Author Archives: Shawn Scott Smith

Mucky Mondays #06 Bittersweet by Laura Ashley

The cold bitter air of winter pierces my skin as I walk through the shady woods towards the pasture behind my house. I rest my frozen aching feet as I sit alone on a tree that has collapsed from the weight of the ice and snow piled up on it. All of a sudden I lose focus of my mission to seek out the pasture and sit with the tree. I identify with its pain, with its absence of life, and of love. Just as it has collapsed in the bitter cold I myself have collapsed. However, my breaking apart is not physically debilitating.

Just as the tree once felt the nourishment of the sun, I once felt the same supplement from love. As the tree lies broken and torn from its devastating fall, I am a walking open wound. With the absence of the sun the tree has collected a detrimental “coldness”, I myself have grown cold and bitter from a similar absence.

Soon my fate will meet that of this lonesome tree. Soon my heart will accumulate the same detrimental coldness, and I too will break to pieces.

Laura Ashley

Sometimes life gets busy and you stop writing, but poetry.com has your back (and your poems from 2002).

Mucky Mondays #05 Your Dream By Purbasha Roy

Next time I will travel by train- Fanny Howe

The dream is yours. The weather is maybe
summer. The gulmohar reddening in the
Linking Road sidewalk. Or a winter the
telephone lines mid-morning losing the
weight of dew drops like purposelessness.
I don’t remember anything but the dream
belongs to you and I am walking by it.
Everything seems like a scaffold of extra
similes coming down after a poem has got
written. But what about the songs I am
hearing from end-to-end. The voice is
yours and the words sit beside me like a
ton of bricks from a bulldozer ran like
cruelty. I upturn one and then another.
What do I know about shattering but I
suspect I am famous for them. The
phonemes of my torn frock. The syllables
of a river once I saw die. It wanted to
leave behind something of it. If not bones
then an unclear dash with a waiting. Until
I asked to make choices I didn’t know I
cannot have, everything of everything. This
thought has come down to me here, time
dropping down its anchors. Soon the medium
that’s yours shall puncture a hole in me. Submerge
a sapling and envelope it with layers of shadows
after shadows. I feel a wet breath on my forehead.
I know I am nearing your good chest. And then
the world dialing numbers, dialed mine. A wrong
number disembarks me at the winter station. I 
 feel feverish. I feel unloved. I feel you far.

 

Purbasha Roy

She is a writer from Jharkhand, India. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly Review, SAND, Iron Horse Literary Review, The Margins as of late. Attained 2nd Position in 8th Singapore Poetry Contest. Best of the Net Nominee.

After Part 80

Des grésillements retentirent et Juliette sursauta. Son manteau, usé et déchiré, la gênait dans sa marche rapide vers le récepteur.

” Allô ? Qui est à l’appareil ? Qui est là ? “

Le silence s’installa, et son espoir s’amenuisa, puis…

“Allô ?” une voix d’homme.”

” Allô, c’est George, nous sommes à Calais. Qui est à l’appareil ? “

Des larmes coulèrent sur les joues de Juliette. Elle n’était pas seule. Elle tremblait en parlant dans le microphone.

” C’est tellement bon d’entendre ta voix, George. “

Publication Update : Act Your Age Volume 3: Generations

Rare piece of nonfiction for me with the preorder of Act Your Age Volume 3 put out by Wild Ramp Publishing. This issue is about fandom across generations. My roots are in the fan space, and this call intrigued me. My piece is called A Sense of Wonder and it’s about how I fell into fandom, but also how my hope is that my son finds joy in the media he chooses and chooses love over despair, and maintains a sense of wonder in this world.

You can order a copy while available at Wild Ramp Publishing Shop.

Mucky Mondays #04 an exclusive 60 minute interview by john compton

an exclusive 60 minute interview

it is dark but the branch slides down the window in such a creepy way
i almost run from the room—and i know it is a tree

but it sends shivers with how meticulous it moves, its leaves licking the glass,
and i imagine it being on a documentary about how it had broken into my house

and killed me, and it’s just smiling at the interviewer
with no remorse, only saddened because it was cut down and apprehended.


john compton (b. 1987), author of 18 books/chapbooks, is a gay poet who lives in kentucky with his husband josh, alongside dogs, cats, & mice. his previous full length book is “my husband holds my hand because i may drift away & be lost forever in the vortex of a crowded store” published with Flowersong Press (dec 2024); his newest full length book is “house as a cemetery” published with Rebel Satori Press (mar 2026). you can find his books, some poems, and other things here: https://linktr.ee/poetjohncompton

After 79

In the long stamped path over white snow the blood left distinct marks, slowly catching into evaporating bubbles of steam. The fox sniffed at the ground in pursuit of prey, a lonely hunter, surviving at this point on instinct and genetics. Above a hawk watches, circling, making note for an upcoming feast, talons ready for the rapture. The river slowed by ice, the temperature cause for concern, the fish buried to the lowest depths, with the mud holding earth warmth inside. 

And along the shallow edge the survivors would come, one by one, for a last taste of life, before the world froze, and an eternal winter began.

Mucky Mondays #03 Greater and Lesser Ghosts by Trace Ramsey

On a turn to light;
chaos within the glow.
All clay-red and mullein-yellow,
distorted color furnace flames,
embering memory
and coal ash dumped in
an unsuspecting stream.

On a turn to the dark;
lonesome snow packed tight.
All ice-blue and envelope-white,
breath low and vapored,
grins full of crooked teeth.
We have our blankets,
heat, lights low and our babies
in the other room.

On a turn to the living;
damp grass, peppermint, ivy
that none of us will reach.
All grass-green and horse-brown.
Speak with me as we walk,
goats in the spent pasture.
Bolted down bollards at the parking lot edge
upright, near the sickly trees,
painting dulled greens and yellows
above the warnings in safety orange.
I’d make a great wife you know,
and I have time for more mistakes.

On a turn to the dead;
instants stood still, suggestions there in the ditches full of trash, a dark dummied oasis.
All concrete-gray and street-black,
passing but thick like all our ghosts
pressed together as one.

traceramsey.com
IG trace.ramsey
“Trace Ramsey is a recipient of the North Carolina Artist Fellowship in Prose. Trace lives in Durham, NC and co-parents two children.“

Mucky Mondays #02 Poem by Tom Snarsky

True things are socially impractical
Is a true thing that’s socially impractical

Handling the truth in a poem is like
Holding a baby goose close

In the hope it will someday defend you
Or your ducks, who can’t do it themselves

Imprinting is something the truth does
Almost by accident, although

As evinced by many small waterfowl
Just bc something imprints doesn’t mean

It can’t be killed

Tom Snarsky lives in Virginia with his wife Kristi and their cats.