When the River Speaks

09/07/2025

09/07/2025

Mercury retrograde made us do it!

08/07/2025

HEAR YE, HEAR YE! The July publication and open mic has been postponed - join us Saturday August 9th at 4pm at the San Marcos Public Library. Refreshments will be served.

Send a message to learn more

08/07/2025

ABOUT THE POEM - “[It was summer when I found you]” was published in Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics (Chatto and Windus, 1907), translated by Bliss Carman. In his essay, “Lesbian Sappho and Sappho of Lesbos,” scholar and translator André Lardinois noted: “The poetry of Sappho was already compared to that of the male pederasts in antiquity. In their love-poems we find parallels for most of the wording and imagery which Sappho uses. This is one of the strongest arguments in favour of Sappho’s sexual involvement with the girls she addresses. But against this it can be said that in her wedding songs Sappho permits choirs to sing about a bride in no less erotic terms than she uses in her alleged homo-erotic lyrics. A good example is fragment 112. Here a maiden choir sings to the bride: ‘Your form is gracious and your eyes . . . honey-sweet; love streams over your desire-arousing face. Aphrodite has indeed greatly honoured you.’ Most fragments of Sappho are far more innocent in tone.”

07/07/2025

JOIN us this SATURDAY July 12th at Rio Claro Studios for our open mic/publication party at 6:30pm. The studio is located at 127 Hunters Glen Rd, San Marcos. Bring a friend & a poem to share - families welcome & as always, this is a free, community event.

04/07/2025

On the Pulse of Morning By Maya Angelou

A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow,
I will give you no hiding place down here.

You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness
Have lain too long
Facedown in ignorance,
Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.

The Rock cries out to us today,
You may stand upon me,
But do not hide your face.

03/07/2025

TONIGHT 730-930pm: San Marcos Poetry Night!

03/07/2025

ABOUT THE POEM - “I think a lot about the invisible and ever present, the theories associated with dark matter, the eighty-five percent of the universe we cannot see using light, and the weight of what has yet to be known. Therefore, I believe each poem is comprised of questions and wonder. In these contemporary moments, my wonder is polluted by ideas of geography and ‘home.’ This poem is questioning—does home exist in the moments we are cradling mothers preparing to leave the physical body behind? How can children of any age come to know a mother as an authentic individual? And then, are we meant to?”
—DaMaris B. Hill

02/07/2025

Enjoy this past submission - Garden of Eve by Jane Badb

i can hear my heartbeat thrumming in my ears
and i think about how i would love for her to
bleed me dry lick every last drop off her fingers she

is exquisite i imagine she tastes like rhubarb and
honeysuckle i imagine her teeth biting at my neck
peeling me open and i burst like a grape we are

just children and children like to break things it’s
how we learn i wonder if eve ate every last seed
of the pomegranate if she could feel the tree of

knowledge blooming inside her i’ve never been
scared of snakes but i am afraid of fathers i can
still remember watching snakes walking through

my mother’s garden i picked them up and stole
their legs before they could run away i wonder if
the pomegranate was really a pomegranate

and if the tree was really a tree and if eve too
craved another woman’s touch i imagine she did

01/07/2025

ABOUT THE POEM - “Redefining love for myself is vital to my healing and survival. I am grateful to turn to Black women writers for guidance toward redefinition. Pilate Dead of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon teaches me that, while the truth has many forms, love stands apart. Pilate, in spite of what she survives and witnesses, embodies love. Love has no clear origin, and it is ever-present. Love may even look like me. This poem is both a search and a reflection on what may be possible when a person moves forward with faith in love. Love may just guide a person back to origin.”
—Hílda Davis

Hílda Davis is a Black poet and the daughter of immigrants from Limón, Costa Rica. She was raised in Staten Island, New York, and now lives in Seattle, where she is pursuing a Master of Social Work at the University of Washington.