Poetic License 

Fire up your thoughts: Poetic License is looking for submissions. If you’ve got a poem or short piece of prose, please email me, Liam, at  liammwoodworthcook@smccme.edu. I’d love to have a ruckus year of poetry and get some on-campus readings and poet gatherings happening.  Featured here is a piece I wrote in regards to the political shape of the United States, and the world at large.

Stranger’s Smile
by Rebecca Dow

If a smile could wrap
Such as my sheets,
Round a mind like
The body swathed,
Come.
Question not the draw –
As moon-phase, full;
Of stranger’s luring gaze.

Does he play, the cat with twine
Those many maiden’s heartstrings?
Ah, but mice roam freely unto softest dens,
Even unto clenching grip.

One must hope that
From such smiles no scarlet drips.
No lying tricks, nor hollow lips that deceive
But, that their winds should mingle;
To share ancient tunes,
Strummed o’er fingertips of life,
Heart,
And
Soul…

War Culture Karma
by Liam Woodworth-Cook

A pity,
fragile innocent death our toll
in acceleration

heat of the 21st blink,
we are demanded by what
we’ve held hostage.

Burn or bust our fragments pressed,
The doomsday chamber,
loaded,
to explode.

The end was created by their own machines,
they’d even made a clock.