Blog | Mid-Atlantic Review | published by Day Eight

Three Poems By Walker Valdez

Poetry

MAR Editorial Assistant

-

June 17, 2025

Poetry on the menu

Hey, how are you doing, my name is Walpoet,
and I’ll be your poet for his evening and the remainder of this piece.
Looks like we have some poetry on the menu.
So, please, take off your coat, kick back, relax,
and I hope you brought your appetite for these poetic verses.

Next, let me tell you about our specials,
because for starters, we have a delicious and delectable delicacy
full of alliteration with a dash of assonance slowly heated,
and aimed to keep you seated at the table begging for more.
As for the entree?

Don’t worry, I have something truly amazing.
Sauteed metaphors on a bed of similes,
sprinkled with a dab of personification,
enough to make your plate stand up and dance for joy.
Oh, so you say you’re’ practically starving.
Well that’s perfect because for dessert we have flambeed hyperbole,
enough for you and 40 of your closest friends.

Wait, so you don’t understand the menu?
Well, then say no more fam, let me explain.
I know that poetry can sometimes feel out of touch or out of reach,
like a high-end menu from a restaurant you can barely pronounce.

And you might think it raves too much about love or how the world is
essentially falling apart right before our eyes.
Or you also might think that poetry has nothing to offer that Netflix
and chill can’t already take care of.
But I beg to differ.
Because you know what?
The art that lives and breathes on your wall is poetry.
The Spotify playlist of your favorite tracks is poetry and the motivation
for your love making sessions to last at least 3 songs is also poetry.

And I’m sure you’re saying, that’s what any poet would say.
Yes, but typically not so graphically.
But according to the Oxford languages dictionary that breathes inside of my laptop,
any intense sense of beauty or emotion can be poetry.

Which means the first time you had your heart broken was poetry.
But I know what you’re saying;
how can my heart being ripped apart from my chest and then being served to me on a charcuterie board by my first love be poetry?
How can crying alone in a parking lot at 11:00 PM in my run down Nissan Altima,
at age 20 after a nervous breakdown be poetry.

But it is.
But then it’s also a first kiss, and the sight of your newborn child.
And can even be the touch of God.
But for me, it’s definitely setting a stage on fire with just my words and when me and an audience are sharing a telepathic connection while they’re laughing at every punchline,
and each word I say means something.

And it’s hard to explain a feeling that overwhelms
and inspires creativity or the need to spark change.
But I can tell you, whether you believe it or not.
Poetry is a necessity.
it lives inside of all of us waiting to come out when we most need it.
It is our food, but not just any food, it’s food that nourishes the soul.

Because poetry, when it’s done well,
is not just edible lines that we take in and defecate out.
It is our compass, map, and raft
And poetry when it’s done well is our survival gear
and reason to persevere when everything else inside of us,
screams to just give up and quit.
And I hope this poem was done well!

Because in this world full of infinite beauty and pain,
poetry is something that we can use more of,
but most of all is something that we all need.

Poem

How do you know a poem is ready?

When the words in your poem start to backspring off the page,
like cliff divers in Hawaii landing in the Pacific Ocean.
Then you know your poem is ready.

When adrenaline rushes through your veins as you read your poem aloud while you perform for a ten person open mic but perform it the exact same way,
you would for a sold out audience at the Lincoln theater.
Then you know your poem is ready

When you feel every line, every beat, and the rhythm of your words start to sound like a seasoned salsa conjunto,
with claves and el guiro spinning each other around on the dance floor,
followed by the blaring of brass trumpets,
right up to the 10 minute conga solo.
Then you know your poem is ready.

When your poem is a mixture of chaos,
humor and pain and yet it all makes sense.
Then you know your poem is ready.

When your poem snores loudly like a grizzly bear outside your tent, knowing at any moment, when it wakes up, all havoc will ensue.
Then you know your poem is ready.

When your poem shines as brightly as a supernova in the night sky.
Then you know your poem is ready.

When you don’t really need to ask
anyone, is this any good?
Then you know your poem is ready.

Because we all know, you’re not satisfied with that sleepy poem, that can barely keep its eyes awake poem..

And we know you’re not satisfied with the, uh.. …
I think it’s a pretty good poem.

Because if you’re gonna write a poem,
why not go for broke,
why not let your poem deliver a fatal knockout blow like Ryu in Street fighter,
hearing Haduuuuuken as your words lift up their arms in triumph on the page.

And if you’re gonna write a poem, why not let the poem tell you what you’re gonna write instead.

Trust the process, because the poem knows….

That it’ll open its eyes.
Lift up its head.
Stretch out its legs,
find its balance.
Don’t overthink it.
Don’t be a drill sergeant
Poems don’t respond well to orders,
They hate being micromanaged.
They need breathing room, leg space.
They want independence.
To know that they’re loved.
A place to call home.
This I know.
Trust me, I know.
But how do I know?
Because your poem is ready.

Not your typical poet

I am not your typical poet.
I don’t speak only in rhyme,
and bongos don’t magically appear,
when I have something important to say.

I am not your typical poet.
Poems don’t just come to me after viewing the constellations.
Nor do I have the urge to live amongst the trees.

I am not your typical poet.
I don’t have an MFA,
but I do have enough poetic vision to fill up a Thanksgiving day parade float.

I am not your typical poet,
because typical poets may find my writing to be shallow,
selfishly focusing on myself,
when I should be writing about nature and the spiritual being.

See, my poems are mostly grounded in reality,
except when words like ladybugs crawl up my arm and rest on my shoulder,
waiting for the perfect time to cannonball jump on the page.
Or interrupt me when I’m eating empanadas de queso at 8 AM on a Saturday.

And sometimes, these words don’t let me sleep,
prying my eyes open in the middle of the night and forcing me to create art that only other atypical people will appreciate.
And maybe that’s who I choose to write for,
create for, bare my soul for.

People who have had doors slammed in their face time after time,
but refuse to stop, trying, believing, and dreaming.
People who don’t know how to be anything else but themselves.
Because at the end of the day,
maybe we shouldn’t want to be typical,
and just maybe we should just want to be original instead.

Walker Valdez is a Bolivian American spoken word poet, educator, and teaching artist from Falls Church, Virginia. He holds a B.A. in English (Performance Media Concentration) from Marymount University and a M.Ed. in Special Education from George Mason University. He has performed throughout the DC area including at the Studio Theatre, Gala Hispanic Theatre, and the Rayburn House Office Building. He was recently a featured poet on the Zona San Antos Podcast (San Antonio, Texas.) Mr. Valdez hosts a monthly open mic, “Coffee House Poetry”, at Grace Episcopal Church in Georgetown, and is a teaching/performing artist for the Heard non-profit arts organization.

Featured image in this post is, “Siebenpunkt-Marienkäfer (Coccinella septempunctata) auf Blüte im FFH-Gebiet “Viernheimer Waldheide und angrenzende Flächen” By Stephan Sprinz – licensed creative commons via Wikimedia Commons.

Two Poems by Ed Baranosky

Poetry

-

June 13, 2025

0

I Stay

I stay.
But it isn’t as if
There wasn’t always Hudson’s Bay
And the fur trade.
–Robert Frost, ‘An Empty Threat’

But you never had it planned.
Then the trail wasn’t yet blazed
As the First Nations moved
Through without leaving a sign
For the First Settlers to follow–
And yet they never gave it away,
The invisible gathering place
Stretching without a trace
Too vague for a castaway–
I stay.

Only shards are found
On these islands, anyway.
You don’t mention where you are
Or have been anymore.
You cast your line into the surf
On a beach below the cliff–
There’s already been enough trouble
You think, getting to this point.
The Muse’s words linger–If,
But it isn’t as if…

It seems centuries since
Another refugee cleared a field near
The far shore scattered with dead fish.
He sometimes told of bones plowed up
But he didn’t say where they are–
He had trouble enough, enough hearsay
To bury the unmarked graves
Without the rattlesnakes and arrowheads.
And when he’d been drinking, he’d say
There wasn’t always Hudson’s Bay–

And long ago he didn’t stay; and
Others came through and moved west,
Leaving a faded blazed trace
For scribes of hieroglyphs
Or petroglyphs on the riverbanks.
Long-haul truckers masquerade
As sleepless pioneers throwing clouds
Of dust as fine as ash across the feral fields–
Unsettled again, and again renegade,
And with the fur trade.

Speak For Yourself
Speak for yourself, John Alden.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Courtship of Miles Standish
1
Ley Lines —

Seasons of mist and brine,
The scent of spring in the cold–

A quiet cove where the locals
Curl inside a chambered nautilus,

A Palladian colonnade built around
An old stone cenotaph —

I have no will, just a wish:
Saltwater bays where I can slip anchor

And drift unseen, unnoticed
Under a smuggler’s moon,

Bearing contraband relics
From a faraway cay,

No blind response, no backward
Look, no ravening recognition.

The past changes with the future
Driving past remains of the Marie Celeste

Or the grander experiments
Of the Titanic or the Hindenburg.

Slowly we become no one
With no trailing embers

That lead you to a dying inferno
Which the stars are, even the sun

Which will become a black hole
Storing memories of millennia.

2
Soundings

Sailing without water, you dream
That darkness waits in desert islands,

Hidden rivers and lunar tides
And unknown undercurrents stream

Into oases’ pools reflecting a turquoise moon
Emerging among the vast flowing dunes.

As thundering breakers still pour jade foam
Over indigo seas, echoing beneath high bluffs–

Punctuated by the cries of seabirds driven inland
On a shoreward gale reshaping the coast.

And you, should you search beneath fragments
Of memoirs for the lost songs that water makes,

Raise anchor, as an hourglass pours sand
Into sand, before setting sail for timeless seas.

3
Listen…

Listen. Thunder rumbles offshore.
Seabirds wheel in before the storm.

And the seasons shift against a dark plain
Of half-truths, putting the past to rest

As easily as we retrace our steps
Into the new snow, that itself melts away–

You brush away the debris of grief
Misplacing comfort for belief,

Stoking the last gleaming embers
Of last evening’s winter blaze.

Teach us a treason to ourselves
In the battle between love and fear,

You resist returning again —
The river skim ice has already melted,

The air tangible, electric,
Gathering cold gusts–

Leave the timeless
For your children’s children

To paint the great migrations
In the flickering light of sacred caves.

And though past the last step is space,
Where your deep breath is exhaled–

John Alden rests his case,
Speak for yourself, Priscilla.

painting of ed Baranosky by by Melisa Fauceglia. Dark hair, glasses, dark green sweatshirt with blue tshirt underneath

Edward Baranosky has painted seascapes since he was seven years old. His focus on marine-scapes, draws him back to visit his native home in the American east coast, for inspiration from the North Atlantic. As a poet-artist he crosses the channels and pathways between the visual and the textual. He continues to exhibit in the United States and Canada. Baranosky owns a small press EAB Publishing, for poetry chapbooks and related material. He currently lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Visit his website. Portrait painted by his friend by Melisa Fauceglia from Ravenna, Italy,

Featured Image: “Melting of river ice 1950” by Voutilainen Erkki under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Two Poems by Jeffrey “J.A.” Faulkerson

Poetry

Serena Agusto-Cox

-

June 6, 2025

0

AGENT OF CHANGE

During the Winter
Of your discontent
You crave
The warm embrace of Spring,
Knowing it will fade away to
The scintillating heat
Of Summer
But you need not worry.
No!
Because you know
Every hot Summer
Gives way to the
Coolness of Autumn

But as the seasons change,
So do you.
You think
You feel
You do
You ask yourself,
“Who am I?”
“What is my purpose
In life?”
When you ask these questions,
You expect a response,
But none is given

Poverty often denies you access
To prosperity
Each time, she asks,
“Can you spare a dime?”
You look into her blood-shot eyes,
And your shared silence becomes
A clarion call

You hear voices,
Those of the great African kings
Speaking to you
You hear the rhythmic beat of drums,
Encouraging you to dance
This is your moment,
Your chance to shine.
But do you change or
Do you remain the same?

Heroes have come.
Heroes have gone
But now you are being asked
To be something more
No one is asking you
To change the world
Change a life
And bear witness to the
Rippling effects
Of your sacrifice

THE WISE MAN SAY

Move forward then upward,
That’s what the Wise Man say
He said do this daily
And you won’t lose your way
But that’s just what you did
In the Spring of eighty-eight
For you found yourself carrying
A tremendous weight

Dreams of Olympic glory,
Adoring fans calling your name
But your ailing body
Disqualified you from the game
You had to find something different,
Something new
You had to behave differently
To say that you grew

But grew you did
You had no choice
First in your family
To heed the Wise Man’s voice
His voice was loud,
His voice was clear
You felt his presence,
Drew the invisible him near

Clouds of doubt, uncertainty
And regret hovered overhead
Sinking feelings that could only
Be described as impending dread.
You know why this feeling
Inhabits your soul
Anxiety, depression,
Taking a toll

Roll, Daddy, roll
Like never before
Step into a future
That is bright, not a bore
Forward then upward
The Wise Man say
To keep this train a moving
You have to bow your head,
pray

Pray for blessings
From the man seated on high
When you receive these blessings
You aren’t supposed to cry
But when you do
Reflect on the road traversed,
Receiving the many blessings,
Never believing you were cursed

The Wise Man stands on the horizon
Marveling at all you have done
To overcome obstacles
To stand in the sun
He winks his eye
Only you can see
You bow at the waist
Thanking him,
Then God,
For this victory

At the apex of Achievement
You gain wisdom and sight
For you now know obstacles
Are there for knowledge, might
But you must extend your hand
To the hungry, the lost
Pull them up gently,
Remove them from the frost

J. A. Faulkerson, a Northern Virginia-based author, poet, and screenwriter by night, moonlights as a fatherhood engagement coordinator by day. His poetry pays homage to the Black leaders of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s, individuals he calls compassionate neighbors led by the unconditional love and neighborly compassion. A graduate of Dobyns-Bennett High School (Kingsport, Tennessee) and the University of Tennessee (Knoxville, Tennessee), J. A. has been happily married to his wife for over 32 years and is the proud father to his 21-year-old son. Follow J. A. Faulkerson on Instagram. Subscribe to his newsletter, “Writers’ Bloc with J. A. Faulkerson.”

Featured image: “A Collection of Ethiopian Liturgical Drums” by A. Davey under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Blue Fading to White by Teresa Burns Murphy

Gregory Luce

-

June 5, 2025

0

Blue Fading to White

A wintry wind blew
the color out of the sky that day
‘til it was as white
as my cousin’s corpse
contained in a coffin
inside the church sanctuary. I recalled

another day, sunlit sky sparkling
blue. I sat among family and friends,
remembering him,
not as a man, grown grim,
gun aimed at his own heart,
but how he glowed as a boy,

glistening skin tanned a ginger-
snap brown when he raced
across the high dive,
landing with a crash,
before vanishing under water
at the deep end of the pool.

Teresa Burns Murphy is the author of a novel, The Secret to Flying (TigerEye Publications). Her writing has been published in several places, including The Bookends Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Doubleback Review, Evening Street Review, Gargoyle Magazine, Literary Mama, The Literary Nest, The Opiate, The Penmen Review, River and South Review, Slippery Elm Literary Journal, Southern Women’s Review, Sparks of Calliope, Stirring: A Literary Collection, The Word’s Faire, and The Write City Review. She earned her MFA from George Mason University and her EdD from the University of Memphis. Originally from Arkansas, she currently lives in Virginia. Visit her at https://www.teresaburnsmurphy.com

Image: Kritzolina, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Two Poems by Mary Stone

Poetry

MAR Editorial Assistant

-

May 29, 2025

0

These poems are published as part of the Amplifying Disabled Voices special section, selected by editors Christopher Heuer, Marlena Chertock, and Gregory Luce.

Wry-Necked Diptych

Wring, wrang, wrung. My mother’s girlhood chore, to kill
the dinner chicken. She longed for the city. When she got
to her city, she longed for the hens and sisters left behind.
Don’t cross your eyes, she warned, they might get stuck.
But gave no warning of indecision’s perils.
How they can wrench a neck, distort a voice, contort
a body perpetually. Some days I want to holler. Get back!
I warn my son who clambers dangerously close to the bow.
But only gravel bits spill out. Only one whale spotted
off the coast of Santa Barbara that day, despite the captain’s
zigging and zagging. Can a curandera heal my neck? She
sings, offers fresh-squeezed juice, shows me how to bury
roadkill using gloves and shovel she keeps in her trunk.
Lie on the bare earth, she instructs. Eat wild strawberries.

My neck wasn’t swan-like, but it was cooperative,
capable of doing what I asked: holding up my head,
allowing walnuts and tea to transit unobstructed
to my gut, housing the apparatus of my speech
and song. In triangle pose, it turned my face toward
the sun, stayed strong and straight in a headstand,
however brief. Without wilt or droop, it meditated.
One day, a turning of my neck to the right. A jerk,
a bobble, a twist. Wry neck, wrenched, wrung. No
longer mine to control. Some days, even my voice
is silenced. An effort now, to hold my head up,
level, facing forward. To heal what can be healed,
which is not this dystonic neck. What words to sing
to this body? To the dimmed lights ringing it?

On Stoicism

Angling for green beans, I cut a woman
off with my shopping cart. She looks
like the neighbor whose son was shot
by officers in the woods behind my house.
Older than her age. Sorrow on her face,
or resignation. Anger, too. The scowl,
the hunch. If I had a gun, I’d shoot them,
that neighbor threatened when my dogs
escaped the unlatched gate. The beans
look good, I will a smile as I speak, then
apologize for the danger of me: blundering
like a flounder, neck torqued, left eye,
a blank. We all have something, she says,
and I sense how heavy hers must be.

A former biomedical writer, Mary Specker Stone lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, where she practices as a certified spiritual director and leads poetry salons. Her poetry has appeared in Image, Mom Egg Review, RockPaperPoem, Gyroscope Review, and other journals. Her chapbook, Valentine’s Dinner at Wren & Wolf, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2024. For thirty years, Mary has lived with dystonia, a rare neurologic disorder that causes involuntary muscle contractions and painful, uncontrolled movements in her neck and vocal cords.

Featured image in this post is, “A Chicken Running, 2009″ by Alvesgaspar – licensed creative commons via Wikimedia Commons.