This Week's Friendly Reminder

A sadly appropriate sticker put up sometime during Black History Month.

American Haiku: Crowder Pleaser

When I started my Sarcastic Haiku series, I wrote my first American Haiku. An American Haiku doesn't care about tradition, formality or history and takes as long as it wants to complete because America. You can read others I've written since by clicking here and scrolling down. 

 

American Haiku: Crowder Pleaser

This is not funny!

Why does Twitter mock Crowder?

He can't breathe! He can't breathe! 

SAFE DISTANCE EDITION - Stone Soup Croutons, 4-21-21: No One Gets to Choose a Hero

Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions picked from Stone Soup Poetry's open mic readers and features. I figure out a title (and sometimes the rest of the poem) later. You can read the other ones I've done since 2015 here.

I also have an award nominated book out now collecting the best of my first year of poems. Click here to purchase it.

Thank you, Gloria Monaghan, for a wonderful feature on Wednesday. Gloria has a knack for bringing new voices to the open mic. In this instance, it led to a more challenging crouton poem. 

All those wonderful voices, and I had to turn it into a anti-humanity poem of sorts. Ah, well, it's the pandemic, so I can do whatever I want, right?  It was also slightly influenced (at least in the editing process) by the recent Derek Chauvin verdict and the ways people were already appropriating his memory. Thanks for reading.

No One Gets to Choose a Hero

Disco physics are hard to test

under spinning ball lights.

Hard to recreate the hustle

when you write it up in code.

American Haiku: Blank Tomi Gun

When I started my Sarcastic Haiku series, I wrote my first American Haiku. You can read others I've written since by clicking here and scrolling down. 

 

American Haiku: Blank Tomi Gun

 

Five-seven-five Waaahhhh!

Why's their mob better than ours?!?

White riots matter! White riots matter!

This Week's Most Distinguished Network Name

It's amazing what people will name their online networks. I'm always trying to hijack Wi-Fi when I'm commuting, so I often come across a number of interesting names. Every Tuesday, I post the most impressive and/or cringe-inducing names.

Not funny, but appropriate. Vote Blue. Black Lives Matter. 'Nuff said.

SAFE DISTANCE EDITION: Stone Soup Croutons, 6-24-20: A Matter to Listen

Stone Soup Croutons is a weekly poem I write using lines and impressions picked from Stone Soup's open mic readers and features. I figure out a title (and sometimes the rest of the poem) later. You can read the other ones I've done since 2015 here. To paraphrase Lorne Michaels, this poem doesn't go up because it's ready, it goes up because it's Friday morning.

 Jamilla VanDyke-Bailey gave us an amazing feature Wednesday night. I'm grateful to her for being Stone Soup's historical first online feature. I hope you will support her if you haven't already. I hope you support her through her Cashapp ($thekweenmother) her Venmo (links to it will be on Facebook) or by buying her book.

I also want to preface the poem below saying that while I make allusions in the body of thepoe to Kendrick Johnson and Breonna Taylor, (both mentioned by Jamilla during her feature). I even made referrence to a story about one of George Floyd's murderers from last weekend. This is due to the way I try to reflect the content of the open mic in the final poem and not meant to minimize their tragedies. In fact, I urge you before reading my poem to read up on to look up their stories if you don't already know them and try to use existing hashtags on Facebook and Twitter to raise public awareness. Thanks for reading.

A Matter to Listen

Toxic partners role play their abuse,
Bondage and Bandages until one
realizes it's no longer a game.

World leaders launch force from space,
try to hit part of the little blue dot
that doesn't include one percent.

Now More Than Ever

Oddball Magazine wants to use it's forum to the best of its ability in these terrible times.

We will still publish pandemic-inspired work in response to the global issue, but we also would like any work (poetry, art, etc.) in reaction to the recent racist atrocities, especially with the deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery.

Please send such submissions under the "Timely Submission" category of our Submittable page.

Please spread the word. Thank you.