Open Journal Poetry 2025
Many thanks to all the poets who continue to submit to Superlative.
Here are the fantastic poems we have selected we have selected for our open journal in 2025.
If you would like us to consider your poetry for publication, please submit here.
Enjoy!
Before I go into the long night
​​
Before I go into the long night
I want to see the world,
not the whole damn thing,
just the small corners
that smell of salt and fried fish,
where the boardwalk wood
creaks like tired bones,
and the seagulls scream louder than drunks
outside a half-lit tavern.
I want to sit on a splintered bench
in some nowhere harbour in New England,
watching the tide pull the day
out of reach,
and find love,
the kind that doesn’t ask
for time or promises,
just another beer,
just another hour,
before the light goes.
I want to walk the cracked streets
of run down old towns
where the neon signs
still burn pink in the fog,
and the waitress calls me “hun”
without knowing my name,
and that’s enough
more than enough
to make a man believe
he hasn’t wasted his years.
Before I go into the long night,
I want to lean into the wind,
barefoot on the sand,
laughing at nothing
with someone who understands
that the world doesn’t need saving,
it just needs seeing,
before it all
turns black.
​
​​
By Ian James Kelly​
Ian is a designer by trade, who always had an interest in all things creative. In his teens and early 20's he sang in a number of bands in the thriving Dublin music scene, which is where he became interested in a number of creative disciplines including design, writing and photography. He spends most of his spare time travelling to small towns all across the world trying to capture the essence of them via words and analogue photography.
IG: @ianjamesanalog
I am glad to be your daughter
​​​
In the kitchen in the morning you press
the switch’s quiet click, cast a gold
ward against winter’s slate. The silvered
kettle you fill with cold filtered water,
press play, then stand at the garden’s
lakeside listening to its steady crescendo:
orchestra ensemble at whose last trumpet
notes you pluck a teabag from the cupboard,
drop it deep into the well of your mug,
pour steaming heat, then stand again
at the wide glass doors, waiting for tannins
and the richness of flavour. From
the elderflower’s bare arms three netted
feeders wave their empty hands, and from
beneath the sink: a packet of seeds
shut tight with a bright orange plastic clip,
you unclip, and, tea forgotten, swap slippers
for boots, pull a cardi across your shoulders
and unlock the doors, seed bag in hand.
You unhook the cages, tip them tenderly,
then carefully refill, as if preparing
breakfast for your own small children again.
You replace the catches, hook them gently
back on stout branchlets. In the kitchen
I remove your soaked and swollen teabag,
replace it with the single splash of milk,
no sugar.
When you turn and see me watching,
we share a small smile, like a tiny bird
cupped between us.
​
​​By Rachael Hill​
Rachael is a Manchester Poet, founder of ‘The Space Poetic’, and an MFA student at The Manchester Writing School. Her work has recently been published by Ink Sweat and Tears, and Ver Poets, and she was awarded by Wirral Poetry Festival in 2024. She is a lover of cats and climbing.
SubStack: Poet Notes
IG: @rhillpoetnotes
The Summer I Learned to Ride a Bike
​​
Rubber melted on pavement,
like dropped ice cream cones.
Tongues out to catch the sweat
that slid down our foreheads.
She told me to ride around the house
one more time.
My little pink bike—
a salmon streak of lightning.
I took off on unsteady footing,
knees stippled and bruised,
gravel digging deeper with every fall.
But she told me to try again—
and I did.
Mid-July. The drumbeat of feet,
the two-toned whistle
of orange soldiers
marching the solstice.
We waved flags, begged for pennies
from strangers to buy
knick-knacks from stalls.
She said she knew a swear word,
whispered it in my ear.
We said it together—
a secret phrase
only we could hear.
We slept side by side
at least two nights a week,
when the percussion of my house
grew too loud to bear.
We made shampoo potions,
rose-tinted wishes
left for garden fairies.
Wands in hand, we cast spells
on the girls in class
who mocked her hair,
or my body.
We laughed because our dolls
had no underwear.
I told her she was magic—
she told me I should go to sleep.
Then, years later, she told me
that like a tree, her roots
had grown too far,
far farther than me.
That like two boats at sea,
we’d drifted apart
to different lands.
That now we were too old
to hold hands.
And I was left
like a bottle in the sand,
my message forgotten
as her roots expanded.
​
​​
By Savannah Smyth​
Savannah is a third year English Literature and creative writing student with The Open University. Her work explores darker themes of trauma, predation and grief as well as lighter themes such as childhood, longing and romance.
Instagram: @cherry.knotz
Return
​​​
Why did we stop talking
about the sunsets we want to
chase around the globe,
the love waiting for us in a
mysterious plan, and that
finding summer sand in our carpets,
in wintertime, is not a nuisance—
it’s a clue to fortitude and flight.
Change your mind
about swimming naked at night—
your body pulsing through the water
like jellyfish, mindless and free.
Nothing will get you, except
this looseness, the letting go,
the surrender to the
the person you’ve built up.
Let’s stop talking about
how poor our eyes are.
What about the beauty of
these berries in the bowls
we made from clay and pebbles
during an afternoon
in the sun?
We make things that
will outlive us—a painting
of a woman on a veranda,
planting an oak tree to block the neighbors’ gazes,
a pie recipe, a song of despair.
That song of despair—
you play it on a turntable,
use your old headphones,
and lay back.
The song is a key that
turns your soul inside out—
the tears come.
You’re back to you.
Let’s go back to a time
we knew ourselves best—
the dust play, the bubbles
resting on a patch of wild grass,
the search for Orion,
napping in a pile of black and white dogs.
We’re barefoot, dirt under our fingernails,
sticky with sweat and oranges.
​
​​By Jennifer Hill-Flores​
Jennifer's poetry, fiction, and essays have been featured in literary publications such as Bridge Eight, Funicular Literary Magazine, San Antonio Review, The Texas Poetry Assignment, and Flash Fiction Magazine. Beyond her writing, Jennifer earned an MA in Writing from Johns Hopkins University and a BFA in Writing, Literature & Publishing from Emerson College. She serves as a Teaching Artist with the Austin Library Foundation/Badgerdog Literary, an Adjunct Professor of Literary Studies at Austin Community College, and a reader for Ploughshares. These roles fuel her writing by reminding her of the power of stories to shape and heal.
Website: www.jenniferhillflores.com
​Instagram: @jenniferhillflores
Facebook: @jenniferhillflores
Circling the Blue Moon
​​
Spring’s purple chia crests and crimson-spotted rockrose face
curved, wilted, and dropped, but I still walk this trail
in awe. In summer, I didn’t go there at all, I floated
in circles on my back and watched the neighbor’s
silver-tipped eucalyptus tree shimmer in the heat,
imagined the trail sun-heartened, baked, a dried-out
canvas. There was one word, it was his diagnosis,
thrumming in my mind, a sore wound to tongue.
Two nights ago, I mapped the grief, white-hot to touch,
counted the times I’ve made my body a bridge, ground
the toothache of my heart, catalogued drops of pinprick dew,
dragged my fingers along dense moss rock—and remembered
my life. So much was taken, but not this holy place,
its fog shroud of comfort. Some things can be brand-new.
​
​​
By Rebecca Maker​
Rebecca Maker is a nonfiction book editor and emerging writer. She is working on poems about family, nature, and her grandparent’s central California ranch. She is published in Poet Lore and is a 2024 Pushcart Prize nominee and a 2024 Bread Loaf participant. She lives in Southern California.
Intergenerational Trauma
​​​
My grandmother pitches a tent in my mindscape
a white Teepee, wavy in the haze of time.
Its skin gently flutters in the howling wind,
the stakes inch deeper by the decades,
poking the tectonic plates.
The cone is also volcanic, becoming mount Fuji.
Solitary, distant and snow-capped,
with the hot unknown flowing beneath.
When the immovable rumbles
it is cinder, ash and lava.
In the months of disappearance,
Grandma runs away, rolling up her tent.
She is the white moon in the sky.
Pale, distant and curled up tight,
hovering over the edge.
She ebbs and flows my oceanic mother,
pulling and pushing her
with waxing and waning abandonment.
My mother breathes tempest against the cold moon
crashing her heart against the rocks of the coast.
I am the ambivalent creature
that bathes in the cosmic moonlight.
I swim from the sky to the ocean shores and back.
I am of the sky and the water with no firm ground.
I thought I am the oyster that holds a precious pearl
till my daughter nudged me out of the sand.
She sees a shell holding the light of yester eons.
She raises me to her ears
and clearly hears the roars of an untameable sea.
​
​​By Priya Rajan​
Priya Rajan lives in Bangalore. She is an ex-IT professional, a play therapist and a striving writer. She writes creative non-fiction and poetry, which have been published in Orion, Flocklit, Hinterland, snapdragon, iO literary journal, Gyroscope review and such. She is interested in working with children and words.
Prompt: “In The Aftermath of Goodbye”(Poem 316)
Reaching Back
​​
in the aftermath
of goodbye –
rain pools
around
trickling tears
sequestered
stifled through
the years...
but now
now –
I am
a tidal
wave
crashing in
drowning discourse
with my pain and
I'm dismayed at
the fact that
I want to
run and
plead...
not for me
but for
her –
the inner child
within me
who always
felt so
unlearned and
unnerved in
having to
think carefully
about
every
little
word
she said because
otherwise
how can she
not go through
life
unnerved??
oh, sweet child
it was never
your fault and
you know
what?
it wasn't
really
hers
either because
she was only
teaching
what was
passed down
to her and
of course
there's
duressing
in second
guessing and
isn't it
introspective??
that often
as adults
we feel
sparks
of our
young hearts
refusing to
return and
be regressive?
in the
aftermath of
goodbye –
I reach for
her hand
the little girl
who even then
always had
stars in
her deep
brown eyes and
would imagine
chasing fireflies
writing words
by their light and
I'd murmur
“it's okay...
it's going
to be –
alright...”
​
​
By Brooklyn Saliba​
Brooklyn Saliba is a 30 something year old poet, writer and photographer, a library assistant by trade, words have always been at the helm of her life and in spare moments of time, she's always scribbling away, trying to capture the fleeting with her lens and pen.
​
We Bushmen
​​​
We once migrated across the Kalahari,
We Khwe, ! Kung, Bawairw, we Bushmen,
Sons and daughters of San, rivals to the Khoikhoi,
Named and unnamed by boats from Nederland.
We outlaws, we bandits fought great powers
With the greater powers of Kaggen –
You say “Mantis” – greater than your Son,
For he walks among us, runs with us, still.
We saw you through the eyes of an eland,
Slithered among you as a snake,
Hovered above you as vultures.
You saw us in skins and furs and hooves.
In Bantu, Kaggen showed us Masarwa,
As He did when The First People
Met our Medicine People, dazed protectors,
Who took in the poisons carried in your hands.
You heard your future spoken from a waking sleep.
The wind swirled the sand north and south
As we carried our water in ostrich shells
And the hyenas sprinted from
The chase, the hunt, the kill.
That night we feasted on mongongo and zebra,
Eggs and wild honey.
We offered you flying ants and tortoise,
Sweet berries and marrow from lion's bones.
We made you blankets,
Gave you sticks to deliver water,
Showed you the thirst for roots.
We smoked Makaranga mixed with honey from bees.
You took our dagga for yourselves.
You drank from our waterholes.
When Old !Twi and Young !Twi came to you,
You took their kaross for your own travels
Throughout Kalahari
And left them without digging sticks.
You watched Young !Twi's first kill –
From eland to man;
You saw Old !Twi's Bull Dance
Free her from hunger and thirst;
Then took from her parents
The anointment from the eland's heart.
We showed you the power of ngwa,
Of euphorbia, and snake bite –
And how to smear that power
On your arrows and stalk the steenbok
Swiftly from sun to sun.
We dug pitfalls near the Okavango River
And told you of a time
When the Chobe, the Kwando, and the Zambezi
Flowed across Kalahari into the lowlands
Where the Makgadikgadi Lake has dried.
We bushmen:
We women gathering wood;
We men chasing the hunted for days;
Honor our children.
All you heard were savage tongue-clicks.
​
By Brian Padjen
Brian Padjen is a freelance writer and poet who has published ten books in the past three years, writing across various genres to explore the existential challenges of human existence. His poetry, inspired by historical events and personal observations, has appeared in small press journals over the years. Beyond writing, Brian leads an informal book club, fostering thoughtful discussions and a shared love of literature. With master’s degrees in English Literature and Clinical Psychology, he combines psychological insight with literary artistry, captivating readers and sparking introspection.
Descansos
​​​
Along the interstates and county roads,
you see them, make-shift crosses, rudely nailed
slats, painted white, leaning, as if exhausted.
Bouquets of plastic flowers, photographs,
sun-bleached, rain-warped, and plush stuffed animals,
in silence, huddle, like saints beneath the cross
and remind us there’s life after our death.
Others will carry our names in their mouths.
For some, even strangers know where they died.
I’ve never raised a cross on a thin shoulder,
beyond the yellow line and rumble strips,
where the grass slopes down to the frontage road,
yet, they move me, these monuments to grief
and love. I wonder what were their names, age,
their favorite food. I never stop to look.
These shrines are meant for us, the passersby,
we who speed headlong to unchosen ends.
They remind us that all loss should be shared.
I keep them with me, interred in the lines
of this poem, words you read, take with you,
words we all hold, til we come to our rest.
​​​​
​​​
By Richard Stimac
Richard Stimac has published a poetry book Bricolage (Spartan Press), two poetry chapbooks, and one flash fiction chapbook. In his work, Richard explores time and memory through the landscape and humanscape of the St. Louis region.
Descansos was first published in the US by SHINE.