Broken Ani Leland They say I'm heartbrokenBut heartache can't sufficiently describeHow the physical agony in my chest steals the air from my lungsPain so visceral tears seem trivial - not a worthy outlet of emotionThese windows to my soul are dry, seeing clear for the first timeMy body is numb - unfeelingTorment induced disassociation shielding my fragile mindMy tortured heart no longer set alight by my twin flameBut incinerated by the resulting infernoEach broken piece fueling the blazeThe once glowing embers now cold and black

More from Ani Leland ↓

• @neversent.poetry on Instagram
• Her book, Echoes and Embers, the first in a trilogy co-authored with T.C. James, will be published this fall

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

Sep 1 - The Bleeding of Dreams by Dean Charpentier @mrcharps on Instagram. His most recent publication: two poems featured in B O D Y literary journal

Sep 2 - The Playground by David Park

Sep 3 - When I die, lay me down under a willow tree by Peyton Michelle Bryant @mama.laloba on Instagram. Peyton Bryant on Substack. Her book, Feral Mother, Sovereign Woman, is out now.

Sep 4 - A memorial service before death by Adheena S Farhan @carbon_dat.ed on Instagram.

Sep 5 - Accidental Birds by Deborah Howard @deborahcrafts on Instagram. Her book, Haiku 52: A Journey Through the Year, is out now.

Sep 6 - Stillness of Light by J. Ishaan @__fire_fist_29 on Instagram.

Sep 7

I WorryAbout running out of wineAbout my daughter’s friend’s mom not liking meAnd no one liking my poems,About not writing any more good onesAbout the dishes and the laundry,No strike that—About not worrying about the dishes and the laundryAnd the endless list of worries.
I’m exhausted just putting this down So I will put it down All of it.I’ll set gentle fire to it And rub the ashes over my tanned skinAnd comb my chlorine scented hair
Then I’ll go find some mushrooms and let the rest of it fly awayTo live without meFor I can be reborn every day And lately I want toAnd I don’t know why that scares me.
- Maggie Devers

More from Maggie Devers ↓

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

Stillness of Light J. Ishaan The wind runs wildacross empty ground—no footsteps, no voice,no soul to meet its cry.
The sun slips away,its final raysbrushing the earthin tender, fading gold—a beauty too fragile to stay.
The light falters.Darkness folds in:soft, slow, complete.
A boy stands stillbeneath a skythat has forgotten stars.No moon to hold him—only shadowsand the silence of everything.
Yet he hopes.He dares to believethe sun will rise again.But how could he know?Light does not vanish—it only waitsfor eyes ready to see.
So he watches.Still.Afraid.But he does not turn away.
And in the hushbetween moments,a shimmer stirs—not from the sky,but from within.
The new daydoesn’t mirror the old.It shifts, reshapes,and still,life moves—as it must.

More from J. Ishaan ↓

• @__fire_fist_29 on Instagram

Accidental Birds Deborah Howard Let’s meet beyond the ticking of clockswhere the river flows over smooth stoneand wildflowers lace the muddy banks.I will come over the stone wall,knees bloodied from scrambling across sharp-tongued granite.You will walk out of the forest,a canoe hefted on your shoulders,past deer silent on fallen leaves,smelling of rot and redemption.
There will be a vagueness to your face,no more than a trick of light.You will not remember the snow that fell in oceanic driftsoutside the window where your bed was moored,the small hurts or the lastwhen everything went on as if it wasn’t so.
We’ll spread a blanket on the grass,eat handfuls of honey,watch the clouds swim through the sky.I will ask who received youand if they spoke with the voices of lost stars.
You will gather accidental birds in your arms-the western grebe, the snowy egret,the red throated loon.You will whisper to them, tell them how to find their wayby the green jeweled moss that growson the north side of the treesand the position of the sun.This timeI will listen.

More from Deborah Howard ↓

• @deborahcrafts on Instagram
• Her book, Haiku 52: A Journey Through the Year, is out now

A memorial service before death Adheena S Farhan a house/ before it’s a funeral home/ is a pitstop for God.a hot midafternoon always seems to linger/ past welcome.I live in that part of the world/ where memorial services are never held.Instead, we pool around the dead/ and become a tempest clawing at the dusk,While they wait, in the white docks, ready to go/ Or not/ I don’t know.A grandparent, his life unravelling into the season of exit/Is mostly the first encounter of death/ for most people with good, orderly lives.Cancer had tugged at his long-lived skin, it had cut the back stitch knot/That kept the threads of a whole/ neatly, folded century.Now coming undone/He trips on them, here and there, a memory, blown into confetti that had long fallen/ now no wind blows.I, my father, my uncle and aunt, my mom and many/ hold as much as we can /In our pockets, and habits, and hilt of our lives/ we try/ to weave back an autumn /back to its trees/ but doctors said the pills are only for pain.His eyes/ jaundiced/like odd eggs/hueless pupils watering often/ on yellow eyeballs /gathering the last of the world he will ever see.It will be before he is gone /it will be before he is stone growing out of this world/it will be before that wet earth is only how he knows of the floods in our lives/ I will let him know/that life was pleased to meet him/and so was I.

More from Adheena S Farhan ↓

• @carbon_dat.ed on Instagram

When I die, lay me down under a willow treefacing my mountains dressed in blue. Bury me in the costume jewelry my grandmother gave me-a ring on every fingertwo on each pinky and thumb.Put me in the ground with my pewter wolf still nestled in the hollow of my throat and my sword around my neck. I don’t want a fancy coffin;leave me to the crows I loved so much in life.Let my body be my final gift to the land.Promise to only tell the truth.Tell the truth of how I burned.Sometimes like the sunlightthat peppers your eyelids with kisses in the dog days of summer-some days like a wildfire devouring everything in it’s path. Tell them of how my rage blazed as hot as my lovebut I never let it hold me for longand I couldn’t hold a grudgeto save my own damn life.Tell the truth of how I was a pain in the assand would argue a point until I was blue in the face but damn it, did I make life more interesting.When I die, I want you to throw the biggest party this town has ever seen. Only the most outrageous outfits will do!If I look down to an ocean of black at my wake, I swear I’ll haunt you all.Play my Inner Summer playliston a speaker at my funeral;turn up the volume as loud as it will goand dance.When I die, tell my children that they hung the moon and the stars in my sky.Tell them that they were the greatest thingI ever created.Tell them that I’ll see them again somedayin some other waybut that until then, they’ve got one hell on wheels kinda angel protecting them on the other side. When I die, cover the ground where I lay in wildflowers and scribbled lines of poetry. Put crow feathers, coyote hair, roses and honey next to my picture on the family altar. Leave the thorns on the stems. On Sunday mornings, pour a cup of black coffee on the Earth.Right there in my favorite spotwhere I spent so many afternoonswatching the birds dance and play. Plant butterfly bushes.Right there, where I held a ruby throated hummingbird in the palm of my hand and felt the pulse of God herself through a blanket of green feathers. Give my words away.Pass my journals down to my grandchildren;let my spells live on in the hands and hearts of the generations to come after me. Tear out all of my head in the oven poems written for that one lover that got awayand mail them to his door. Stamp two wolves on the envelope and tell him how I wished for so longthat we had more time. Tell him that I’ll see him in another life in a den underground. Let these pages tell a living story of each time I cradled heartbreak in my hands and still dared to love again.When I die, let our love keep you warmwhen sadness comes to call.Let grief in the front door (don’t make her search for the spare key)Let her soften your sharp edges.Let her crack you open and remind you to live your life like this is all going to end. Because one day, it does. If we’re lucky,this life will have been enough-a spark in the dark that lit a thousand flames. A story that will live on in the blood and bones of the ones we leave behind. When I die, may the life I lived be the flare that lit the matchof a torch called freedom.May it be the best story I ever birthedfrom the tip of my pen.May it be the permission slip to be bold.May it be the heart song that sets my lineage free.
- Peyton Michelle Bryant

More from Peyton Michelle Bryant ↓

• @mama.laloba on Instagram
• Peyton Bryant on Substack
• Her book, Feral Mother, Sovereign Woman, is out now

You can listen to me read another poem by Peyton, I don’t know who god is exactly but I know this, over on Instagram @rembrandts.cure

Playground David Park In the spheres the playgrounds are alive!Excitement pours forth in laughter and tears. What’s now and what’s nextis felt as the vibrations ripple through the air. Rising up through the trees to echo down the fading memory of childhood. In our time, this ever achingly brief blink, as of a child’s tear filled eye,we kneel to honor these moments. To honor the child, the Mother andthe Father. We, in our capacity to hold open our hearts, call forth blessings not bestowed on us. The singularity of eternity expands in the presence of our presence. Fear and sadness let loose, anger and pain softened. We rise to our next kneeling. Holding fast and fleetingly to unheard hymns. To the faintness of spirit gesturing us on towards sleep. We soften. We drink from the deep waters of our resiliency that is finding its way into parts of our healing. And, we sleep and dream in the spheres of our own playground. In the echoes of laughter

More from David Park ↓

• This poem is inspired by David’s years at Play Mountain Place, where children are free to learn

The Bleeding of Dreams Dean Charpentier for Andrea Gibson
“Who possesses a perfect soul?” — Rimbaud
I am reading Rimbaud onmy porch when I hear you have died. It is a thick July morning. The ceiling fan stirs a slow potion of lazy haze and the slow sun efforts to rise above the trees. The leavesare a muted green and gold. Tired birds sing.
My soul is patched and stitchedtogether, much of the mending amateurish and clumsy, but there is evidencehere too of your deft hand,your words woven into thin threads,sutures to stop the bleeding of dreams.
It occurs to me that you arethe answer to the poet’s rhetorical question:to remove the border between life and deathis to traverse the invisible horizon at the ocean’s end on a moonless night.
I am learning. I wield the delicate needle of your wisdom to sew up the hole you’ve left in my world, only to discover you’ve beaten me to it.

More from Dean Charpentier ↓

• @mrcharps on Instagram
• His most recent publication: two poems featured in B O D Y literary journal

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

Aug 25 - Unfinished Men by Miss Greenwood @_miss_greenwood_ on Instagram and YouTube. Miss Greenwood on Substack. Her book, PolyPoetry, is out now.

Aug 26 - a soul of no age by Elle Sirs @ellesirspoetry on Instagram and Tiktok. Her book, Girls: A Collection of Poems, is out now.

Aug 27 - What I love about women’s sports by Lauren Mantis @laurenmantis on Instagram. vers/atile by Lauren Mantis on Substack.

Aug 28 - Wild Acolyte by Jenny Beldame @jennybeldame on Instagram. Jenny Beldame on Substack.

Aug 29 - When two writers fall in love by Neeta S @pahadan.writes on Instagram.

Aug 30 - Paper Boats by Donna Burke Esgro @the_writing_harpsichord on Instagram.

Aug 31 - Propaganda I’m not falling forMaggie Devers Laws make us safeWar is necessary Our worth is determined by our usefulness Children must be taught Right and wrong
Productivity creates happiness Sugar is badBabies are dumb Intelligence can be measuredEmpathy makes you weak
No pain no gainThe world is a cruel placeI don’t deserve to be happy There’s more suffering than goodAnd art won’t save us.

More from Maggie Devers ↓

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

This poem first appeared in Flora/Fauna an internationally curated book of eco-poetry and photography, edited by Pete Taylor and published by Open Shutter Press

Paper Boats Donna Burke Esgro I am a rivercoiling, curvingflowing ore at first lightjumping the reeds, rushes, sedgestrailing silver ribbons of salmon
I run heavywith blood, tears, poisonbroken hearts of bearswispy with water hyacinths, damselflies
Listen to my ancient songsfrom glacial depthsto tarnished surface
Pay heed as I flood, surge, rageagainst jagged cliffscrack boulders and chisel stoneinto sacred chasms
Attend as I light the votive candlesof ten thousand transparent spawn
Kneel as you set sail your paper boatsfleeting as wings of time
I am a riverresolute as the constant starsmy blue veins coursing, coursingto the thumping heart of the sea

More from Donna Burke Esgro ↓

• @the_writing_harpsichord on Instagram