.call it rebellion.call it myth.a womanwho no longer waits.she is the ink and the echo,the storm braided into calm.you may look,but you will not read her.not everyone seeswhat silence reveals.so i offer you a line,a voice shaped by defiance,a presence drawn in truth.let me speak for her,since her lips are sealed:she would not kneel.she is herefor you to bow.

More from Aslam ↓

• @smmaslam on Instagram
• @aslammohammed on Substack
• His book, Paper Boat in Rumi’s Garden, is available now

Mentioned in this episode:

One Poem Only submissions are open.

This round, I’m looking for poems about what remains. What stays with us after we experience change? What survives? What do we yearn to carry forward? Send me the poem you wrote and want the world to hear. Also, if you’d like to read your own poem on the podcast, you can. Submit a clear audio file recorded in a quiet space—no perfect studio recording required. And yes, your poem can have been previously published in a literary magazine, a book, or on social media. Submissions close Thursday, October 29. I’ll respond by Wednesday, November 11. Whether I read your poem or you read it yourself, I’d love to hear what you have to share.

One Poem Only Submissions Form

On Learning to Dissect Fetal PigsRenée Nicole Good

This poem was awarded the Academy of American Poets Prize in 2020.

i want back my rocking chairs,

solipsist sunsets,
& coastal jungle sounds that are tercets from cicadas and pentameter from the hairy legs of cockroaches.
i’ve donated bibles to thrift stores
(mashed them in plastic trash bags with an acidic himalayan salt lamp—
the post-baptism bibles, the ones plucked from street corners from the meaty hands of zealots, the dumbed-down, easy-to-read, parasitic kind):
remember more the slick rubber smell of high gloss biology textbook pictures; they burned the hairs inside my nostrils,
& salt & ink that rubbed off on my palms.
under clippings of the moon at two forty five AM I study&repeat
ribosome
endoplasmic—
lactic acid
stamen

at the IHOP on the corner of powers and stetson hills—

i repeated & scribbled until it picked its way & stagnated somewhere i can’t point to anymore, maybe my gut—
maybe there in-between my pancreas & large intestine is the piddly brook of my soul.

it’s the ruler by which i reduce all things now; hard-edged & splintering from knowledge that used to sit, a cloth against fevered forehead.
can i let them both be? this fickle faith and this college science that heckles from the back of the classroom


now i can’t believe—
that the bible and qur’an and bhagavad gita are sliding long hairs behind my ear like mom used to & exhaling from their mouths “make room for wonder”—
all my understanding dribbles down the chin onto the chest & is summarized as:
life is merely
to ovum and sperm
and where those two meet
and how often and how well
and what dies there.

Mentioned in this episode:

One Poem Only submissions are open.

This round, I’m looking for poems about what remains. What stays with us after we experience change? What survives? What do we yearn to carry forward? Send me the poem you wrote and want the world to hear. Also, if you’d like to read your own poem on the podcast, you can. Submit a clear audio file recorded in a quiet space—no perfect studio recording required. And yes, your poem can have been previously published in a literary magazine, a book, or on social media. Submissions close Thursday, October 29. I’ll respond by Wednesday, November 11. Whether I read your poem or you read it yourself, I’d love to hear what you have to share.

One Poem Only Submissions Form

Genesis of HerKiran AshrafHer body is like a powerful tidelooming in an ever-flowing motionchewing on her emotions like riceshe aches to read in sheltering armswearing her chaos for a better lifeher skin is a wild thing at its bestmemories in her songs of griefnow trembled and hummed in her boneslike a silent gust of unfinished wreckageor an absent orchestra of musical hellher two eyes wander through the meadowslessons forced on her forgiving shouldersall her exhausting days and unsent textsare winding up in threads of crocheted woolshe exists in this unyielding temporalgrowing stronger among unseen enemies

More from Kiran Ashraf ↓

1. @kiran_ashraf on Instagram and @kiranashraf7 on Substack

Mentioned in this episode:

One Poem Only submissions are open.

This round, I’m looking for poems about what remains. What stays with us when we experience change? What survives? What do we yearn to carry forward? Send me the poem you wrote and want the world to hear. Also, if you’d like to read your own poem on the podcast, you can. Submit a clear audio file recorded in a quiet space—no perfect studio recording required. And yes, your poem can have been previously published in a literary magazine, in print, or on social media. Submissions close Thursday, October 29. I’ll respond by Wednesday, November 11. Whether I read your poem or you read it yourself, I’d love to hear what you have to share.

One Poem Only Submissions Form