She’s got a handle on it Maggie Devers She won’t let me clean the dirt from under her nails She holds onto it as a matter of distinction,An indication of her interests.
The grey, opaque polish covers it completely But not the pink sparkles.Both will degrade equallyTo reveal the dark line still in place,But this will take a day or two.
Now it’s time for bedSleep well, I tell herHer response,I will!Rings of with the certaintyOf fresh nails.

More from Maggie Devers ↓

• Read my debut poetry book, For My Daughter
• Follow me on Instagram for more poetry @rembrandts.cure

Mentioned in this episode:

Write After: National Poetry Month with One Poem Only

Write After is a way to encourage poets to listen and write, and use National Poetry Month to highlight how listening to poetry makes us better poets. I know I write the best when I’m surrounded by beautiful poetry–it’s part of the reason I created this podcast, and I want to encourage others to share this practice.

We'll get started in April. You can share to #WriteAfterOPO.

#WriteAfterOPO

First published in The Thieving Magpie
No one needs to invent time travelIt’s already here. We’re already traveling.The slam of a door layers then with now.Raised voices split screen brains
send us back to prisms of pain.The moment of terror as the airplane turns just so.Oh, sky that certain clear cold blue, we go
back. We are washing dishes heresuds between our fingers. Indoor. But fearplaces us in the car. Plays the announcers
voice crumbling like block towers. Fall.Time travel exists inside us all. Thinning reality.What we need to invent is a way away from time’s debris.
A failsafe to replace ache, mistake, heartbreakwith joy. With birds singing clear and sweet, laughterechoing down the street. Ice pops running down chins,
grins between grandparents. Transparent momentswhen the sun shone through the clouds. Just. That. Way.Golden molasses dough rolled in sugar. Crinkled cookies
cooling on the counter. The need is plain.We just need time travel that isn’t to pain.
- Christiana Doucette

More from Christiana Doucette ↓

• Her website: Christiana Doucette
• @doucette515 on BlueSky, Instagram, Threads, and TikTok
• Her haiku “sudden downpour” appears in Where the Mountains Were: A Helene Disaster Relief Haiku/Senryu Anthology. All the profits go to The Foundation for Lake Lure & Chimney Rock Area Businesses.

You can listen to me read Christiana Doucette’s, Lifting Weight, over on Instagram @rembrandts.cure

Mentioned in this episode:

Write After: National Poetry Month with One Poem Only

Write After is a way to encourage poets to listen and write, and use National Poetry Month to highlight how listening to poetry makes us better poets. I know I write the best when I’m surrounded by beautiful poetry–it’s part of the reason I created this podcast, and I want to encourage others to share this practice.

We'll get started in April. You can share to #WriteAfterOPO.

#WriteAfterOPO

Sonnet: To the Poppy Anna Seward 1742 – 1809 While summer roses all their glory yield To crown the votary of love and joy, Misfortune’s victim hails, with many a sigh, Thee, scarlet Poppy of the pathless field,Gaudy, yet wild and lone; no leaf to shield Thy flaccid vest that, as the gale blows high, Flaps, and alternate folds around thy head. So stands in the long grass a love-crazed maid,Smiling aghast; while stream to every wind Her garish ribbons, smeared with dust and rain; But brain-sick visions cheat her tortured mind,And bring false peace. Thus, lulling grief and pain, Kind dreams oblivious from thy juice proceed, Thou flimsy, showy, melancholy weed.

Mentioned in this episode:

Write After: National Poetry Month with One Poem Only

Write After is a way to encourage poets to listen and write, and use National Poetry Month to highlight how listening to poetry makes us better poets. I know I write the best when I’m surrounded by beautiful poetry–it’s part of the reason I created this podcast, and I want to encourage others to share this practice.

We'll get started in April. You can share to #WriteAfterOPO.

#WriteAfterOPO

Someone, open me up.Fillet me, from my shoulder blades, kneed out the knots I’ve collected throughout the years.Flip me over and crack open my ribcage, lungs deflated, heart popping out at you like a jack-in-the-box.Pour bleach down my airways, forget other aesthetics and make me pure like a candy cigarette.cut out my heart,Rumor has it that it's beaten for too long.Look inside, see the heart string that broke, the thinning of the aortic valve.
I hear my liver is rotten, kidneys growing mushrooms; my throat’s got a hole in it, my tongue growing blue.
Put a heart-shaped patch over every hole I've made, give me new, paper maché organs, ones I can’t feel in my chest.
Give me taffy heart strings in a cotton candy heart, pump me with helium, and sew me back together with ribbon and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be okay.
- Lindsey

More from Lindsey ↓

• @writing.by.lindsey on Instagram
• She is currently working on a poetry book.

Mentioned in this episode:

Write After: National Poetry Month with One Poem Only

Write After is a way to encourage poets to listen and write, and use National Poetry Month to highlight how listening to poetry makes us better poets. I know I write the best when I’m surrounded by beautiful poetry–it’s part of the reason I created this podcast, and I want to encourage others to share this practice.

We'll get started in April. You can share to #WriteAfterOPO.

#WriteAfterOPO

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

Jun 23 - Hunger, as Salvation by Ariel K. Moniz: @kiss.of.the.seventh.star on Instagram. Her chapbook, Nostos Algos, is published with Ethel, a Micro Press.

Jun 24 - Shadows by Harriet Monroe

Jun 25 - playing god by Michaela Godding: @michaelagodding on Instagram. Her book, the year our grandmothers died, from AOS Publishing will be released February 2026. Her chapbook, Dwelling, is out now from Bottlecap Press.

Jun 26 - Inheritance by Maggie Devers: @rembrandts.cure on Instagram. Her book, For My Daughter, is out now.

Jun 27 - Gender Affirming Care by Nikki Grierson: @poeticallynikki on Instagram.

Jun 28 - fatal dance - a love story between fire and wood by velvetpoetess: @velvetpoetess on Instagram

June 29 -

Whir Maggie Devers The flower falls from the tree And floats in the waterAnimated in her demise.
That she’s held on this long,To the middle of September,Is remarkableThen again it’s warm And these days summer stays
The girl teaches me tricksBossy described this type in the olden days– Back in the eighties when they still spanked kids,She’s heard the stories.But I want to protect her from bossy
I think as the hummingbird hoversWondering what to do with flowers in the poolChirping noisily to protect the nectar still enthroned in the treeNot bossy, just directAs more flowers fall

Mentioned in this episode:

Write After: National Poetry Month with One Poem Only

Write After is a way to encourage poets to listen and write, and use National Poetry Month to highlight how listening to poetry makes us better poets. I know I write the best when I’m surrounded by beautiful poetry–it’s part of the reason I created this podcast, and I want to encourage others to share this practice.

We'll get started in April. You can share to #WriteAfterOPO.

#WriteAfterOPO

fatal dance - a love story between fire and wood Velvet Poetess there is this certain hungera hunger that cannot be satisfied byanother but youI reach out my handdon’t let it be in vainfor we both know how this shall end; let usat least celebrate it properlydance til death with melet us light up this world one last timebefore my hunger will have been foreversatisfied;before the only remains of your existenceare smoke and ashes

More from velvetpoetess ↓

• @velvetpoetess on Instagram

Mentioned in this episode:

Write After: National Poetry Month with One Poem Only

Write After is a way to encourage poets to listen and write, and use National Poetry Month to highlight how listening to poetry makes us better poets. I know I write the best when I’m surrounded by beautiful poetry–it’s part of the reason I created this podcast, and I want to encourage others to share this practice.

We'll get started in April. You can share to #WriteAfterOPO.

#WriteAfterOPO

Gender Affirming Care Nikki Grierson When I was a girl Little flurries of hair Began to sprout Here and there At first I didn’t notice But then something made me care What if other people see, Will they point and stare?
This worry, grew in my mind As I studied the weekly magazine Where cover girls were smooth Their skin had a beautiful sheen Was I a “proper girl” Like those in “Just Seventeen”
So I began to study The art of hair removal Wanting so badly To gain my peers approval As to be accepted as a woman Becoming hairless seemed crucial
Of course I was told “You are far too young” “Don’t worry about that, just keep having fun” But I stopped wearing shorts In the days that came with sun And at night I would toss, and I would turn For me, gender affirming care had most certainly begun
Now it’s triggered It was here to stay If I was becoming a woman I had to look a certain way Clothing now more important Than the games I used to play I started to wish for boobs I even began to pray!
Eventually we all had bras And fruity glossy lips But then came something else I wanted those womanly hips! Society was infecting me With its binary gender grips
And here we are today Things have gotten worse As filtered fake images Keep our hands in our pink purse Then those trying to demoniseThose who want to live free, diverse Assuming those who are different Are nothing but perverse Helping to maintain the patriarchal curse

More from Nikki Grierson ↓

• @poeticallynikki on Instagram

Mentioned in this episode:

Write After: National Poetry Month with One Poem Only

Write After is a way to encourage poets to listen and write, and use National Poetry Month to highlight how listening to poetry makes us better poets. I know I write the best when I’m surrounded by beautiful poetry–it’s part of the reason I created this podcast, and I want to encourage others to share this practice.

We'll get started in April. You can share to #WriteAfterOPO.

#WriteAfterOPO

Inheritance Maggie Devers She tells me she likes the new sideWhere they eat pomegranates all dayAnd her lifeSounds like an ancient poemChanted down the agesTo her at six.
I wonder if the myths are always in usAnd we ache to relive them through art
She says meditate instead of prayAnd Stracciatella instead of chocolate chipAnd I think that’s a generational vernacular shift in the right direction
She holds the scrunchie open and pulls her hair throughAt the final pass she stops halfway, a poor man’s bunAnd I wonder what’s inherited and what’s instinct.

More from Maggie Devers ↓

• Read my debut poetry book, For My Daughter
• Follow me on Instagram for more poetry @rembrandts.cure

Mentioned in this episode:

Write After: National Poetry Month with One Poem Only

Write After is a way to encourage poets to listen and write, and use National Poetry Month to highlight how listening to poetry makes us better poets. I know I write the best when I’m surrounded by beautiful poetry–it’s part of the reason I created this podcast, and I want to encourage others to share this practice.

We'll get started in April. You can share to #WriteAfterOPO.

#WriteAfterOPO

playing god Michaela Godding (The average person forgets ninety percent of their dreams. I have started keeping tallies on a notepad next to my bed to keep track of all the forgetting. I wonder if endings are all we can rely on. I wonder and wonder and remember that eighty percent of the human body’s heat comes out from the head and I wonder if wondering will burn me to pieces.)
They say that life is easier when you are younger, that you can breathe and swallow at the same time until you are seven months old, that as a four-year-old you ask approximately four hundred and fifty questions a day. They say that what you can’t control you should put in god’s hands. My hands have twenty-seven bones, twenty-nine joints and at least one hundred and twenty-three other named ligaments but I wonder. I wonder about the unnamed ones. I wonder about the fifty thousand cells that will die and be replaced in the body by the time you finish reading this sentence.

More from Michaela Godding ↓

• @michaelagodding on Instagram
• Her book, the year our grandmothers died, from AOS Publishing will be released February 2026.
• Her chapbook, Dwelling, is out now from Bottlecap Press.
• You can listen to me read Michaela Godding’s, Poem For a Mother Six Years Out of Prison, over on Instagram @rembrandts.cure

Mentioned in this episode:

Write After: National Poetry Month with One Poem Only

Write After is a way to encourage poets to listen and write, and use National Poetry Month to highlight how listening to poetry makes us better poets. I know I write the best when I’m surrounded by beautiful poetry–it’s part of the reason I created this podcast, and I want to encourage others to share this practice.

We'll get started in April. You can share to #WriteAfterOPO.

#WriteAfterOPO

Shadows Harriet Monroe 1860 – 1936 What is most near? Ah, sweet dead year- Thy fallen leaf And gathered sheaf,The presence that is fled,The vows that once were said- These are most near.
Swift speeds away Rose-crowned To-day. So far, so far Her light feet are!I look and see thy faceHaunting the upland place, Dear Yesterday.
The blooming flowers, The sunny hours- These cannot rest, These are half blest.But thou forevermoreArt mine, love, as of yore, And time is ours.

Mentioned in this episode:

Write After: National Poetry Month with One Poem Only

Write After is a way to encourage poets to listen and write, and use National Poetry Month to highlight how listening to poetry makes us better poets. I know I write the best when I’m surrounded by beautiful poetry–it’s part of the reason I created this podcast, and I want to encourage others to share this practice.

We'll get started in April. You can share to #WriteAfterOPO.

#WriteAfterOPO