poetryidiots

[poetryidiots]

David A. Romero is a Mexican-American spoken word artist from Diamond Bar, CA. Romero is the author of My Name Is Romero (FlowerSong Press), a book reviewed by Gustavo Arellano (¡Ask a Mexican!), Curtis Marez (University Babylon), and founding member of Ozomatli, Ulises Bella. Romero has received honorariums from over seventy-five colleges and universities in thirty-three different states in the USA. Romero was a guest for the inaugural Elba Poetry Festival in Tuscany, Italy and has featured for Paris Lit Up in Paris, France. Romero's work has been published in literary magazines in the United States, England, and Canada. Romero has opened for Latin Grammy winning bands Ozomatli and La Santa Cecilia. Romero's work has been published in anthologies alongside poets laureate Joy Harjo, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Luis J. Rodriguez, Jack Hirschman, and Tongo Eisen-Martin. Romero has won the Uptown Slam at the historic Green Mill in Chicago; the birthplace of slam poetry. Romero's poetry deals with family, identity, social justice issues, and Latinx culture.

[poetryidiots]

Katya Zinn is a Boston-based, LA-born-and-raised performance poet, educator, and activist. Their first chapbook-length collection human verses was released in 2021. When not shouting poems to mostly-strangers at local dives, she works as a teaching artist and equity director of a children’s education nonprofit, where she’s working on starting a scholarship program to provide free therapeutic mentorship in the arts to neurodivergent children from low-income backgrounds. Zinn is currently the self-appointed poet laureate of Chuck E. Cheese, but hopes to make the title official (as soon as she can get Charles to respond to one of her tweets). Manic-depressive Pixie Dream Girl is their first full-length collection. You can find Katya on tour this summer, traveling cross-country to cities she’s never heard of in a restored 1970 Volkswagen Westfalia: performing shows by night, and selling $1 spontaneous poems by day off a vintage Royal typewriter. Alternatively, try a simple conjuring spell at the next full moon.

[poetryidiots]

A full poetry feature by Gia Kagan Trenchard!

Gia Kagan Trenchard is an attorney, educator, and legal activist. Before transitioning to a career in the law, they taught creative writing in high needs schools, foster care centers, and jails for over 10 years. Gia is also a poet and theater artist whose work has been featured on HBO’s Def Poetry, TEDx, and at the Public Theater. Their first play, In Spite of Everything, toured internationally as part of the Hip-Hop Theater Festival. Their first collection of poems, Murder Stay Murder, is available on Penmanship Books. 

 They received their Juris Doctorate from Hofstra School of Law in 2014. They were awarded the Charles H. Revson Law Student Public Interest Fellowship, the Bergstrom Child Welfare Law Fellowship, and is a recipient of awards from both the Equal Justice Works and the Public Justice Foundation. They were also awarded a Postgraduate Fellowship to serve LGBTQ asylum seekers and help train law students in the Hofstra Asylum Clinic. 

 They continue to train attorneys on how to better serve clients who’ve experienced trauma. They have presented training sessions to attorneys from the Southern Poverty Law Center, New York Immigration Coalition, Immigrant Justice Corps, The Newark Asylum office, and at law schools and legal service organizations throughout New York.

Their book is available at https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9780983121985/murder-stay-murder.aspx

[poetryidiots]

A full length feature from Rich Boucher the Virtual Ugly Mug!

Rich Boucher resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Rich’s poems have appeared in The Nervous Breakdown, Eighteen Seventy, Menacing Hedge, Drunk Monkeys and Cultural Weekly, among others, and has work forthcoming in Words & Whispers. Rich serves as Associate Editor for the online literary magazine BOMBFIRE. He is the author of All Of This Candy Belongs To Me, a collection of poems published by Jules’ Poetry Playhouse Publications. Peep richboucher.bandcamp.com for more. He loves his life with his love Leann and their sweet cat Callie.

[poetryidiots]

“Eve” by Bri Gowdy

“I know you want to blame me for this mess, 

see me with my open mouth and yell “traitor,”

see me with a snake wrapped around my body and hiss “witch,”

but we have never seen the land of milk and honey,

and I know it’s news to you but the Promised Land does not exist 

until we build it.”

[poetryidiots]

“Mana” by Micah Bournes

“And it broke my heart to know

that we was so po’, 

poison tasted like a miracle.

Mana from heaven.

Thirsty souls drink dirty water 

with gratitude.

Hungry hearts eat crumbs  

that fall from tables of the rich,

call it grace.”

[poetryidiots]

“The Fighter” by Steven Hendrix

“My cousin and I sat in silence, 

not really sure how to respond. 

Feeling a little as though we had already failed 

at life because we weren’t alive when it mattered.”

[poetryidiots]

“Spanish Omlette” by Lady Narrator

“But he looks at me as though being with me

is an exchange of empty nest for emptiness,

as if I were just a body, nothing more,

and a vacant one at that.”

[poetryidiots]

“Mom” by HanaLena Fennel

“When our childrens’ beautiful broken bodies

wash up on the shores of their lives 

after having kamikazied themselves against the walls 

of our gender expressions and expectations, 

I turn the walls of my childhood 

into standing with my back 

at the edge of the Pacific Ocean

with arms outstretched, one half 

of an always ready embrace.

[poetryidiots]

Trauma by Alyesha Wise

“I have already mourned the days she does not call.

And on the days she does not call, when she does not pick up

I get antsy.

I see an article online

that reads “Camden Man Shot”

and my hands begin to sweat.

Before I open it,

I regret how shaky I become,

the violence that possesses me.”

[poetryidiots]

“In Conversation with America” by Jonathan Mendoza

“So is Mexico not a home?” she asks.

I say “I told you, my father says it’s not safe for me there.”

“So is Poland not home?” she asks.

I say “I told you, my history says it’s not safe for me there.”

“So is Boston not home?” she asks.

I say “I told you, my depression says it’s not safe for me there.”