June 2025 Editor's Choice: What They Say"

They say to write one's own poetry is a daunting thing.

It's a labor not of flesh but of flame.

You must be born twice in the virgin of time:

First, as the world demands, as others are,

and then reborn as a Poet.

The truest voices are not dulled on borrowed wounds

or second-hand experience.

They drink from the raw river of their own ruin.

They say Poets are also human -

but their joy is stitched to stars they cannot reach.

They wear contentment like borrowed coats,

smiling on the surface,

while their souls rattle in cages without bars.

Some say they're tethered to lies -

But they only lie in love

Told in trembling tongues beneath moonlight.

Others name them cheaters -

But it is their words that cheat death,

that steal breath from the stillness of graves.

They do not mourn the goodbyes that grew them,

nor curse the ache that carved their marrow.

For them, everything slips

like dusk down the spine of day,

and that slipping is called time,

unless caught and caged

in a pure silent drop of ink on a page.

ILA Magazine