Taking Poetry Public
Hello, World!
From Unbroken to Witness: Submissions Are NOW OPEN!
Following the December 2025 release of our powerful anthology, Unbroken (published by Pen & Leaf Press and still available for purchase here), Public Poetry is thrilled to announce our next chapter.
Submissions are officially open for our 2026 anthology, Witness! We invite poets to share their voices, send us their work, and be a part of this upcoming collection.
Your continued support through book purchases and submissions directly funds the mission and operations of Public Poetry. Thank you for keeping the poetry community thriving—we can't wait to read your work!
Verse Spotlight
-
The breeze still threads through
the last orange trees—
stubborn old witnesses
who remember blossoms
drowning the valley in scent,
bees drunk on nectar.
Now wind carries sugar-ghosts
past NO TRESPASSING signs,
over rivers buried under concrete.
I press my cheek to bark,
listen: “We were giants once.”
The trees tremble like widows
as bulldozers circle.
Born to asphalt,
my blood still sings
when a mockingbird trills
from a power line.
Some nights, fractured stars
flicker through light pollution—
Orion’s belt smudged
above the CVS parking lot.
Children here will never know
how the Milky Way dripped silver,
how cosmos once pressed close.
City girl, country bones—
this body wasn’t built
for cubicles. I miss soil
that didn’t taste like gasoline.
Streetlights swing jaundiced fruit
over another compromised night.
An orange rolls into a storm drain.
The earth forgets. -
before the tall stems
of the pre-blossom wildflowers called me
into their bamboo-stalk
labyrinth of swaying
singing forest
and small brown birds
erupted like cruise missiles
crossed the continent
of front yard
to strike the lone magnolia
splashes of lavender
primroses seduced
the sun and a sphinx
moth and cheating-heart bees
the ungrateful crows
I've been feeding
cheap puppy chow
from the discount store
land like Omaha
Beach and squawk
orders for cups of kibble
and the hawk screes somewhere
in the tortured gray
mottled sky
and I unmoor
from the perception
of biological superiority
and face
the truth
of my degenerative
soul
and I can again
and never be
anything but…
but I won't be
the same one
By James Mathis
