POETS PLACE
MAY EDITION 2025
Hello friends!! Thank you for joining us!!! I am lucky to be part of the village of friends and like minded people here and everywhere that want to keep alive our freedoms in America. Yes we are all people of the same flesh and blood. But for some, not of the same mindset. We must continue to resist and pay attention to what’s happening around us, especially in our country. Our country, for now. Do not, I repeat do not, get sucked in to doomsday theories. It’s breaking our hearts, but not our collective minds. We will tear down what the White House will have built, but maybe not as soon as we’d like. Trump’s destruction of America has to hurt those on the Right personally. Like when Nancy Reagan, anti gay movement’s son came out gay- it hit home. I truly believe that the people holding his strings are greedy narcissists and they will become too engorged. And thus implode. And, we will be there to witness it.
We all, in this country and the world, deserve respect from thy neighbor. Them, they who put that authoritarian system in power, do not practice what they preach. So we must do what they cannot. WE must have integrity with our word, have the courage to ask questions and do our best everyday, even when we feel like hurting someone. When the day is done and you lay down in bed for sleep, ask yourself if you did your best that day. If not, well then tomorrow, hopefully, is another day to try. Keep the faith that we will win out!
Today, POETS PLACE readership is 250 eyes a month!!! Look at what our best generates!!
Here we go!!
Love, Linda :0)
In protest of the new fascist authoritarian regime
By Linda Kaye
Soon the poets will be censored from expressing free speech
Soon some of us will summon death to escape the horrors of life
In protest I remain in my country as did the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova writing in secrecy under constant threat of search and arrest during Stalin’s terror
My way of thinking my values as an American my rights my freedoms are no longer popular
Idiocracy has replaced Democracy
We will no longer be the land of the free
And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea
Trauma
By Ronald Carrillo
My trauma
I release you
The boy anticipated
Meeting his father
For the very first time
He was soundly
Rejected no rhyme
No reason
This was his trauma
That he carried
Like a cancer
All during his
Innocence
It metastasized
To his heart
And brain
Brewing like rain clouds
With thunderstorms
Lighting strikes
Throughout his soul journey
No remission
From a father’s rejection
No contrition
For the hatred lump
In his psyche
Realizing this trauma
Was defeating him
He reckoned
To dismiss the man
Who dismissed him
He could no longer
Carry the cancerous
Baggage of his youth
It would be a draw
He estimated
Even his hatred
He would not give
To this ghost man
That haunted him
His truce
Only lasted until
The next torrential
Rain storm
Orphan tears
Self-inflicted
Wounds of the soul
His mental patricide
Did not work
He would have to
Come to terms
With this cruel
Thorn stuck deep
In his side
Tempering his judgement
For a man
He only met once
Finding a conflictive
Forgiveness
Gentle raindrops of absolution
Falling on a boy’s porous soul
His man’s body absorbing
Understanding then releasing
A cancerous umbilical cord
Waiting for the return
Of sunlight to grow
His spirit again
Ronald G. Carrillo is a native Lincoln Hts Angelino, living in Eagle Rock and a retired LAUSD educator and influencer. He writes of his passion and rebirth into the golden age of living. He has been writing since high school and was initially influenced from the songwriters, Keith Reid, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, Neil Young.
Opened Slowly
By Anna Broome
Gasping, shocked at being seen
from some high frequency
An emotional pole—
If this is serious
If there is too much change
If affectionately committed—
Behavior is as far inward
As constituent molecules
An impression of poetry.
Trembled and felt separate
Reappeared strangely
Returned and intended
Childhood passions in billions
Closest attachment
Details in Nature
In mysterious code
Of dense metaphor
Dolloped with aggression:
Closed eyes
Peerless bones
Accomplishments— hands smoothed back
A mournful anthem
Precision of outlines
A bribe on a fake mouth
All have fallen on privileges
— a surplus of ignorance
A certain despair
Being found out
Human existence isn’t a failure
Seemingly always wrong
So say trees in limbo
Stripped naked
Seen with their own eyes
Such a pity
As well-behaved nudity
All the living fossils hanging in the air
Anna Broome is a Los Angeles poet who has published in various anthologies and journals including Acts of Light, LA Art News and Spectrum 17. Broome performs for local troupes including Public Works Improvisational Theatre’s Storyphile at venues including Beyond Baroque and Art Share LA. She produces and hosts the Anna Broome Room, a monthly, free-to-the-public live-performance art show for the last ten years at Art Share LA. Broome studied poetry at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington with Pulitzer Prize nominee Michael White. “Women Napping with Animals”, her collaborative project with Ted Meyer, was published in 2014. Her first collection of poetry, “Orthodox Bats”, was published in 2019. Her second collection “Sex Ed: A Prerequisite at Columbine” was published in 2022. Her new collection “An Irregular Bone” is currently under consideration for the Wilder Prize.
Pig Male Aeon
A Prose Poem by Alex S. Johnson
He works his fingers through the white clay. Quick dry, air dry. Moist. A nice slightly oily feel, a sheen on his fingertips. Sexual but in a doll way. Only he makes sense to himself these days...what would be the sexuality, not of a sex doll, but of a Barby...those things were probably lethal...Klaus Barby Doll Killers. He felt extraordinarily crowded in. He sits there and he just goes to sleep, But the thing is, when you're on your way out, you're on your way out. Can you keep people around when their parts are falling apart? Sometimes just breathing feels like a challenge, a burden. He doesn't want to be here, at least, that is...life is very long, like the poet says. He discovered an early story from a Goth fiction icon in an old issue of Carpe Noctem magazine...a bit disturbing...why are people surprised by old age, decay, death...arises...falls...goes by the wayside. He doesn't feel that ripe sexual urge anymore. These days it's only the most violent fantasies of things done to him as a woman that do it for him...'twas always thus, I suppose. He wanted to be Liza Minelli, didn't sit too well with his kindergarten teacher wife when he spent at least as much time with Pat Califia's columns for The Advocate as he did her...but she got hers, that was for damn sure.
It wasn't supposed to be anything, an excuse, a way out, a way to hide.
These days he's taken up sculpting...his fingers run through the memories, the tits, the shapely curves, the warmth between her thighs, the electric connection...now it just feels sloppy and obvious, like two big animals going for it...like cattle or wolverines...shit, this was supposed to be a nice, delicate, sensitive, nuanced, imagistic poem about life and death and mortality and whatever the fuck...it was prompted by his attempts to become Rodin in his late middle age...where did everybody go, his best friend was dead of a Fentanyl OD, that was five years ago. He had often felt back in the 90s the sheer absurdity of staying alive, but had desperately fought those feelings because hungry to make it. He sold articles to magazines like Metal Hammer for good money, had had short stories in a Penguin Random House dark erotica anthology alongside his underground heroes...but twenty years later he'd done everything he ever wanted to do in spades, and then some, and there was a wide gap and nothing's cunt and eternity to look forward to...FUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT as the saying had it...old lovers appeared through the chinks of daylight that slipped through the clay, as though the sculpture in progress was revealing something...dark, twisted, vast, complex, hammers of deep time banging
incessantly...Lovecraft was right, you really didn't want to correlate the contents of your mind...at least...he wished he could sink into the spaces between where you lived and where you died, elbows in the valleys, eyes swarming with galaxies like a flock of seabirds...involute cinema, and it all goes black...flickers on an old TV set...grief hysterical, the deep groans, the spasms the sobs deep within...why death...why death...why death..why life at all.
Alex S. Johnson's writing career was given a huge boost in 2012 when Ellyn Maybe encouraged him to develop The Death Jazz into a complete prose and poetry collection and Richard Modiano, then Executive Director of Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, invited him to be a featured speaker. With numerous publications over a 30-year career, including HWA Poetry Showcase III, a dark erotica story in a Penguin Random House anthology, CUT UP!, 13 Mynah Birds, Cease, Cows, The Original Van Gogh's Ear, poeticdiversity, Misfits, L.A. Poetry Place, CUT UP!, and many more. His work has appeared alongside such luminaries as Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, Joe Hill, Poppy Z. Brite and Ramsey Campbell, and has nominated for a Best of the Net award. Johnson lives in Carmichael, California with his family.
the daffodil
by linda m. crate
and tiny cherry blossoms
remind me now
is the season of blooming
and growth,
so despite my fears
i am stepping into
the fertile soil of becoming;
it's not always easy—
growth can be painful
in a world resistant
to change,
but i cannot remain in these
stagnant waters;
i cannot remain in a place
without hope—
so i dive
into the soil
and pray that maybe
i will find healing
there.
Linda M. Crate (she/her) is a Pennsylvanian writer whose poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has thirteen published chapbooks, the latest being: faerie witch queen (fae corps publishing, April 2025). Linda has four full length poetry collections and a photography collection book. Linda is also the author of the novellas Mates (Alien Buddha Publishing, March 2022), Managing Magic (Alien Buddha Press, September 2022), and The Queen's Son (Alien Buddha Publishing, December 2023). Her first short story collection King Quinlin (Alien Buddha Publishing, March 2024) was published this spring. Her debut haiku collection in these ancient veins was published in Spring of 2024 (Alien Buddha Publishing, May 2024). Her latest hybrid collection mantle lake (Alien Buddha Publishing, February 2025) is a mix of photography and poetry.
I KNOW
4-3-2022
2:25 a.m.
By Mary Cheung
Now I know how my mom felt...
The day I left home.
And travel almost 400 miles away.
To start my new life...
Excited to begin.
An unknown path.
Without a plan, without a place to live.
Without any savings except $200. to my name.
And a strong desire to study and work..
Open to possibilities..
And none of it scared me.
It didn't seem daunting.
And as you departed home...
It wasn't great.
A huge lump of sadness..
That I was losing my buddy,
my friend,
My child of 23 years in my house, our home.
23 years of hugs and kisses,
of comfort and love ...
it’s too hard to let go.
Yet that's exactly what I must do.
Let go, let fly free and be..
who she is meant to be.
Still, it hurts.
And I am reminded of how,
My mom cried the day that I left.
And how she would plead to me every time.
That I should come home,
to be closer to her.
Close enough to reach out and hug.
Close enough to share meals and such.
I get it now.
Because I am standing in the same place that she did.
Wishing and hoping the same things for Samantha.. that she did for me.
All the while my heart breaks a little with each moment.
Sleep eludes me.
because I think of all the things that have passed between my mom and me.
And I can't help but to notice the irony of how I am in my mother's shoes now.
I love you Sammy, more than anything in the whole wide world.
And I am so torn and tortured by the,
what must be and what I desire.
For life to rewind and for you to be 3 again, to be 9, to be 12, to be 16,
to be 18, to be my buddy and friend.
For me to be your entire world and the one you love the most.
I just want to climb into your bed,
hold you and snuggle like when we were younger and carefree!
But I know I know,
That I must let go.
So that you can become what you are destined to be.
Mary Cheung is a multi-disciplinary artist. She has been creating art since she was young. Grew up the youngest in a family of eight. She came to America at the age of 2 and grew up in San Francisco. Attended American school during the day and Chinese school at night.
Mary has an AA degree in Fashion Design and a Best Costume Design Award from the NAACP. She often creates costumes for her art narratives and creations. Sometimes building the sets as needed.
Mary was the Producer for the Santa Rosa Spring Festivals 2011 and 2012, which incorporated live performances and festival games.
She produced the EVOLUTION Music and Arts event in 2013.
LUSCIOUS, Music Art, Live Body paint Art Event IN 2014 followed by
OPEN FLOOR IMPROV EXPERIMENT whose purpose was to engage the community, encourage local business growth and artists involvement. Her real passion and drive come from being able to engage the community while bringing hope, healing, joy, and human connection.
It is her goal to be able to continue to do this while making an impact on society’s values and thinking.
“I hope that I can be a role model for others to find their own true voice in life through my art."
"Songs of the Fruit & Nuts”
By Michelle Smith
Banana Splits with walnuts
and cherries, dressed up in her
wanton chocolate syrup and
his willful whipped cream.
"It's such a freaky scene."
Cradled in a crystal glass
dessert bowl, a Banana Split
of our erotic dreams:
Two spoonful and open wide,
there's enough to share.
Oh the ice cream is melting
so is somebody's body suit,and
tights,sans underwear.
"It's getting hot in here,
so take off all your clothes."
Unpeel me please.
Hot bothered and buttered.
I'm a hummingbird in
feathered flight, tasting nectar
from our slip, sip, and slide.
Come and take a drink,
remember not to divide that
Banana split into my moist
chocolate cake. "Free Falling"
love and lust our mouths and lips,
"Ain't No Mountain High Enough"...
to keep me from you.
" Take the ribbon from your hair. "
I'm floating on "Cloud 9" now.
The Banana split has me wide open
for the next act of
"Blood Sugar Sex Magic"
We're sizzling like Red Hot
Chili Peppers. All we can say
in unison is "Whoa",
we're " In Between
the Sheets" for
"I Can't Get Enough Of You Babe”
Michelle Y. Smith is a Los Angeleno native and is like Stretch Armstrong, an action figure with many life, love, and laughter roles: My heart is mother to an autistic son who is my more than my pride and joy. Sister, aunt, grand aunt, cousin, & friend. My patience is my employment am a CNA and advocate for the developmentally and elderly disabled community. My drive is published poetry in Love Letters, Acid Verse II, and Just for the People by Los Angeles Poet Society Press; anthologies and zines by DSTLArts; and Four Feathers Press zines and http://saturdayafternoonpoetry.blogspot.com. My poem, "There is a Sunflower" published in June was nominated by the Four Feathers Press PDF/Print Publication Awards.
CANNIBALS
By David Fewster
A vicarious joy is
Feeding pigeons in the square
Carcasses of greasy fried chicken
From the deli across from the office
Bread may be the staff of life
But it is quickly eaten and digested
While the breastbone of a fellow fowl
Is picked and fought over
For an entire lunch hour
The bones even seem bleached at the finish
Time to go back to work
David Fewster is a poet and musician living in Tacoma, WA. Some of his current work can be seen on the 4 Feather Press blogspot.
Prologue:
Sonny Tristan wrote lyrics and laid them before the altar of our robot overlords. His words were entered into a song making AI (suno.com). He then burnt sage, sacrificed an old monitor, the kind with the big trapezoid back, put his forehead down on a power strip, and asked his verse be put to music, preferably in a modern folksy style. He felt a small twinge, which may have been an electrical response from our compugods, or an old bingo injury, the result of always standing too exuberantly whenever G’s got called.
You can listen to the song, “Spelled Clearly” here and read the lyrics below:
Spelled Clearly
By Sonny Tristan
Witchy heartbreaker
Spellbound lover
Caught in your eyes
Cloaked in your covers
You're why they say people Fall…
in love
The most dangerous place to be is In….
love
My heart skips
You go for my soul
I want to give in
You take control
You're why they say people Fall…
in love
The most dangerous place to be is In….
love
Witchy heartbreaker
Who can I blame?
Never mind my mind
Never be the same
You're why they say people Fall…
in love
The most dangerous place to be is In….
love
Witchy heartbreaker
Spellbound lover
My broken caretaker
Never have another
Sonny Tristan started writing poetry when the world shut down. He spent decades artist adjacent, works daily using words, and has a lot of rules he doesn't follow himself. His poetry is published in bathrooms nationwide, mostly on the caulk between the tiles.
The Genie of Darkness
By Jackie Chou
-In response to all the recent senseless murders
Where do you hail from?
Ominous are the tides
that have birthed you
onto the shore.
And the hands
that uncorked the bottle
where your smoky soul
has risen.
You have wielded a knife
to plunge into hearts.
Now it's time to pay
for the ungranted wishes
of the dead you killed.
Jackie Chou (she/her) is a writer from Southern California who has two collections of poetry, The Sorceress and Finding My Heart in Love and Loss, published by cyberwit. Her poem "Formosa" was a finalist in the Stephen A DiBiase Poetry Prize. She also has poems published in Synchronized Chaos, The Ekphrastic Review, Panoply Zine, Alien Buddha Zine, and Spillwords.
Marina Claire- Marina’s work is a constant manipulation of the physical: metal, paint, ink, and bodies. Plato’s inquiries into the timeless perfection of imagined geometric shapes, and into how geometries might lie behind all nature, inspire her to make objects that (though necessarily imperfect because they will never have perfect straight edges, and must eventually erode) tease our minds toward the perfect. The objects she makes — always imperfectly embodying perfection — ask viewers to drift within that gap between the non-physical, conceptual realm and our tangible, sensory experience.
In 2024, Marina was awarded roles as Etcheve Rising Star Fellow and an Ellsworth Resident at ArtShare LA. She has exhibited work nationally and in Germany, including the Maryland Federation of Art, NRM Gallery, Sleep Center (New York, NY), Sidestreet Arts, ADX, Past Lives, Blind Insect (Portland, OR), Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Echo Park Art Gallery, bG Gallery, and TAG Gallery (Los Angeles, CA). She holds degrees in Fine Arts and Philosophy from Parsons School of Design and Eugene Lang College in New York. She studied sculpture with Katja Strunz on a scholarship to Universität der Künste Berlin. She is currently fabricating museum exhibition displays and making ideas physical through paintings in Los Angeles.
Hypnotic Dreams
Poem by Marieta Maglas
A change winds in and around
the spirals of life
and through a few notched vents
of those exhausted buildings' fabric~
sprung structures being
like in a crush of rocking bodies.
Many offbeat marionettes
search for jobs.
They look like they're ready to rock.
Any endless crisis becomes
an odd reality~
a harmful non-self against self.
Hypnotic dreams assassinate the future.
No love can live
in an infected heart,
especially when the phagocytic cells
cannot have a healthy structure
to help immunity.
For sure, freedom doesn't exist.
It looks nothing like it must be~
an illusion for those
thinking that they can do
everything they think is right.
All the things around
slowly lose their meaning.
Maybe we will continue to existwhile rotating around the sun.
This is an essential movement.
Always the body needs the soul to live~
never vice versa.
In an ideal world,
all the voices can be heard~
pressured substance making waves.
Songs are like flowers flowing
along with a river wave,
a river of change.
Sometimes it bends backward~
to be existent.
Is this a necessity?
Marieta Maglas resides in France, where she pursues dual careers as a poet and a doctor. The MockingOwl, Roost, Lothlorien Journal, Verse-Virtual, Masticadores Canada, Silver Birch Press, Kingfisher Poetry, Dashboard Horus, Coin-Operated Press, Mayari Literature, Synchronized Chaos, Al-Khemia Poetica, PentaCat Press, Journal of the Akita International Haiku Network, and others published her poems in anthologies like Near Kin: A Collection of Words and Art Inspired by Octavia Estelle Butler, The Cardinal Anthology Vol. 3, and Ain’t no Deadbeats Around Here. She is the author of the poetry book entitled Cubic Words.
Outdoor Nap
By Anna Mathai
I dreamt we fell asleep,
In a park, talking,
With my head buried,
In the turn of your arm.
Anna Mathai is an Indian-American multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, California. She frequently uses Venetian plaster and other plasters in her work. Her abstract works reference both the natural world and our internal ‘landscapes’ of emotion, blurring both real and intangible. She often touches on concepts of femininity, rebellion, and otherness, with a touch of mysticality, in her figurative work. By pairing her writing with her visual art practice, Mathai creates an extra dimension in which viewers can experience her art and a loose construct to guide their own internal process of understanding. Mathai was born in the UK, but spent most of her childhood in the rural Deep South, which heavily influenced the concepts she explores in her art. Her work has been awarded, published, and exhibited globally. You can find her at www.byMathai.com or on Instagram @byMathai.
Thank you for joining us! We will continue to host writers and poets of all genres.
Please submit your written work to: lindakayepoetry@icloud.com
and include a short bio
Linda Kaye writes poetry, curates poetry, produces films, spoken word and art events and produces a poetry column POETS PLACE for the online publication LAARTNEWS throughout the Los Angeles area. She recently exhibited her first piece of artwork! A photograph taken in Waikiki, was represented at the Los Angeles Makery gallery’s REFLECTION:RESILIENCE show curated by the Arroyo Arts Collective.
Linda’s poetry events have included several summer poetry salons, and shows at the Los Angeles Makery, the Align Gallery, 50/50 Gallery, Gold Haus Gallery, Ave 50 Gallery and Rock Rose Gallery in Highland Park. The Manifesto Café in Hermon, Pilates and Arts studio in Echo Park, and Native Boutique, Zweet Café in Eagle Rock, The Los Angeles Makery in Little Tokyo. And at the Neutra Institute Gallery and Museum in Silverlake. Her first short documentary film “BORDER POETS” was a socially and politically inspired event with poets and musicians filmed at the border wall near Tecate, Mexico on the Jacumba, Ca. side of the US. The film co-produced by MUD productions is available for viewing on her website and on youtube. https://youtu.be/5Te4-dlhxco
Her rap music video project in collaboration with Mary Cheung, “ERACE-ISM” can also be seen on youtube. https://youtu.be/NfrbveNUBgg This video was accepted into the Ontario Museum of History & Art show “We the People” Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow. February 2- April 16, 2023. So honored!!
And… February 19, 2022, she debuted her staged poetry production of “20 Years Left” at the historic Ebell Club in Highland Park! Two sold out shows with 2 standing ovations!! Check out the links to reviews and the video!
https://thehollywoodtimes.today/20-years-left-new-show-performance-poetry-music/
20 Years Left youtube live stream 2/19/22
Linda Kaye is a native Angeleno who grew up in the San Fernando Valley. She claims to be both a first-generation Valley Girl, and The Original Hipster. Educated at Antioch University and Cal State Long Beach in psychology and social work. Linda, now retired from medical social work, was working for her last seven years of employment as a psychotherapist and licensed clinical supervisor for an out patient mental health clinic. She was a licensed medical social worker for 30+ years working on the front line of healthcare, a private consultant for Physicians Aid Association and for skilled nursing facilities throughout California and Arizona. She was also an adjunct assistant professor at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. Oh yeah.
Twitter/Instagram: lindakayepoetry
http://voyagela.com/interview/daily-inspiration-meet-linda-kaye/https://
shoutoutla.com/meet-linda-kaye-poet-poetry-and-theatrical-producer-filmmaker/