Better Than Starbucks Poetry Free Verse July 2020

poetry magazine, poetry book collage, free verse

Free Verse Poetry Page with Suzanne Robinson

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Web of life

caught dead rotted

waiting to be consumed

never eaten by the architect

god is dead

eight-legged influence

ancient inept

hungry ghosts

web struck

follow the thread

the beast is nearing

not so near

the web is electric

DNA mind afflicted

Not quite 2 am.

I dreamed, I was dreaming again

the man in the window waved at me

the cat jumped in my lap

we shared a bowl of cereal

following nocturnal peppermint mists

she doesn’t make me feel dead like the rest

wandering through minefield catacombs

throwing away trivial childhood treasures

where haunted memories can no longer grasp

but only rage in the horror

a loss of control

it’s like I woke up

started to live again

for the first time

Mike Zone resides beyond the pines . . . the author of Void Beneath the Skin and A Farewell to Big Ideas, his work has been featured in Horror Sleaze Trash, Cajun Mutt Press, Outlaw Poetry, Piker Press, and Synchronized Chaos.

Featured Free Verse Poem (front page)

Brouillage

God is bent over

A little transistor radio

With a red RECORD button.

He wears coke-bottle glasses with thick black rims

And his fingers are stiff and bent

With arthritis.

God is trying to tune in.

It’s been so long, so far away,

And the signal is jammed.

God scrolls through white noise

And space junk, broken bits of satellites,

Spinning the dial back and forth

Through the loud, excessively violent sounds of Creation.

It was always a long shot — and we knew it.

With our expectations and demands,

Our constant discontent, the questioning . . .

Where do rivers flow?

Where do they begin?

Who owns them?

Why are there stars?

Are we alone?

Who owns us?

It’s no wonder God is scrolling

Through the sounds of space

And cannot find his children anymore.

His hearing is poor.

His hands shake a little.

He is an old God.

Camelia Gendreau lives in San Francisco with her young son and still marvels at the beauty of fog rolling in, even after a decade of watching it. She was born in Communist Romania and is an award-winning poet in her native language.

Toast

Politically correct and hella serious.

Bleh,

everyone is delirious.

A red square painted on a black piece of paper sold for a

million dollars and called aesthetic?

Meh,

I would rather get an IV of anesthetic.

Talk your shit,

but first,

lemme get lit.

The world can be too heavy to bear,

like the smoke in the lungs of a boar;

Even the starkest get put on a stick and eaten,

but not before looking plated and picturesque.

Trophy the body count;

Head on a wall,

head on a sequel.

What is the difference between a shirt that makes you suck it

in and a skirt that makes you cross your legs?

Nothing.

Might as well wear nothing when you are failing to effortlessly

look society’s definition of hot.

Hell,

might as well wear a mop;

It is what they do in Milan after the models eat carbs and

would die to cry excess lard.

Fuck duck fat;

It tastes like scoring the hottest guys in the frat,

but it makes you crap your pants.

Is lard even duck or did the school system fail at teaching me

how to make toast?

Toast sounds self explanatory until you make the French

version and get salmonella from the undercooked egg.

Been there,

done that.

My stomach is bombed more than Iran,

I probably have an internal tan.

I should probably get that checked,

but I will just save time and wait until climbing gets me decked

and skiing gets me wrecked.

I will just chill,

watch the world take pills of thrill.

One day at a time.

Writing verses with rhyme.

Dachel Fohne is a philosophical poet in 10th grade. In over two years

of sticking to her current niche, she has over three hundred pieces written. Common themes within her works include philosophy, psychology, and sociology.

Somehow

When he spoke to her

Vowels became music

While consonants

Stroked her hair and brow

Nouns and pronouns were one

And stopped time somehow

When she spoke to him

Words were from

An ancient dialect

And the images were painted

Alive in between them

All of this is so

But then the silence

She breathed him in

To a place within her

And when she exhaled

He was different somehow

She was different somehow

Paula Walker is interested in psychological development and altered states, and her poetry reflects these interests. She has published several poems in the UCLA literary journal, The UCLA Beat.

Insomnia

The crescent moon —

a hipbone splitting my bottom lip open —

says take off your Come to the Dark Side shirt.

Says come on take it off —

there’s no one outside to see

your torso with its heavy breasts as you

light up that cylinder of

your wish to cheat death

or maybe your wish to call it closer.

Which is it —

I do not know.

In the name of the hearts of the concrete walls,

in the name of my grandmother’s ghost

that sometimes comes as a black fullness

to freeze my hand reaching for the nightlight,

I swear I do not know.

Anca Rotar lives in Bucharest, Romania, and writes poetry. Her work has been published in several online magazines. You can find her on Instagram at ancarotar5.

Mirrormaze

Lost in a glass labyrinth each

echo a variant, a slight variant,

slightly variant, somewhere

an exit, opposite an entrance

somewhere just out just out where

just somewhere out of reach

Jean-Marie Romana is an accursed poet whose first poem was published when she was eight years old. She has a website at RomanaPoetry.com where she posts poems weekly. She lives in San Diego, California.

The Tulips Smell Like Week Old Meat

The tulips smell like week old meat.

The goats graze on ash and sycamore twigs,

Dousing rods for the dead,

Seeking out the empty parts,

The black hole fixed at the center of all things.

They huddle in the freezing cold,

The traitors of our hearts.

Minds.

Souls.

They ate the best of us

And now all that remains are

Skeletal birds

Struggling to fly.

One by one, we snip their wings.

No one will escape this frozen wasteland.

The tulips have decayed.

The sky leaks, slipping between cracks in reality,

Revealing chrome and glass.

I knew I’d been duped.

Lied to from the womb to the grave.

I look into the bottle;

20 pills left.

20 keys to abandoned bliss

And the land of smoke and mirrors.

Welcome to the Truth, baby.

Meet my big brother,

Destruction.

Take our hands and walk the

Halls of this mighty fortress.

The Kingdom of lost names.

“Who am I?”

I don’t know, but,

The tulips sure sing softly when

Sitting in the right light.

Cry for me.

Let me taste your tears,

Sweet like lemon drops and soma.

The truth lies at the bottom.

18.

19.

20.

The truth lies at the bottom.

Nothing holy here,

Just naked reality and broken hearts

Reflected in the eyes of newborns,

Tulip in each hand.

One green.

One yellow.

Smelling of week old meat.

Vanessa MacLellan writes short stories. Her first novel, Three Great Lies (2015), was published by Hadley Rille Books. She is a member of SFWA and Codex and 2016 graduate of the Viable Paradise workshop.

Choices

It’s cold in our converted garage

when sunlight goes behind the hill.

The cold gets in my bones

and not coffee,

not tea or a heating pad

will warm me—

Only the wrap of my lover’s arms

drives the chill out

and I look forward to the return

of his soft belly in my back,

strong arms around my chest

and warm breath in my ear.

But mostly

it’s what he doesn’t say

as we stand at the sink looking out

at raised planter beds

in shades of green, a double

white impatiens, hanging fuchsia,

hot pink azalea.

We sway together

like tall pines bending

in the onslaught of life,

as we try to twinkle,

as pine needles do and

try to survive living together

raising our children,

paying bills, swaying,

not breaking,

as we struggle

with the choices we make.

Sarah Ferris is published in Rattle, Ol’ Chanty, and the upcoming Lummox9. Her chapbook, Snakes That Dance Like Daffodils, was published in April, 2019. A novel is in the works. Sarah lives in Los Angeles with her family.

Miss Coffee Festival Queen 2020

My acupuncturist says

I need

to give up coffee

she costs me sleep

and drains my lifeblood

one pee

at a time

my acupuncturist

doesn’t know

my first thought

upon waking

is her creamy brown skin

followed by the taste

of her fingers

in my mouth

I have no delusions

I know what she did

to those subsistence farmers

in Guatemala

but she is my

morning drip

of joy

when the world outside

is gray and hopeless

my acupuncturist

knows nothing

about love.

Scott Waters lives in Oakland, California, with his wife and son. He has published previously in Loch Raven Review, The Adelaide Review, A New Ulster, The Pangolin Review, Amethyst Review, Ink in Thirds, Praxis, Santa Clara Review, and many other journals.

Floor Cleaner, United Hospital

Your machine so cumbersome,

so intrusive, how is it that you sail

past, virtually unnoticed?

Head lowered, slightly solemn,

you pass by families who nervously clutch

their Styrofoam cups, watching

and not watching the silent images

splashed across TV screens.

The low hum of your engine

is another kind of breathing here,

as welcome as any. Past the cardiac ward,

past the sleeping newborns

you glide, rounding the corners

with the grace of the well-rehearsed.

For you, the doors open without touch,

without obstruction to your path,

as the faces of those in elder care smile

their private smiles, from the distance

of a dozen lifetimes. Soon there will be

lunch, soon the daily gathering of

smokers in scrubs and pajamas

outside the loading docks.

Soon the afternoon will fold into itself.

For you, the workday goes on.

For there is always one more stretch of

floor to be covered, always

that which needs polishing once

more until it shines.

Greg Watson's work has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies. His latest collection is All the World at Once: New and Selected Poems. He is also co-editor with Richard Broderick of The Road by Heart: Poems of Fatherhood, published by Nodin Press.