new poetry 2026

“Otherness” by Julia Piehler

NEW POETRY

Creature from beneath the waves
Made its way through the turbulent ocean surf
To die drowning in the sharp air of our windy shore

The giant Pacific octopus is five feet long
Its skin is white and its huge eyes blue
I feel desperate to save it
But when I circle it in my arms to carry it to the water
Its proper milieu in life
I find a mortal wound on its underside
Blood not red, but blue, leaks quietly

Do its three hearts throb with love and fear of death?
How do I comfort it in its departing moments 
When it is so foreign and its habits solitary?

Ten days before Dave died
Cancer having stripped him 
of flesh and height
We stood hugging each other deeply
And I whispered 
the volume of my love.
I knew how to comfort him.
In that moment
No otherness divided us.

Julia Piehler authored our previous poem at Fast Pop Lit, “A Rose Dance.” We’ll be presenting one more poem of hers here– as lead in to our next feature at our main site.

“A Rose Dance” by Julia Piehler

NEW POETRY

My roses waltzed in the gusting breeze
Partnered by their shadows created
By the low-angled sun

Unseasonably warm for March
Which has slighted the gardens
of the rain due them

Saturated colors and pungent perfume
A return for the care showered on them
Irrigation I furtively give
Despite the drought

Their cousins the apple trees 
Also load the breeze
With offerings of curtains of petals
Curtains tapering like arms of stars 
In the Milky Way
Each petal softer than a breath

Do roses recognize the gardener?
Do they know the character 
of all the snipping and clipping
while painful brings new growth?
Do we?

Julia Piehler has published in technical journals and compendia during a high-tech career. Her work spanned many job functions. Throughout her career she has collected bouquets of stories that will appeal to the general reader. She was educated at Harvard and Stanford where she specialized in geochemistry.

“Cold” by Holly Day

NEW POETRY

I walk down the street putting rocks into my pockets
because they’re pretty and I want them, I whistle at the birds fluttering overhead
talk to squirrels, tell everything how much it’s loved, I want everything to know
how much I love them, everything around me I don’t know why.

My husband tells me I don’t pay enough attention to him, and I
wallow in guilt as I make his sandwiches and cookies for work
my daughter shouts that having me for a mother is like being raised
by an angry wolf, I curl up inside, imagine my heart is a fireplace.

Out in the garden, I set the rocks from my walk in a neat pile
imagine how much the frogs hiding in the greenery will enjoy these rocks
tell the invisible frogs how I got these rocks just for them
fuss over the pile until everything is balanced in such a way that they will not fall.

My husband tells me I talk to the dog more than I talk to him, my daughter
tells me how happy she’ll be to move out in a couple of years
I close my eyes and imagine a house of silence and warmth
imagine that I can get these noisy things to love me as much as I love them.

Holly Day‘s writing has recently appeared in Analog SF, Talking River, and New Plains Review, and her published books include Music Theory for Dummies and Music Composition for Dummies. She currently teaches classes at The Loft Literary Center in Minnesota, Huge House in Washington, and the Indiana Writers Center.

“Optional Nourishment” by John Zedolik

NEW POETRY

Foolish to be consuming a huge juicy pear

at seventeen degrees of a mid-January day

while the wind whipped so froze my fingers

flushed with the fruit’s water

as the naked skin burned then numbed

in the stripping air young in this year

and even an iota more foolish to be toting

a bilingual book of Borges’ verse

exposed then receiving a drop of dripping

pulp upon the pages’ upright edge, whose stain

no flicker or rub of now warmed finger

could remove, so soaked into the fiber,

now an irregular umbra and penumbra

spreading almost cover to cover, an elongated

oval russet just drying to aged and average

brown, with my volume now maculate with evidence

of experience and error, yet not marring the print,

poetry in either tongue upon the pure white below

so the consequence minor, just a reminder

to consider and be humble at the juncture

of choices as the near future ripens

in atmospheres, measured seasons of promised

heat and the fair recompense of stinging cold.

John Zedolik is an adjunct English professor at Chatham University and Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and has published poems in such journals as Abbey, The Bangalore Review (IND), Commonweal, FreeXpresSion (AUS), Orbis (UK), Paperplates (CAN), Poem, Poetry Salzburg Review (AUT), Transom, Writer’s Block (NED), and in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. His full-length collections include Salient Points and Sharp Angles (WordTech Editions), When the Spirit Moves Me (Wipf & Stock), Mother Mourning, The Ramifications (Wipf & Stock), Lovers’ Progress (Wipf & Stock), and Triple Muse (Wipf & Stock). All these collections are available on Amazon.

“The Moment He Realized She Wasn’t For Him” by Brenton Booth

NEW POETRY

(image c/o wtfarthistorydotcom)

They were at

the National

Gallery of

London. He

stood frozen

before

Vincent van 

Gogh’s 

“Sunflowers”.

Totally

mesmerized

by Vincent’s

artistry; the

still life’s vast

confounding

beauty.

She casually

pulled up

beside him.

Intensely

focusing on

the painting

an extended

period.

Asking why

he was

wasting so 

much

time on

such an

amateurish

work.

Brenton Booth lives in Sydney, Australia. His poetry has appeared in New York Quarterly, Midwest Quarterly, and North Dakota Quarterly, among other journals.

“The Day of Her Burial” by Peter Mladinic

NEW POETRY

(image c/o ncronline)

A man at the diner
made the server cry.
The cops weren’t called.
He wasn’t even asked
to leave. The manager
came. The man’s yelling
rattled us diners, his loud
early morning swearing
at the end of the twentieth
century—five hours later,
an ice cold day,
my mother was buried—
is what I mostly recall.
He paid his bill
but didn’t tip
or invite anyone
to see his side.
Around his greasy hair
florescent light
signaled nothing’s
going right.

Peter Mladinic’s most recent book, The Whitestone Bridge, is available from Anxiety Press. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, United States.

“lungs” by Ken Kakareka

NEW POETRY

(image c/o swegonairacademy)

the sky
breaks open
with such
breadth
at 6 am
when you
have
a chance
to watch it
instead of
driving
on the
freeway
w/ 1700 other
angry ppl
pushing towards
a meaningless
job.
i watch it
break
wide open
like a pair
of lungs
filling
with air –
i can breathe
knowing that
the demands
of life
can’t
suffocate me
today.

Ken Kakareka is an American writer of works of fiction and nonfiction, such as BULLSHIT (Anxiety Press, 2024) and Summer of Irresponsibility (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). His novella PARIS IN ALL ITS GLORY is on its way with Anxiety Press. Ken’s work has appeared or is on its way in numerous rags including Gargoyle Magazine, The Disappointed Housewife, and Foofaraw. He has been nominated twice for a Best of the Net. A list of selected publications can be found at kenkakareka.com.