Poetry – Page 2 – PLEASE SEE ME

The Diabetes Chronicles PSM 18 Poetry – Laurie Billman

Poetry Issue #18: Choices April 20, 2026 The Diabetes Chronicles by Laurie Billman The Diabetes Chronicles like an astronaut I blasted off, cartwheeling from the earth my constant motion the antidote to mom’s hot fudge cooked on the stove top cocoa caramelizing in bubbling butter poured over soft mountains of ice cream when I left childhood behind, candy still cried out to me designed to snag children sweets caught me at the checkout counter little drops of pleasure coated in chocolate battled in my blood promising fuel ...

Zeroing Out PSM 18 Poetry – Richard Stimac

Poetry Issue #18: Choices April 20, 2026 Zeroing Out by Richard Stimac Zeroing Out Only one absence in its presence changes things: zero. Take one and hold a place for what is not standing behind it. This lack of essence makes more. Zero is the temporalized question, “What if?” Once, I read, all creation was nothing but potential, another word for what is yet not. I like to think zero gives value to the dead. Here we each are, alone, it seems, an ...

Where There Is Despair PSM 18 Poetry – Joe Bisicchia

Poetry Issue #18: Choices April 20, 2026 Where There is Despair by Joe Bisicchia Where There is Despair There was a belief, not fully yours, that you would heal the world, but now this, and as the world cries you cry and you know why as it hurts so much deep inside while everyone labeled you as the one to heal this because you were made with a mind and the know-how and as the floor prescribes mindlessness to erase the pain, the world is ...

Not Isn’t PSM 18 Poetry – Lawrence Bridges

Poetry Issue #18: Choices April 20, 2026 Not Isn't by Lawrence Bridges Not Isn't Up to the steps, interest earned is life, paid is death. Some mobility, unless you toil, more Paul than Peter, and complicit. Even then the clocks and calendars get you. Would failure on Greenwich Ave. tax you today? Faces in frames would be different, vices remain, gibberish in the mind remains but you lost your smell and taste of its aroma. Pencils grow shorter now that they stopped making them. I ...

Weather Report From Suicide Lake PSM 18 Poetry – Travis Stephens

Poetry Issue #18: Choices April 20, 2026 Weather Report from Suicide Lake by Travis Stephens Weather Report from Suicide Lake Emerge from a stuffy house into the broken, gray clouded hard brittle ice. Cross the woods leaf carpet & step onto the lake. December has settled into the trees like fluffed-up crows. There is just enough snow on the ice to pull a blanket over its face. Roiling dirty booted clouds are marching past & bring nothing, not rain, not snow, not Christmas gifts. Nothing for the children, the dogs, or lonely bachelors nursing the last ...

Letter from the Poetry Editor – PSM17

Editorial Issue #17: Free November 1, 2025 Letter from the Poetry Editor: Creative Writing that Empowers You, as Poet, and Engages Others by Stephen Granzyk ver 17 Issues, Please See Me has accepted poetry of many different types and styles, by poets from a wide variety of lived experience and varying levels of writing training. We welcome work from everyone with a health-related story. Over time we have had opportunities to help patients, caregivers, and healthcare ...

PSM 17 Poetry In the Garden – Andrew Dillon2

Poetry Issue #17: Free November 1, 2025 In the Garden by Andrew Dillon Andrew Dillon reads “In the Garden”: Andrew Dillon's debut collection, The Great Permission (https://thegreatpermission.com), is the first poetry collection built exclusively for the web. His work has been published in several print & online journals (https://andrewdillonpoetry.com/links). He is a neurodivergent arospec poet living in Amsterdam.

PSM 17 Poetry 2 Poems – Ron Riekki

Poetry Issue #17: Free November 1, 2025 Two Poems by Ron Riekki Retention The boss informs me that my hours will be cut back. Of course, she tells me before Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year, because coffins are always blooming in this world and, to make matters worse, she tells me why and the why is because, apparently, my ‘retention’ is bad and, of course, I immediately think of urinary retention and the fluid retention of edema and bile retention and retention of teeth and I think of tension and re-tension, and ...

PSM 17 Poetry 3 Poems – Rais Tuluka

Poetry Issue #17: Free November 1, 2025 Three Poems by Rais Tuluka My Voice is Bleeding My voice is bleeding. It bleeds out slow and clogs my throat like molasses. It bleeds because my fingers don’t bend right no more, because the calluses turned to fire and the frets laugh at me. My voice bleeds because of the strings I used to whisper to, and because the old Gibson stays quiet in its case like a dog that won’t bark. My voice bleeds ...

PSM 17 Poetry 3 Poems – Linda Philliips

Poetry Issue #17: Free November 1, 2025 Three Poems by Linda Vigen Phillips Mental Health Awareness Contest Winner The Porringer He wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth but surrounded by enough silver to blind someone like me. The porringer– engraved with his name, etched with strutting monkeys, dancing bears prancing pigs, cats racing chariots, elephants strumming on harps–shone on the mantle like a beacon proclaiming princely pedigree. Three months into our marriage he threw it and when it missed me, it landed on the ...