Portsmouth, Ohio

There’s no place for wildlife
if animals like these roam the cities.
The country is in on the precipice of it’s next riot
and the dollar store is out of mouth wash.
I used to think about places like Tunisia
and Medellin when I thought this life was fair
and these words would take me outside
of ghettos and the last stop on the A train.

But those dreams leave your head first.
There’s a quick first love and then the rest of your life.
How much dollar pizza can one stomach take?
Are these fair thoughts when you’re sitting
in a theater the punks of Portsmouth managed to reclaim?
I’m a lucky man.
I wrote a book and then I got to see the country.

I brush my teeth on a deserted street and
think about my father’s face when I told him
I’d quit my union job and was driving 400 miles
to read poems for six minutes in Ohio.
The shopping cart bum passes in silence.
His throat unslit, his eyes greyed by time.
What’s the point of locking the car?
There’s nothing of our lives anyone would want to steal.

The tears of an empire have dried up.
We don’t cry.
We’re not curious.
Is there a girl in Tunisia who dreams of Los Angeles?
American’s don’t even see America.
But the sun still hangs over Portsmouth,
the babies smile here like they do in every womb,
and the single string of a violin sounds sad
whether you’re on the rooftops or in the street,
the last one to call a city home
or the first one on the bus out

Scott Laudati runs Bone Machine with his dog in NYC. He is the author of Play The Devil and Bone Machine. Visit him anywhere @ScottLaudati.
X: @ScottLaudat.
Instagram: @ScottLaudati.
Substack: @ScottLaudati.

HOW TO BE A MILF IN 2026

a wolf cut helps 
but is not essential 

we are a nation of easily tricked adults 

should we use poetry to galvanize
the spirits of our friends? 

should we use poetry to persuade
those radicalized the wrong way? 

in the words of that old el paso commercial
from 20 years ago: 
por que no los dos? 

poetry is something you have to see yourself
a mirror selfie can move mountains 

do the clouted up even reside in it
do they realize 
we only go viral via rage bait 

faux pasing our way to an easy dunkaroo
a layup of opportunity 
vibes play a larger role than you think 

i quit being your blood boy 
but america gets to project 
power with our pedophile president 

trying to trip up predictive text 
from my one star red state 

little birds should flock around you
it’s up to you to learn their language 

frame mogging the mossad agent
who can’t help but molest my money

i thought we had all moved on 
but i guess not 

it’s a bipartisan thing 

my first love was murdered 
and it is gauche to write about 

you could meet me at my place of business
i’ll be here the rest of my life

 Alexandra Naughton is the editor in chief of Be About It Press and the founder of Bring a Blanket Reading Series and the alternative to AWP mini-festival, A Writers Party. Her latest collection, Sick of Being Inside Myself, was published by House of Vlad in 2025. She writes Talk About It on Substack.

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).

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.