One Poem Only is a daily ritual: one poem, center stage, just for now. This month, One Poem Only presents One Poem After, featuring selected poems written in response to the poems shared during National Poetry Month. Each piece began as a conversation with another poem and became something entirely its own. Today’s poem is The Bee’s Knees by Amelia Wicker after To Be a Salamander by Rachel Turney. Read the full poems on Substack.

More from Amelia Wicker ↓

• @poison.or.grapes_poetry on Instagram

More from Rachel Turney ↓

• @turneytalks on Instagram
• Rachel Turney on Substack
• Her books, Record Player Life (the b-side), Retired Wannabe Club Kid, and Women Making Soup Together are out now
• You can discover more on her website: TurneyTalks.com

Support + Stay Connected to OPO

If you’d like to support the show, Substack and Patreon members receive a copy of my book, For My Daughter, along with episodes from the audiobook.

Follow OPO on Instagram, Substack, Threads, TikTok & YouTube.

Feed yourself poetry every day.

One Poem Only is a daily ritual: one poem, center stage, just for now.

after Avalon

More from Rachel Turney ↓

• @turneytalks on Instagram
• Rachel Turney on Substack
• Her book, Women Making Soup Together, is out now with Vinegar Press

And now for the poem this was written after.

More from Avalon ↓

• @avalonspoems on Instagram
• Her book, Sorry, I didn’t mean to make it weird, is available now

Support + Stay Connected to OPO

If you’d like to support the show, Substack and Patreon members receive a copy of my book, For My Daughter, along with episodes from the audiobook.

Poetry shows us what we need. Thank you for being part of the experience.

One Poem Only is a daily poetry podcast offering a quiet moment with a single poem—read aloud, without analysis or noise. Today's poem is by Kay Medway after Amy Laessle-Morgan -

Everywhere, a surround

of mirror glass blue.

River rain, grey, falls

from a peak

with a stain

of rose window,

and the stickiness,

syrup of a theatre fair.

I was held

in a bridge moment,

thin black iron rail

and all, veering

from waters to stone.

A water thread

of moment.

Sweetened air, as if by berries,

a safe steam of teapot smoke,

a tale passed till as a tradition

as a wind.

More from Kay Medway ↓

• @medwaykay on Instagram

And now for the poem this was written after: Butterscotch by Amy Laessle-Morgan -

Somewhere between the amberblush streetlight of Division

and the butterscotch stain on the back of my throat,

there was a glasslike moment

nearbent

but not yet breaking.

Half-formed, honeydrunk on the hour

slipping past the soft machinery of becoming

unbecoming

rewinding

rethreading.

Warm, butterfat air washing in subtle

breathing through the cracked window taxicab

teacuplight broken open on my cheek

whispering nothing is permanent

except the way we almost changed.

There was always something burning—

toast

bridges

the last good version of me I kept resuscitating

with mouth-to-mouth-watering memory.

Tonight, I’ll wear that dress you loved

in the color of skinbrushed apologies

while the past rides shotgunsilent

adjusting the mirror like it still matters how I see myself

because when mirrors grow honest

the corridors echo less—

as everyone pours out.

Let us go then, you and I

through the goldblood hours

where no one teaches you how to bleed pretty—

not in the swanpale wrist pressed

to cold porcelain tile way

half-lit in someone else’s forgetting.

You learn it knees to marble

cheek to linoleum

in radio silence buzzing through your teeth

playing love songs that didn’t learn the language.

He liked it leaning in disrepair

so I sucked the ghostsweet butterscotch slow.

I let it split goldenglass hard and sharp

the bloom red blooming—

behind teeth

a salty flood.

It cut me—

but I didn’t spit it out.

I kept it

I kept it all.

More from Amy Laessle-Morgan ↓

• @ultramarine_poetry on Instagram
• Her book, Live Wire, is available now.

Support + Stay Connected to OPO

If you’d like to support the show, Substack and Patreon members receive a copy of my book, For My Daughter, along with episodes from the audiobook.

Poetry sustains. Thank you for supporting the podcast.

One Poem Only is a daily poetry podcast offering a quiet moment with a single poem—read aloud, without analysis or noise. Today's poem is: Dear Unknown Ancestor Naked in the Woods by Danielle Eleanor La Valle after Chris Kads -

I haven't gone back far enough,

keep going, keep going,

back, back, back,

farther still...

...ah, there, there you are, sitting on a log.

Waiting maybe.

You are wind-thickened skin, tattoos made

of soot and saliva,

scars I didn't know a body could hold.

I look at you and see an early death,

abscess teeth, parasites, tuberculosis.

You smile with the half teeth you have remaining.

You look at me as I am, confused and wrapped in many layers of highly profitable fear.

You are deaf in one ear and you limp,

rheumatoid is already curling your fingers,

but you're alive, gloriously and nakedly in this wood.

We are I think the same age, though that means something different here.

Then asking with your eyes -neither of us have any language that will mean anything to the other- you want to know why am I so sad, why am I so afraid?

You put your hand on the scar that missed my eye,

you hold up the face I fear is sagging too soon,

you slid your arms around my soft, asymmetrical body.

More from Danielle Eleanor Lavalle ↓

• @danielleeleanorlavalle on Instagram

And now for the poem this was written after. Dear Personal Care Department God by Chris Kads after Lancee Whetman -

God of the Personal Care Department,

please grant me musk. Grant me

the strength of “Steel Courage” -

buffness in a bottle. Let my

body be a vessel of “dragon’s breath”

and “warrior’s blood”. Allow me,

like men, to be baptized

in wet swagger, to have my

preconceived softness

wash away with the scent

of toughness.

Bless me,

with blindness in the face

of razors. Grant me

the normalization

of forest-y armpits

to pair with the scent of

“Sasquatch Foot”.

And, please, oh holy

Personal Care Department God,

revoke your commandments

and let the avoidance of “Secret”

and smoothness

not be a sin.

Amen.

More from Chris Kads ↓

• @chris_kads on Instagram

Support + Stay Connected to OPO

If you’d like to support the show, Substack and Patreon members receive a copy of my book, For My Daughter, along with episodes from the audiobook.

Poetry slows us down. Thank you for listening.

One Poem Only is a daily ritual: one poem, center stage, just for now.

after Ella B. Winters

it doesn’t take much to see

through skin, through blood, through bones

i’ve etched poems in each rib

this cage can only hold so many stories

see how this poem is stuck in the marrow

see how this poem is caught in the hollow

do i have to break these bones

for you

to read me

More from Toni Young ↓

• @toniyoungpoems on Instagram
• @toniyoungpoems on Substack

And now for the poem this was written after.

Behind the dusty radiator,

green splashed like blood

spray in a B-film, from that time

when you decided

to paint our bedroom

in the middle of the night,

I keep my poems

hidden in a puce manila file

so unremarkable, it chameleons

into the background, pink tongue

unfurling to swallow my words

into the shadowy crevice.

Mostly, I don’t want you

to see them, as though,

in the starkness of the early

hours, when our walls

demand another change,

they might reveal my ugly

bones through the translucent

skin. But sometimes, I forget

they’re there, as well. Imagine

leaving them behind when we

move on. Who will I be when

unsuspecting tenants pull me

out word after word like a magician’s

string of endless gauzy scarves?

How will they piece my naked bones

together? What colour will they

paint the room?

More from Ella B. Winters ↓

• @ella.b.winters on Instagram
• @ellabwinters on Substack

Support + Stay Connected to OPO

If you’d like to support the show, Substack and Patreon members receive a copy of my book, For My Daughter, along with episodes from the audiobook.

Feed yourself poetry every day.

One Poem Only is a daily poetry podcast offering a quiet moment with a single poem—read aloud, without analysis or noise.

Dedicated to Beca /

We are looking at the moon

Through the delicate lines

of a spider's web

Dutifully spun in the

branches of a tree

She takes a sip of her Baja Blast

and says "You're right,

Maybe we shouldn't kill ourselves

Today."

I bite into a cinnabon delight

crunch the sugar between my teeth.

because I know what the moon

has told her.

I can still hear my own message

from that night when the sky was black

with despair

and the full moon was red from

screaming

There is no need to reply.

More from Kris Aziz ↓

• @tacobellkris on Instagram
• @tacobellkris on Substack

And now for the poem this was written after.

When the Moon is Full,

She never holds Me by the hand.

She grabs right behind the

gape of My neck and

drags me to all I've been avoiding.

When the Moon is Full,

She never whispers in My ear.

She screams at the top of Her lungs,

so loud, that her rasping voice awakens

the aliens in outer space; now peering from

their spaceships.

When the Moon is Full,

She never glides across the sky.

She anchors through the clouds

beaming directly for

everyone and everything in Her path.

When the Moon is Full,

She is never dainty but always true.

She smiles from above,

sneering at everything You thought You knew about Her,

and reminding you of exactly who You are

More from GiGi ↓

• @thegigirising on Threads
• @thematriarchyrising on Substack
• Her books, The Scorpio Rising and The Marilyn Rising: Letters to Marilyn
• She has a new book coming soon The California Rising: Poems from San Francisco to LA

Support + Stay Connected to OPO

If you’d like to support the show, Substack and Patreon members receive a copy of my book, For My Daughter, along with episodes from the audiobook.

Poetry slows us down. Thank you for listening.