TRAUMA DEN
19 pained poets
Surrender, Martyr - Chelsea Nelthropp
Yield, Martyr. Lay down again on crumpled cushions, swollen Achilles ankles waving high as white flags on bloodied battlegrounds. Accept, Martyr. Give your body to the cause. Allow the mountain beneath your breasts to reveal peaks and valleys unearthed by ancestors, rediscovered on sterile hospital beds. Feel, Martyr. Sing with crushed lungs, of life, of pain. Become the animal, gnashing until the jaw goes slack, knowing, like death, this, too, cannot be stopped. Submit, Martyr. Let the internal waves crash, inward and upward, drowning you as you gurgle out lullabies. Feel the surge destroy you— smile as you sink. But most of all, Surrender, Martyr. Allow tiny feet to bring you to your knees. Relent to the banshee cry. Stare into the hazy eye. Collapse beneath the weight of new life. In the ruins, you’ll find resurrection.
© Chelsea Nelthropp 2025
Prodigal Daughter - Edward Swafford
Stowaway runaway rhetoric rides tonight
on the brackish back of her wound hole
can’t you see it?
all the boys she never loved before could
they. leapt.
at opportunistic divides, and a word was
CONSEQUENCE
yet inconsequential, opportune, dynastic
advantages played some total (un)recall
the ace card, it was never
up her sleeveless supine arms, why would
lady Lazarus luck endow
those blessings?
is it hell, or habitual ritual thinking
circular thoughts consummate her mind
fucking writhing
”it’s just a fuck, calm down”
so she slept beneath comfort clouds, PUFF
virile vanishing acts, gossamer divine
girls meets world
extinction begets suffrage self-sabotage
and muralled suffering, it’s the
oldest storybook, pages as pale as snow
white skin, novel sheets
those silken restraints still hold her
D
O
W
N
© Edward Swafford 2025
Blade’s Illusion - J. Kayla
I pull myself together, tighten the seams,
rehearse the way I’ll look whole.
Make myself shiny, like something worth cutting.
To be touched, I must seem untouchable.
To be hurt, I must look like I can take it.
To be wanted, I must act like I don’t need anything.
This is the show: a smirk,
a drink I pretend not to need,
a story that makes me sound
just broken enough to shimmer.
You move carefully, deliberate—
the kind of touch that makes it look
like you’re a good guy.
Your hands skim the edge of decency,
waiting for me to say it’s okay to go deeper.
Your voice is low, measured,
like a man who’s learned
to make the ordinary sound like a confession.
But we both know this script.
You buy the drink, I take it.
You test the waters, I don’t push back.
Each move a step closer
to the edge we pretend isn’t there.
The blade flashes in every glance.
By the time you touch my wrist,
we’ve already bled.
Your practiced hands map my body
through my Sunday-girl layers,
peeling me open, seam by seam.
Desire becomes a prayer
we whisper in the dark.
This is the illusion we both crave—
no part of me left untouched.
We don’t slide with each other, but through.
Moments pulse. Electricity quiets longing.
Gripping tight against its dissolve.
You search for salvation in my sins,
and I will chase the ghost of myself in your arms,
finding her shadow in your gaze.
Each of us knowing the illusion
won’t survive the glinting dawn.
The razor’s reflection—
an invitation to press close once more.
© J. Kayla 2025
A Prayer to Persephone - A. J. Grant
Persephone, daughter of Demeter,
Harbinger of frost, herald of sorrow.
Taken from this plane by a deceiver,
Bring me to your skin, Queen of the Hollow.
I ask, do you love him? Do you suffer?
Beneath the still Earth, roots twist around you.
Did you ignore the cries of your mother?
Did you know she would take all that dares bloom?
I have grown accustomed to the stillness,
I hear the barren fields whisper your name.
The tremblings of the earth in your absence,
A mother’s wail somewhere amongst the plain.
Let me wake when the Hydrangeas blossom,
Unfold my limbs in the golden spring air.
Teach me to climb til you fade with autumn,
Faced again with Demeter’s lonesome stare.
© A. J. Grant 2025
Offensive Things - Annie Lure
To most: A swastika spidering the bartender’s shaved scalp. To some: A penis nudging a cross. To the self-anointed elite: The dog ceased serving it’s (its) master. Expected to all: A white schoolboy paints on a tile in fluorescent green and halcyon yellow a black schoolboy dangling from a tree. [1] Expected to all: A man spoons caviar against the backdrop of a dust-bitten child begging on the scrawny street. [2] Expected to none: Nurse proffers you a saccharine smile with happy pills as you await a bed in a facile feelgood facility. Expected to none: An NGO worker clinks in front of a displaced family two prosthetic legs as if toasting their son while B-2s drop bombs like bubble bath balls. To dissident feminists: The TV gapes vagina-like on the living room wall: He raped me twenty years ago. I was twenty. He serves in the senate, but, in fact, he is a miscreant who… To virile men who feel emasculated: A woman hawking ‘Hands Off My Vagina’ lube tubes. To me: An obscenely large Listerine bottle flashing its chemo amber on the shelf of Walgreens. NOTES: [1] Scene from "Blacked Out", a film by the Highland Park African-American History Project. Directed by John Hulme. Highland Park, a self-congratulatory town, confronts its deep-seated racism and de facto segregation. [2] Imagery from "The Five Obstructions", a documentary by Jorgen Leth and Lars von Trier, which explores the construct of the perfect human.
© Annie Lure 2025
Check Engine - Laura Catanzano
My trauma is flooding the engine and I had cut the line black sludge spilling mercilessly covering the heavy machinery such that it could barely run I fed it with my fear thoughts was it any less real? I pictured you dying saw myself in the front pew at your funeral tumors growing, crossing lines My engine, sputtering if it only happened in my imagination does it mean the pain's not valid? Sparks flying through my engine- miswirings of a doubtful mind. I brought her into the mechanic and she told me to find 5 things I could see- but how could I see anything when my engine was seizing? I let my tears rundown the windshield, let my engine slow to idle. And in the quiet rumbling, I opened my lungs for breathing. And I could see, that my engine is just a machine. Doing what machines do. I didn't need to listen to it's clunking. I could drive the car with eyes wide open. I could steer my heart to home.
© Laura Catanzano 2025
Is Spring Being Called by Any Other Name? - Sue Banerji
1: Shadows disintegrate slowly into the wall. They stood tall once when things were okay with all. My mind floats up above impermanence conundrum dreams dance. Once again, truth doesn’t exist for those blinded by the color of hate. Sensitivity to the truth is not a diagnosis. Once, I lost my way in a lonesome summer. When I went to report what I had lost, The hot press fired back: 3 days ago: Leaders decided It’s not called rape Whether a forced entrance is love Or a requirement for the needy? It will be decided by a handful who know what’s best for the nation. And definitely for the women! “It’s not a rape” They know words and laws and are the protectors of all good things. 2 days ago from the hot press: They have declared, “There is no such word or thing as rape.” They might ban the dictionary altogether where it says it is Or maybe a majority of words from it. The rumor has it: They are about to ban all dictionaries! A day ago from the hot press: A loyal team is to be assigned by the leader — to come up with a newer history and the newest dictionaries. “All people beyond this line will have to learn a new language.” “And on the other side They will dig graveyards for the languages and cultures of other kinds and the faces with wrong contours.” The leader enquired the nation: “Did you know The Almighty Created people of wrong colors? “What to do with such a God or maybe it is the work of the Devil? They all agreed to the latter theory! “We will have to wait for the list of what is now obsolete.” “My administration is working on it! We might have a new God if you don’t mind!” I sit and knit stories for my unborn grandkids. I include two types of wars internal and external. The sun is misguiding the already tired travellers. Dunes are not ‘Highways to heaven’. The polite Moon reminds them often, but they don’t listen. My eyes need rest since the milkweed days. What do they call trauma these days? Is spring being called by any other name?
© Sue Banerji 2025
Big Bird - Melanie Cole
When someone asks me What I was wearing I tell them: Big Bird overalls Light-up shoes And a Little Mermaid pull-up When someone asks me why I didn’t say something sooner I tell them it is because I did not have the tools to do so As if I were some kind of repairman When someone asks me why I didn’t run I tell them feet were frozen in fear My shoes without wings It is only decades later After carrying around such a shameful secret That one stops and thinks to themselves: “I am not okay.”
© Melanie Cole 2025
A Liminal State - Adrian Njoto
Painfully wasting away the seconds i have like a parrot plucking its feathers / as if there'd be plenty more coming from within // but perhaps my body would give up giving me that coat i desire // my best self had been left to fester at the door of my youth // it had always been on the wheel before the hail came screaming my name in between its melodic thunders // typhoon harmonises every interval of their claps / flinging every door apart / then leaving them to settle on the streets // the sun ? though it has been mothering the fuck out of every sick twisted motherfuckers in their ungrateful existence / i don't think it would appear the same the next dawn // the night could be my last chance / my only friend longing for my arrival // dread settles under my feet and sets my heart heavy // then come worries creeping from my back and to my neck / slowly clasping my breath ways like dry chilly air / gripping my larynx / leaving no gap to cry for >help< // Tie me in your knot with a single whisper, Scared, scarred, discarded—but tethered. Upon your shoulders, I lay my soul, surrendering, Neither whole nor shattered.
© Adrian Njoto 2025 
Devolved Diffidence - H. R. Sinclair
Who am I to you?
The fallen angel landing in
his own consequences,
life’s contradiction created for
amusement or pain,
the hopeful horizon or
the never-rising sun?
Who am I… who am I
to you?
A frightened faun feeling fear
alone in this wilderness,
a hopeful prey or disassociated
predator… do I seem to you
one who holds his own or pushes
boulders not for his own or
who am I… to you?
Who am I to you?
Innocent until proven or proven
already of gluttonous guilt?!
A valiant soldier fighting his last breath
or a coward behind a shield
just trying to catch his breath.
A lost soul at sea unable to see
the sacred land ahead,
or a lighthouse keeper lost of direction
forgetting the land he harbours —
When I know my way who
will I be to you?
Can I be for you?
Whoever I am
to you?
I’ve memorised too many scripts
too many lines
learnt too many characters
to know which I am,
too many falsities to remember
what is true?..
but still
I mix and match
to create something
for you…
but is it even
Who I am to you?
© H. R. Sinclair 2025 
The Light Will Suffice - E.R. Davis
God’s own milk lights up the empty fridge, our eyes cling to the sky desperate seekers yearning for an apparition Something and we will take Anything to temper the primitive wailing of heartstrings severed and hear Nothing but the familiar ice box wires humming. Just a freezer full of pain and cold organs to burn against hollow aches; and thick bands of ice crystals accumulate on the edges to illustrate how far we are from where the stardust falls. and longing builds behind prayer sealed lips until repressed howls die a stillborn death. We want so much more than we were made for. What vanity is this? The moon looks big enough to satisfy. Will it tide us over? The moon is made of cheese. When dreams are shut out of the night, we will devour the light. In a hungry existence, the light will suffice.
© E.R. Davis 2025
Mountain Man - Clare Frances
15 years today: sometimes I listen to that song with no words (you wouldn’t know it) and think of your face soaking in a puddle of vomit on the planked floor. Its charming crooked nose, copper skin, somber sky eyes that glistened and glazed like mine did then; so different from how, they do now. 15 years past: my self a stroke of a selfish ego, begging for scraps of time; smoking dust drinking dreams twisting slowly in your shadow. I finally made it to your mountain — the one you promised you’d take me to but — now with my family. We make angels, softly crunching fresh snow and memories beneath our boots. Funny how I never can imagine you there.
© Clare Frances 2025 - originally published in Scuzzbucket, and revamped for Trauma Den
Kaleidoscope - Maisie Archer
The angels are excruciating.
I mean that in the very best way,
of course,
and if you’ve had them gnawing the inside of your eyelids,
you would understand.
Maybe you do.
If they had started there instead of with
the icy hands
curling into my nerves,
I might have been more amenable to their intervention.
But everything turns out the way it should, in the ends.
The end was not what I expected, not at first,
but I’ve learned not to expect;
that way, the fear is short and sharp,
in the moment rather than the stretched out
squeeze inside my chest,
the gummy taffy twist that held me hoarse for days.
In the beginning.
The reminders are not gentle,
not the winged softness of the creatures
cradling infants in paintings gifted to new parents,
the image a spike in my throat as I swallow
against the rawness of memory.
It is a lesson borne in the insidiousness of their glare,
the hot sizzle of their overpowering judgment.
Appreciation.
Learned after years, after a hot heavy dawn
when I discovered the beacon within me,
that the one who brought them back again and again
was here.
She was beyond reach,
more real than I am myself,
tangled up inside her.
No, angels are pure, incapable of judgment,
only deliverance, afterthoughts chide.
Silver platter offerings of guilt glazed in perpetuity,
sticky with forever, a dance of shivering threads.
Will I make these repeated reflections sing with color again?
© Maisie Archer 2025 - originally published in The Interstitial, and revamped for Trauma Den
Crossroads - Tina Leavitt
left at the crossroads
so many lives, so many lovers
parts of my body taken
a trophy
buried, burned
thrown
so far away
throw me into the sea
blood running thick
red down your mouth
running down your thighs
drain me
of blood, of soul
drain me of 20 years
chewed up like a toy
teeth picked clean
my flesh left between your teeth
rabid dogs fighting
over scraps
nothing is left within
to give
a beeswax candle
sits in the hollow between my ribs
covering skin, an altar
search the crossroads
north south
east west
lighting your way to me
one by one
reaching down your throat
throw up the parts you took
i will find myself again
© Tina Leavitt 2025
Before Date Rape - Ann Marie Steele
Returning from mass, Good Friday, a college freshman, golden skin abuzz with a Hell-saving liturgy meant to irradiate insight into my soul. Tales refracted through rich stained glass windows where light conquered darkness and goodness conquered sin. * Passion Sunday and virginal me just an -
Afterthought to Friday night escapades soon to begin. The culmination of daily flirting with Aryan race-like ROTC dorm kitchen coworker, I trekked up to his room. On a whim? Really don’t remember. Like being at summer camp for the first time.
wine cooler just downed, or was it a Zima? Nimbly I climbed to his top bunk giggling, kissing as Sister Christian by Night Ranger hummed in the hallways — blouse, sandals dropped to the floor, flirty mini skirt remained intact.
Panties as well. Kissing, touching, sighing, enter — fingers — his — a trenchant weapon, probing the unready raw before playing his game of bait-and-switch. A muffled “no” and again “no” escaped my trembling lips.
Duran Duran’s the union of the snake is on the climb
It’s gonna race, it’s gonna break* refrain repeating. Slipping off the bunk, crimson liquid running down my inner thighs, I left in -
Embarrassment that I had sullied pristine white sheets but not anger. Oh, no, not anger. Fast forward to the next fall. In the Quad. Met a sinewy athlete named Nate, a sprinter. Picking me up on our first date, he tackled me to the floor. In my apartment. No one around. My heart raced.
Boy, he tried hard. Pinned to the dingy beige carpet smelling of my roommate’s forbidden chinchilla, I squirmed and shoved, scratched and pinched. Then darted away from this track star. Beat him in his own game. Never saw him again.
A few months later, attending a mandatory dorm presentation on a newly-coined term — Date Rape, I understood. Before date rape, was it rape? I think so.
*John 3:16
© Ann Marie Steele 2025
The Human Wheel Syndrome - Maarten Bleijerveld
Round and round, we spin, we run, faster, but to…. a blur of motion—going where? Faster still, yet nothing’s won. The wheel turns, the years slip by, we know the change must happen now, not in lifetimes, not somehow— yet still, we race and close our eyes. Centuries built this comfort strong, layer upon layer, stone upon stone. To tear it down feels almost wrong, so we turn away, leave a truth alone. Some rise; fight, their voices sharp, their will alight. Yet most still spin within the glow of comfort’s grip—refusing to go. Call it syndrome, call it disease, a blindness we choose when the road is unclear. To break the habit, to face the fear— would mean unraveling all we believe. We claim to shift, we claim to grow, yet trace the same well-worn path. Small steps that mask the coming wrath, change dressed in a quiet show. Where is the force, the flood, the spark? No whisper will break these chains, no gentle touch will shift the dark— it takes the fire, the blood, the pain. Rip the bandaid, let it sting, let the wound be seen, be felt. No easy road, no softened welt, only rawness change will bring. We live in a world of predictability, where suffering stays outside the door. So long as it’s far, it’s easy to ignore, a quiet indulgence in our stability. But time does not wait, nor beg, nor yield, it tears through walls and cracks through stone. To break this wheel, to forge the field, we must stand. Not just one, nor few, nor fame, but a spark, a wave, a sudden flame. No script exists, no path is set, but step—before the sun has set.
© Maarten Bleijerveld 2025 
A.R.T. in session - Maggie McCombs
It’s called A.R.T., this therapy. You follow a yellow ball on a stick to pretend it never happened. Laughable to see I’m sure to the person waving the wand -- watching your eyes graze that horizontal flash! of metal on yellow on metal, scraping clean the unimaginable. It’s magic! You dash your eyes back and forth. “Focus on the ball so we can begin the process to desensitize you,” she says. Don’t get dizzy between eye movements! Just recall the event. Watch the ball, slide your eyes back and forth, into focus. Follow, follow, follow, Shiny, yellow, shiny, yellow taking a squeegee to the red marring your vision, scraping away bullying, rape, disaster, abuse, in one big “burrumph!” down the mind’s windshield. It’s clean now, are you ready? “It’s time to reimagine your scene,” she says. Think of the ball as an eraser, scrubbing off the old Memory. Now, make something you like better, -- a mental image, pastel, tufted -- But this time, you’re holding the pencil end.
This poem focuses on a new-ish therapy for PTSD called Accelerated Resolution Therapy, or ART. I have personally undergone it for C-PTSD with great results.
© Maggie McCombs 2025
When the Status Shivered in Disguise - Jill Eng
When the not told the truth, it was a memorized redundancy outside tossed bewilderment. implicating a front of indifference toward a cloak. a break of tendency smothered copacetic maneuverings beyond forward.
I was a shadow of what lay back. framed by a coping of sorts. courting a travel to lands of abled resistance. never as a mention when the status shivered in disguise.
based in undercurrents populating infringement was a rightful discourse against withdrawal. clever as a dance to ordinary lanes in the darkness of practical consideration.
calling a suggestion in a missing edge of grace, then the avenue of import could delete its place of birth. a wicked troubled form that corroded blanket space.
emptiness mistook into gross disfigured trim. as a course that took a death with its rope around a throat. that was then, of a nature, coming out of something lost.
© Jill Eng 2025
Sick Sad Boi - Jozef Cain
entice me into this digital box
this chamber of 1s and 0s
and watch
as my heart beats for attention
and my guilt for being selfish
for thinking i am special
but just another creature
lucky to have met you
my confused soul longing
stretched thin and yawning
tired of this wanting
can’t escape the haunting
as the woodstar
pierces / my heart
but no sugar
a decoy
can’t help the fact it’s rancid
and one pill made me
smaller
so the swift wings of a broadtail
became larger than my sober size
and the sound of humming
transformed
into unbearable blasts of sonic boom
i chose solitude years ago
i don’t want to torment someone
with my confused rambling
godforsaken angst
and sick perversions
and stench
anyone who left
would tell you
i’m a sick sad boi
an overweight shell
but, see
not the kind
anyone should want to collect
me“You’re only given a little spark of madness and if you lose that you’re nothing.” — Robin Williams
© Jozef Cain 2025 - originally published in Scuzzbucket, and
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What an ensemble under BCP 's tutelage n provided theme♥️
Congrats to all the artists and to our dearest dearest host n curators of Black Coffee Poetry...and thanks to our readers!
~Let's enjoy slow savored sips sometimes slurps~
Curation. Presentation. It is its own art form.
Thank you: two words too fleetingly simple.
The images. Edward- you are a master elevator. Giving light to the shadowed halls of nineteen bender of words is an impressive feat. Matching each with provocative imagery for the purpose of enhancing art's consumption? That's priceless. Jedi mind master level skill.
I'm here for it. This collaboration that is a mountainous effort of love from the entire BCP team.
Every Wednesday.
Because if we can't all have love, we can have poetry. Served black. And scalding hot.
Bravo to all involved. ☕️🖤⚰️☕️
THIS WEEK ROCKED!!