Cindy Ana 🇳🇿

Haha, cleverly discordant

Fire, John. Pure fire

MASTER CLASS Not just the sinister misopedist who said a fib would turn my tongue black but every teacher I ever had lied as if their pull string plastic voice boxes were preloaded with platitudes like no one is above the law and what can you do for your country when they were pried from their molds at the same industrial complex as red lights and stop signs melting pots and voting booth curtains Chatty Cathy’s who whined “I hurt myself” instead of shouting “stop hurting me” and G.I. Joes who yelled “throw the grenade” but left unspoken “at the children.” All, except the sadistic Sister Misery who preferred to have a second grader pee the carpet rather than use the rest room before the end of the pledge of allegiance and then sent her to the office to call home for fresh undies and socks and detained me for crossing an imaginary border on the playground no one ever before judged illegal because she could, and Mr. Myopia the jaded eighth grade geography teacher to use the title lightly who never taught a single fact or feature while clock-watching on his lazy ass as we read the text book on our own and Sharpied a blood red X over three problems I got right on a test but wouldn’t change my grade because he didn’t make mistakes. Knowing what I know now I should have been studying them more than the snowflakes and fakers who softly peddled esoteric aspirations like science and art and fairness and made us cower in the basement lined up on our knees chins tucked to our chests heads against lead painted walls waiting for imaginary incineration from the other side of the earth unaware only forty miles north a slumlord’s son with bone spurs and shoe lifts was being groomed for this moment to liberate the freedoms we freely relinquish.

#PoemsAbout #BreakTheMould
@thebrokenspine.co.uk
Depending on what the app allows, I will either put a reel or a link in the comments for the 🎤…

The divorce will cost you more, a lot more.

not the leader Wellington needs, ever.

Three were mum, the rest were ‘MUM!!!’

in my dreams i saved us by Joel LeBlanc   A voice sings a lullaby: “The animals went in two by two, Hurrah! Hurrah!” Noah is drunk in the corner, grieving the past, he thought the ark would make him happy. Naamah is wash...

Aotearoa poet Joel LeBlanc has been nominated for Best of the Net 2026 for his magical poem ‘in my dreams i saved us’
Published in Stone Circle Review
@cottageinwood.bsky.social
@stonecirclereview.bsky.social

stonecirclereview.com/in-my-dreams/

Ātaahua! He nui te rahi?

"They're trying to convince people they can't do the things they've been doing easily for years - to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies - to write that for you." We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, "that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else. You won't know anything and you will be told repeatedly that you can't do it, which is the opposite of what life has to offer. Capitulating all kinds of decisions like where to go on vacation, what to wear today, who to date, what to eat. People are already doing this. You won't have to process grief, because you'll have uploaded photos and voice messages from your mother who just died, and then she can talk to you via AI video call every day. One of the ways it's going to destroy humans, long before there's a nuclear disaster, is going to be the emotional hollowing-out of people." - author and filmmaker Justine Bateman from a piece by Emine Saner for the Guardian

Author and filmmaker Justine Bateman on generative AI

They used Toitu te Tiriti to increase party membership

100%

Tino ataahua!

Jfc! And every one of those job seekers is just lazy 🙄

"Jason regretted the extra sugar in his coffee" by Cindy Kurukaanga @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social is today's 75-word #story on Paragraph Planet paragraphplanet.com #writingcommunity

Today's 75-word Paragraph Jason regretted the extra sugar in his coffee. It is the reason he is standing in a bank vault. A cacophony of alarms and shouting growing louder as smoke congests the shrinking space. His thoughts narrow to the rich black syrup Maeve poured into his mug this morning. His usual one sugar added without expression. The second, delivered with her knowing sneer; the look she gets when she knows he will do whatever she says. By: Cindy Kurukaanga

Thank you @paragraphplanet.bsky.social
My little story is today’s paragraph.

She’s saving that gem.

Last call for entries! The Monica Taylor Poetry Prize closes at the end of September, so don't miss your chance to be part of this beloved competition.

💚$300 first prize + publication in the December issue of takahē
💚$150 runner up

www.takahe.org.nz/submit/

This is so good!

Congratulations @merrildsmith.bsky.social !

Quiet as dirt When I'm dead and buried I'll hear the earth sigh As I sleep silently The soil hums Inhaling with each winter Exhaling slowly with each spring No voice to issue complaints A chorus only visible in Vibrant autumn leaves Vivid and varied In their undying rhythm

Here's my offering for #PoemsAbout #SilentPlanets @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk

Audition for poetry journal iamb in Sept 2025 Audition to be part of quarterly poetry journal iamb between the 20th and 27th of September 2025.

**AUDITIONS NOW OPEN TILL SEP 27**

Want three of your poems with text and recordings of you reading them to feature in popular online poetry quarterly @iambapoet.com?

You now have just 7 days to audition for your place in a wave in either 2026 or 2027.

Good luck! 🍀

iambapoet.com/audition

“But dawn,
Because you hid behind the horizon
torches blazed, blinding,
breaking sleep and families
as parents were taken from screaming kids
to be jailed then charged then sent back to the islands
 
Dawn,
because you were silent,
because all murmurings were silenced.”

- @kakapowhakatoi.bsky.social

Thanks, Rachel 🙏🏽

Thank you, Carolyn 🙏🏽

It’s my online launch tonight!

whakapapa - lineage, descent, genealogy
tīpuna – ancestors
taiaha - long wooden weapon - of hard wood with one end carved and often decorated with dogs hair

No Te Paruparu, No Te Purapura Of the Mud, Of the Seed They came to me while barefoot in bitter mud, with acons angry whakapapa, they held me there. Hands stretched through flesh soaked earth, wrapped my feet in weighted expectation. My soles a pair of seeds, husks waiting to be pierced by a justice of tipuna, as steadfast as battle-blooded taiaha. Hope takes root. Lightfast, it endures this bright white blaze.

I am thrilled this poem got a special mention in Given Words 2025. It is amongst a wonderful collection of works, please fill your Friday afternoon reading.
I have added a glossary in the comments for those unfamiliar with Te Reo.

nzgivenwords.blogspot.com/2025/09/give...

Ha! Brilliant!

we are currently accepting submissions for our FALL 2025 issue, & we'd love to hear from you! ✨🍁✨

voicemailpoems.org/submit

🧡 deadline october 1st 🧡