Evening of September 25, 2026

 

helium-rich breath 

into the eyes of 

the fire beast

~Richard Magahiz

 

 

 

 

old freaking pond   

at the bottom  

there were quasars   

~Richard Magahiz

to relearn the breath,    imbibe null space     

 

~Richard Magahiz

 

 

sliding scale wearing motley 

~Jerome Berglund 

 

 

blood stained 

bingo card

~Jerome Berglund

 

 

smart people 

are going to figure it out 

and then what

~Jerome Berglund

 

Netflix now

bullies back

on the news

~Biswajit Mishra

 

 

 

pedestrian crossing

all eyes

on cellphones

~Biswajit Mishra

winding road —

gauging the blind spots

of our second marriage

~Debarati Sen

cinnamon cat, orange eyed

meowing autumn

~Pegah Rahmati Nezhad

 

 

Zeitgeist

 

 

Tick.

Tick.

Tock.

Now.

No.

Next.

~Leonard Zinovyev 

 

 

 

Post-Dream

 

 

hope dies

at seven a. m.

 

~Leonard Zinovyev

 

 

 

 

The Geologist's Diary

granite

remembers 

the weight 

of the sky

~Leonard Zinovyev

 

 

 

on the way back home the lightness of my backpack

~Bipasha Majumder (De)

 

 

 

 

becoming a wildflower eternity

~Tejendra Sherchan

 

 

 

climate change
a short in the wiring
of landlocked birds

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

stockpiles 

we stack our prayers

by expiration date

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

 

escalation
one last chance to bow 

to birdsong

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer  

 

 

endless war  

here and now

hear and know 

~Hifsa Ashraf 

 

 

Afternoon of September 21, 2026

 

wabi sabi

for   get   ting

which is which

~Vishal Prabhu

 

 

 

kleptocurrency

stacking the coins

by bits

~Tré

 

the boys next door

at it again

four moons

~Tré

lab tests

I identify

as a pincushion

~Tré

They will find you 2:35 p.m. scrolling.

~Souvik Sarkar

for sanity chestnut trees in sunlight a moment of peace 

~Sarah Mahina Calvello

 

sun unfolding spiraling days back from the mess

~Sarah Mahina Calvello

afloat on quicksand

~Pegah Rahmati Nezhad

suffering from their suffering street cats

~Pegah Rahmati Nezhad

th(i)s too shall pass

~Pegah Rahmati Nezhad

aligning with the inclining hill half moon

~Tejendra Sherchan

what the war leaves behind shrouded moon

~Mona Bedi

 

deep grief the bed still unmade

~Mona Bedi

Sorrow's Mysteries

cannot be solved 

by Angela Lansbury

or the gun

on the table

they are only 

ended so

lean back relax

change the channel

~dan smith

Metaphors

tumble in the washing machine

of my brain and come out

all mixed up soggy and wrinkled

I try to put a different spin 

on them in the dryer that is my heart

and they do come out softer

and smoother if not new

or improved     

~dan smith

the devil

really

has plenty of

advocates

~Noah Berlatsky

the strait roars

a shuddering moon

smoked out

~Kavita Ratna

Record-breaking Nashville heat

ends two days before fall begins.

Red hot anger at

how we treat the earth.


~Jeffrey Taylor / Janelle Curlin-Taylor

unicorns, mermaids,

fairytale propaganda—

wander in the real

~Maximilien Hein

faint stretch marks

are all I have left 

of you 

~Marie C Lecrivain

I’ve

started

to remove

the paintings we hung

to showcase our relationship

but the blank spaces

were all lies

just like

us

~Marie C Lecrivain

Celebrate with smols poetry journal (September 22)

 

      

Submit your ultra-short poetry: https://smolspoetryjournal.blogspot.com/

Afternoon of September 18, 2026

   

war criminal first person plural

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

 

My heart 

is an open-faced sandwich, 

prepared with blackened avocado,

a half-grind salt

and the glistening shards 

of a dead woman’s dream.

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

 

eating my heart out   spirochetes 

~Kelly Sauvage Moyer

 

 

 

my AI buddy

does the heavy sifting

tells me what to believe

~Mark Gilbert

 

 

in my gorilla suit

I can’t solve the world’s problems

~Mark Gilbert

 

 

a plastic bag of doggy poo

words I would have wanted

never to have written


~Mark Gilbert

orangeness

be gone

with

ye

~Roberta Beach Jacobson

I caw at the crow

perched alone

atop the dead tree…

it plays deaf

and mute.


~Diane Webster

 

For a writer

a sentence handed down

would be a good thing.

~Jon Spencer

staring sidelong

at his reflection

in the laptop’s

dark theme,

 

the hunched scholar

lifts up the chair

gripping fistfully

its grilled rungs

~Marcus Ten Low

T'ai Chi —

balancing what refuses 

to settle 

~Debarati Sen

midnight stroll

ghosts of the past

walking in my footsteps


~Debarati Sen

Poetry

I have written her name

in countless ways mannered and colloquial

thru moonrise and sunset calm and storm.

Her name is poetry. She lives beyond the norm.

She walks in sunlight's madness.

Bestows her kisses oh, so sparingly.

The fleeting glimpses of her beauty nothing to compare. 

I'm left in the wreckage. Left in the burning air.

~dan smith

spirit birds and me kindred 

~Rupa Anand

MIRROR

There was a smudge on the mirror.

I wiped it with my sleeve.

With the smudge gone,

my wrinkles showed more clearly.

I looked for a moment,


~Young-jin Lee

THE SEAT

A seat opened up on the bus.

Two people spoke at once.

“Go ahead.”

“No, you go ahead.”

While they offered it to each other again,

a student who had just boarded

walked between them and sat down.


~Young-jin Lee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

beneath the moon

a small flower opens

no one sees

~image and text Manasa Reddy