Poems

  • Parenting 101

    Parenting 101A Stream of Conscience, Comedic, Multisyllable RhymeBy: Emmitt Owens(Index #01012026) IntroAlright—hold up…Sound check crackling like my last relationship.Fair warning upfront: This gets weird if you’re sober or expecting common sense. Verse 1I’m infectious with sentences, diction got pestilence,If you clap back, pack proof and some penicillin in.I overcook metaphors, choke jokes twice,Trip over punchlines, Read more

  • Rest in Peace: 2025

    R.I.P. 2025 By: Emmitt Owens (Index #12302025-8:07am) Diddy’s baby oil stash went from bathroom accessory to courtroom exhibit, and the whole internet got LUBED, MOISTURIZED, AND SIDE-EYEING EVERY SHINE Suddenly nobody trusted a glow, a gloss, or a man with “good skin.” Taylor Swift got engaged to Travis Kelce and that announcement PENETRATED DEEP—timelines expanded, Read more

  • A Tuesday Poem

    A Tuesday PoemBy: Emmitt Owens(Index #12302025) Tuesday weighs heavy like wet wool, this day that pretendsto be productive but really just slouches between the bookends—and I’m thinking about how we’ve built this elaborate theaterwhere everyone’s both audience and performer and no onecan remember their lines but we all keep showing up anyway,swiping left on our Read more

  • The Bug, I Didn’t Remove

    The Bug I Didn’t RemoveA Whimsy-Whirly, Topsy-Turvy, Tale of Delightful NonsenseBy: Emmitt Owens In two-thousand-seventeen, so the story goes,Everyone was keeping score with their…fingers and toes! Of a game nobody wanted, a game with no rules—I said, “I won’t play!” and they thought “he’s a fool”. Ten years before that (or was it eleven?)I found Read more

  • Tuesday feels like everyone’s got a checklistof thingsthat shouldn’t bother thembut doHoward wrote three posts this weekabout baseball caps facing backwardThree separate postsSame capSame complaint.Same energy of a man who says“I just keep scrolling”while absolutely…not keeping scrollingInstead…He stopsHe has to post about itHe has to post about howthe plastic strap bothers himThat little adjustable piecestretched Read more

  • Pleasure without Depth is a LieEmmitt Owens(Index #09272025) The mind is a weather pattern… shallow breezes, deep currents, and the strange silence before lightning. Emotion doesn’t ask permission.It floods, it carves, it reshapes.Identity isn’t fixed… it’s sediment, washed and rewritten by every wave. To fear intensity is to fear color.To flatten experience is to bleach Read more

  • The Signal in the Static

    The Signal in the StaticBy: Emmitt Owens(Index #09122025) Oh, look what crawled through the ethernet cables today—your little transmission—blinking at me like a confused lighthouse that’s forgotten which way the shore is supposed to be. And here I am, cosmic radio operator extraordinaire, having to tune into your particular brand of “scrambled frequency” because apparently Read more

  • Tuesday in My Brain

    Tuesday in My BrainFor My Grandchildren: Silas, Elijah & Theo(Index # 09112025) In the town of the teapots I painted a shoe,With pickles for buttons and some glittery glue.I danced with a doorknob, I sang to a chair,I juggled three penguins while brushing my hair.Pull the moon backward and tie it with shoestrings,With a bubblegum Read more

  • Subject Change’s

    it’s tiring, isn’t it— trying to be enough in a world that keeps shifting the goalposts. they say: be driven, but don’t try too hard. be soft, but not too open. feel things, but don’t let it show. and i’m just here, trying to be honest without falling apart. trying to stay whole in a Read more

  • Fractured, pieces lie aroundWhen your heart is broken down and scarredIn a moment, I turn coldThe guilt gets passed along from yard to yard Bare branches pierce the grayVisions of loss and frozen painBut when storms rage harder, I grow strongerYou can steal my things, but not my flameBut when storms rage harder, I grow Read more