One Poem Only

Remember Olivia Woods Your apples were as savory as sunlight I can’t remember the last time they seemed so sweetThe last time they were as red as rosesThe last time they smelt so greatI fear there is nothing left here anymoreI can't remember how long I've been hereOr when the maggots cameI can’t remember when the taste had changedFrom sweet to sourWhen the rose color began to rot When these sores appearedI fear there is nothing left of me hereOnly the husk of my bodyThe salt from my tearsAnd the maggots I've eaten Trying to remember the taste 

More from Olivia Woods ↓

• @owibia_writes on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube
• She is currently writing the first draft of her novel, What Remains Of Us.

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.

Sep 29 - Lebensabschnittspartner by Sarthak Mukherji @sarthaksays on Instagram and TikTok.

Sep 30 - Taemong by Kimberly McAfee @writerpoetkim on Instagram. The Savior/Shadow Principle: A Self-Help Technique and Philosophy Using Archetypes is out now along with, The Savior and the Shadow Queen: A Fantastical Tale Told Through Sequential Poems, the poetry collection and companion work to The Savior/Shadow Principle. This poem is published in her chapbook, AmerAsian: My Journey to Becoming Whole as a Mixed Korean-American.

Oct 1 - Grapes by Frankie Reed @frankensteins.curios on Instagram. She is co-curator of Flesh and Parchment, a Liverpool based zine and live poetry event celebrating queer and neurodivergent creativity.

Oct 2 - Silver Filigree by Travers Charron @traverscharron on Substack. His tanka and haiku collection, Glass Shadows, is available now.

Oct 3 - i am not a poet by Kole Kealey @kolekealeypoetry on Instagram. Her book Sunflowers Sting: Where Poetry Meets Boudoir will be out soon.

Oct 4 - Bloodfruit by Abby Zhang @abbyz.320 on Instagram. She is the Cofounder and Editor in Chief of The Sixth House a youth-led lit magazine, based in Montréal.

Oct 5 - Kick ItMaggie DeversI’m giving up smokingEven though I’ve yet to startNicotine makes me queasy But I wanted an impossible goal all the same
So I’ve flushed my non-existent cigarettes And slapped an imaginary patch on my armTo face each day bravely without somethingI’ve yet to grow accustomed
In the quest for a lie to be smug about,A make-believe deprivationTo tide me overUntil that next craving hits.

More from Maggie Devers ↓

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

Bloodfruit Abby Zhang Say it, like you used to peel blood oranges with your teeth, Ma.The flesh splits soft and shivering under the pressure,its rind stuck under your fingernails. Juice spilling—licking your lips with the same golden, bitter heat.Let the pith cling to your hands, burrow there like spoiled lace in the creases of your knuckles, a ghost of a daughter you couldn’t bear to name.
Say it like an apology that came a heartbeat too late, sinking into mildew buried beneath nailbeds, sour and white.Too deep to name. Too guilty to believe.You can’t call it loveif the flower doesn’t survive the soil and dies trying—You leave your shadow in the freezer beside the frostbitten peas,between the birthday cake we never finishedand that bag of lentils you said you'd cook someday.Your laugh long forgotten in the laundry with the whites,now pink and fraying open at the edges.
I preserved your almost in girlhood, placed it beside the sunflower headI dried and nailed to the wall as a lesson in achein symmetry in what bends too far trying to face the sun. The ache is old enough to leave home but it lingers—
In the smell of citrus and ammonia,in the violence in wanting something at the exact moment it curdles. The way rot hides sweet and ruin arrives tender.The citrus flesh, bruised, half-fermented, half-forgiven,slips in your palm, limp and leakingthrough the fault lines as if even the fruit knew I wasmouth you left empty in late-night arguments,over half-cold half-servings of tear-salted rice.
Say, Ma, you didn’t mean to ruin me.Just once. Say it even if it’s a lie—I’ll take the lie. I’ll eat it whole.I’ve survived on less.I’ll take the ghost back into my chestand fold up her silences, moon-heavy.Wrap her in the napkin you forgot to placeat my side of the table.

More from Abby Zhang ↓

• @abbyz.320 on Instagram
• She is the Cofounder and Editor in Chief of The Sixth House a youth-led lit magazine, based in Montréal.

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

i am not a poet Kole Kealey i touched rock bottom before i ever touched apen, so do not call me a poet
call me your mother tongue,
burning the back of your throat making yourblood boil, a taste you can’t quite name butrhymes with copper and death, with misery anddespair, the taste of childhood meant forsomeone else, one you didn’t experience butthrough the rose-colored lenses of your brokenheart tethered to a string being dragged throughbusted up concrete, through fragments of brokenglass and shattered dreams
call me salvation
on a Sunday morning when your words nolonger have meaning and your bones ache withdesire for the mundane, when your blood runsblue with the lack of oxygen left pumpingthrough your body, when your tears run dry andyour legs stop moving forward, face down in thedirt you dug up for your grave
call me down on your knees
begging for mercy from your god while shelaughs in your face saying “i told you so,” saying,“fix your own damn mess because i gave you thechallenge but i did not tell you to fight,” saying,“fuck you and your salvation, you deservenothing but rock bottom, babe, fight and clawyour way back,” saying, “blood, sweat, and tearsmean nothing if you aren’t on bloody mud-soaked knees begging for my mercy”
call me the truth
that runs down your thighs when your razorscars bust open with hatred and the desire tomeet Daughter Death, the knife blade stuck inyour ribs, the broken handles of lust and love ofAphrodite’s weapon, rising from the ashes ofLilith, from the darkness of Persephone, and theblood stains on your white satin sheets
call me shame
on the bathroom floor of a bar leaning over atoilet because you thought that sixth drink wasenough to lessen the pain of not having enoughwords to describe the heartache you feel in yourbones, no matter how hard you try to put aname to it
call me resurrection
on a Monday morning when you find the wordsto give that voice in your head a goddamnedname different from the demons in your soul,different from shame, disgust, anger, or fear,different from the names you hear in the mirror,different from the horror you see in thereflection on your mother’s face
call me your mother tongue, salvation, truth, orshame, call me mercy or even resurrection if youmust, but do not call me a poet. i am simply thepain you brought to life with your still-beatingheart

More from Kole Kealey ↓

• @kolekealeypoetry on Instagram
• Her book Sunflowers Sting: Where Poetry Meets Boudoir will be out soon.

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

Silver Filigree Travers Charron Before the day unbuttons its sky,while morning’s breath still clings to the grass, I find it—a single web,threaded between two branches, a silver filigreetrembling in dew.
Each strand,so thin I dare not blink, holdsthe soft breath of the waking earth.No grand cathedral could matchthis tender architecture—woven by instinct,lit by grace,enduring the weight of a single drop without breaking.
I stop,breath caught, knowing I am the first to come this way.The trail is laced shut,a gate spun in secret hours.
I hesitate,a clumsy giant before a sacred thing.For a moment,I stand—small, unworthy—aching to preserve what I must undo.
“I’m sorry,”I whisper,before the spell is torn.
Behind me,the broken strands sway,gathering dew like tears,and the mute earth folds over the wound.
The web is gone,but the reverence remains—clinging to my skinlike mist,like memory

More from Travers Charron ↓

• @traverscharron on Substack
• His tanka and haiku collection, Glass Shadows, 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 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

Grapes Frankie Reed we hung together —tight, green,not yet sweet.small things,skin against skin,no space for air.
you leanedinto every breeze.I held still.neither of us saidwhat we knewabout weight.
we ripened unevenly.you softened.I didn’t.
the stalk grew thinbetween us.not broken —just tired.
when I fell,there was no sound.just grass.just air.just me,not where you were.
you stayed.you always would have.still facing the lightlike it was enough.
if I’d stayed too,maybe we’d have gonequietly —turned dark,sank sweetinto ourselves.
but I tasted the sourbefore it came.and leftbefore you noticed.

More from Frankie Reed ↓

• @frankensteins.curios on Instagram
• She is co-curator of Flesh and Parchment, a Liverpool based zine and live poetry event celebrating queer and neurodivergent creativity.

You can listen to me read another poem, titled Skin, by Frankie over on Instagram @rembrandts.cure

Taemong Kimberly McAfee After Li-Young Lee*
My mother had a dream of me,when she and I were one.She dreamed of a snakecoiled on her belly.It was her taemong, her conception dream, of me.
How Adam and Eve were so deceived!A wily snake, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.Introducing suffering on this earth.A snake condemned to writhe about the world on its belly.
I was strange when I was young;a half-Korean girl in a place with no other Asians or mixed people.How the other children were so deceived!I was no gorgon!I was a human child — just like them.
I once had a dream,where I warred against an amphisbaena.One of its heads was bigger than the other,and I managed to avoid the larger head’s bites, and crushed it with a rake into the earth.The victory was short-lived,as the smaller head bit me with vengeance.I then killed the monster,but was horribly injured in the process.
The great Cleopatra, ruler of Egypt,left this world with the bite of an asp.After I awoke from that strange dream,successes and failures came,the pains brought by the striking bites of life.
I became a new creature,my skin shed to reveal my nature within:I am a Poet.I writhe about on my belly,hunting for experiences,hunting for words, to birth creations.Satiating the hunger within.My dream.
Could this be what the taemong foretold?
*Inspired in part by Li-Young Lee’s poem titled, Water. It is part of his debut poetry collection, The Rose.

More from Kimberly McAfee ↓

• @writerpoetkim on Instagram
• The Savior/Shadow Principle: A Self-Help Technique and Philosophy Using Archetypes is out now
• along with, The Savior and the Shadow Queen: A Fantastical Tale Told Through Sequential Poems, the poetry collection and companion work to The Savior/Shadow Principle
• This poem is published in her chapbook, AmerAsian: My Journey to Becoming Whole as a Mixed Korean-American

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

Lebensabschnittspartner Sarthak Mukherji Lebensabschnittspartner.Life - section - partner.A gorgeous German distillationof something about as mystifyingas splitting an atom and the violence that follows, the wondrous shine.
Have you ever sat with your hand on your sidecovering a pain you can't quite understandbut as soon as you are diagnoseda relief washes over you as this phantom is lassoed by a definition.Here is Lebensabschnittspartner for your wound.They were your whole heart, your soul matebut only till the expiration date.They were before the March and April of you.The right person for the time, the better loved and lost rather than never loved at all.Exactly who you needed to push youand pull you, kicking and screaming, into exactly who you needed to be now.Your Lebensabschnittspartner.
Come lie in me, they said.I shall be the snow to soothe youbefore the spring of you rolls forward.I will be gone but I shall water the earth you will bud from, whether I want to or not.I was the object of your ire,thank me for the scars you acquired.For the way I burned you so utterly.For lessons you learned not later but early.I brought you to the brink of the wire,gave you the sating drink you desiredbut oh, did I make your poor heart stir,call me your Lebensabschnittspartner.
You breathed them for days, months, years.They sat in your lungs, ran the circuit of your body from legs to ears,lapped it with their tonguebut now they’re just somebodyand you're not as young.You look at the clock of your life,the way it ticks forward.You can't deny the gears behind the face of it,every misshapen one.The way they clambered into place,day after foreign day,amongst the mechanism of your being.Just another cogbut a whole new chain completed.Is there anything as subtleyet obvious as growth?
But you were there once, together.Not three gears apartbut arm to goose pimpled armin a garden staring up at borrowed starlight.Behind a house you both loved, sometimes lamented,for its warm corners and mouldy windows.For the space it gave you,the way it filled that space with bills.You eventually left home behind for work,or after you broke something soft between those wallsand ran from the wreckage,too much to clean.You left because calling a house your homedoes not qualify as rentand all the real money was spent.Take pictures in all the rooms you forgot to in the midst of contentment,in the midst of surviving.Every room a living room, well lived rooms.Your Lebensabschnittshaus.
The beloved chaos that is your dogjoined you on the deck, nuzzled your neckjust after lifting a leg by your one surviving plant.They do not gaze at the light in the skyjust at you, as if you gave a tender glow.Your dog taught you patience, that after a day of reigning in and nippingyou will still abstain from moving just to avoid losing the pressure ofsomething using you as a bed.You are restfor a few more years, for the rest of theirs.Their mild weight stays in your laplong after. The one command they knew well,stay.Your Lebensabschnittshundpissing on your Lebensabschnittspflanze.
In that moment, surrounded by the currentness of your life,an Abschnitt of your life,do not worry about the next.Accumulate with borrowed starlight.Fight that moment,embrace it,weep for its passing,for what it brought you and chiseled away.You have no idea how long it will last,how it made you, you.

More from Sarthak Mukherji ↓

• @sarthaksays on Instagram and TikTok

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.

Sep 22 - "a walk from my Eve to my Lilith" by Eva Garg @thelifedraft on Instagram.

Sep 23 - Nikomis by Shelby Larkin @calamityverses on Instagram.

Sep 24 - Ash and Gardens by Jessica Sorya @jessicalynnvision on Instagram. Her book, Pinch, Breathe, Burn, is out soon.

Sep 25 - Clouds Have Always Been Women by Nanki Kandhari @therhymemuse_nanki on Instagram. Her book, The Girl Who Spoke In Starlight, is available now.

Sep 26 - Winds of reverie by Philippa Drake @drakephilippa on Instagram. Her book, Mystic Meanderings, is out now.

Sep 27 - Cliff by Ofelia ferch Rhos @ferch_writes on Instagram.

Sep 28 - Born ArtistMaggie DeversShe created her own works for an exhibition tonight Unaware of traditional artistic practicesOnly sweet, innocent bliss of the raw and ragged.
She had cut up her stuffie and used the skin fabricTo fashion a heart emblazoned with maker, tape and assorted gems—If Tracey Emin were six and slightly more destructive.
Another was on paperAnd the third a juxtaposition of disparate mediaAll with the unifying theme:Portrait of a Girl with a Dog.
Later they curl up on my bellyAs I recline watching videos ofThe Artist at Two—Smashing all the colors of play-dough together,Her stuffed dog tucked under her armAt ease in creation, another day to play.

More from Maggie Devers ↓

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

Cliff Ofelia ferch Rhos Salt spattered on chalk carves out the rough-hewn shape of thought:the cliff is a canvas where
they escape me, and become mammoths on sandstone, scattered by stick-figured spears.
Magpies perch listless as dew and wing their words over the sea.The water ripples their birdsong agon.
Clouds crowd in anticipation-I am the heavens surrogate on earththey would rapture me, and leave
the cliff empty as a forgotten age.The stones know no different.I am their occupying army.
I kick the stones,kick the moss,kick the cliff loose
so that landslipped rocks chase down the incline.The waves retreat-
capricious tide.Arrogant as weeds.Pretentious petrichor.
Dappled sun on dimpled seareaches over the horizonlike the old joke.

More from Ofelia ferch Rhos ↓

• @ferch_writes 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