World of Women: Volume II
15 fresh writers stare into the female glare
Revealing the masquerade masks
No - Ann Marie Steele
girl treads on down across a world so flat
unlike Christopher Columbus dreamt
winding down nameless straits and deserts
‘til round world blossoms
towering summit, she too emerges
tall, beaten by the sun, blistered
legend only by a foregone artifact
both girl and woman continue steadfast
graced by the moon
through time, place, and age-
Dark-Middle-Renaissance-Industrial-New
until Revolution stirs passion in her soul
heart aflutter, she arrives!
but not really
for it’s not about equal pay, rights to this
or rights to that
that’s come, time and time again
and gone
but-the-right-to-say-NO.
© Ann Marie Steele 2025
She Is Earth Is She - Sue Banerji
Pique in her eyes
separated blood from sweat and tears
it burned a hole in the earth
the chatter it created
shattered the formidable voices
that once broke the ceiling
and eagles hung
their heads in shame.
You could have written
commandments in a factory
where they bred power
and experiments of extremes
and broken childhood
but you forgot
the complicated argument
for the existence of the Yoni
instead, you sold verses
that you knew nothing of
Truth
dove with vengeance
in an already enraging ocean
churning in her eyes
and found
dreams have broken wings
they can soar only so far
but
as Bobby said,
“The Times They Are a-Changin’”.
Once again
she is waking up
she won’t shed her invisible cloak
an unlimited light awaits her
and freedom wants to swoon her.
She alone can and will
hammer down
the silent stinging shackles
into smithereens
dreams are ready to be
darned and duct-taped
and nourished as new
and will soon be set free.
She will chew and spit out
your incoherent words
you can never ‘grab them’ ever
the filth will remain
where it belongs — in your toxic soul.
intentions will be better
than the previously
published version
and are good to fly
high beyond your putrid brain.
The mephitis of
your words and thoughts
needs to be cleaned out
you have misguided
and inbred algae and weed
that now strangulate the plankton
that need
to live and breathe
all that is good
for the lungs of the Earth and our soul.
© Sue Banerji 2025 - Originally published in Fourth Wave and revamped for Black Coffee Poetry.
If The World Forgot Words - Heather Zoccali
first, silence would peel the paint.
letters would vanish mid-sentence.
whole alphabets
ferment under the tongue
then rot.
trees wouldn’t stop speaking~
but without names,
no one would know how to listen.
the oaks would ache in vowels.
aspen would hiss like teeth
gnashing through snow.
moss would grow jealous.
it remembers when we used to kneel
just to whisper a story
into the dirt.
crows would riot.
not because we forgot them~
but because they were never deities,
just messengers,
tired of carrying
what we wouldn’t say aloud.
you’d touch my hand
and i’d flinch~
not in fear,
but in grief,
because there’d be no word
for stay.
shadows would grow ambitious.
they’d begin mimicking
what our mouths couldn’t.
a shrug.
a prayer.
a goodbye
dragged out too long.
the moon wouldn’t rise ~
she’d descend.
closer,
closer,
until her craters
opened like mouths
speaking thorn, salt, antler, ash.
children would hum
in their sleep,
melodies with no spine~
just breath and bone
and the echo
of a door
opening
in the wrong direction.
and truth~
truth would be feral.
truth would bleed
from the corners of your eyes
while you slept.
truth would live
inside the girl
with fox-eyes
who runs at dusk
and never once
looks back.
© Heather Zoccali (Brutally Beautiful) 2025
We’re Losers, Kiddo - Annie Lure
We’re losers, kiddo,
it’s life’s eleventh hour, and you still haven’t ass-wiped
naivete’s mud off your soles.
We’re losers, kiddo,
ruined Lamassu
towering as steel and concrete and glass.
We’re losers, kiddo,
privy to mankind’s
perishability. Its tragicomedy.
We’re losers, kiddo.
No Noah to save our creed.
Red wine dribbled over jaundiced disappointments.
Feral ducks screaming at aging snakes.
Pebbles, thorns, rusted betrayals,
mosses of rotted loves.
Notice how they sing the loser’s song?
With a fattened tongue?
Whereas you pursue a flying bike,
wanting it snowy, as snowy as can be,
the easier to ascend and descend
the skies and precipices of apathy.
to win in a giant race of losers.
© Annie Lure 2025
Shrapnel Wounds of Womanhood - River’s Writings
This body was made a battleground
without consent,
it was mocked, invaded, policed
I was shoved, not invited, into womanhood,
bullied before I had the chance
to form an identity,
sexualized before I turned eighteen,
taken advantage of by “lovers”
who pushed until “no”
morphed into a soundless “yes”
In all of this, where’s
the softness, freedom, and beauty
they speak of when they paint
the glory of being a woman?
This skin was an all-too-tight costume
others possessed, obsessed over,
claimed,
it was never mine to begin with,
a birthright stolen with my first breath
Existing in this body,
being a woman,
is a torture like no other,
every curve is a threat,
even my chest betrays my trust
when it moves too freely,
and in freedom I find chains,
shrink, hide, strap down
just to breathe,
just to stay alive
Do not search for beauty in my words,
in womanhood, I found only pain,
they told me who I should be,
then took this body as if it were theirs
to claim, use, discard, betray
Lights on – be a woman with a head
held high, wear make-up, be this, be that,
be feminine, but what does femininity even mean?
Lights off – suffocate in the explosion
of your self-hate,
bleeding from the shrapnel wounds
of your womanhood
I’ll be honest,
to be a woman
doesn’t sit right with me,
maybe because it was never
allowed to be mine on my own terms
And in the present,
to be a woman means,
invasion,
performance,
pain masquerading as power,
being seen but never truly known
These are my shrapnel wounds
inflicted all because
I’m a woman
© River's Writings 2025
Not Woman Enough - Debdutta Pal
“Women”
He said
A joke
A statement
An insult.
And I nodded
Conditioned not to
Make him enraged
Be perfectly polite
Obey
Don’t make a scene
In the public eye.
Doubt strung
The laces of my sneakers
Not soft enough
To be feminine
Not hard enough
To shut up and put up
With it all.
“You’re not like the rest of them.”
That fucking compliment
Became my shadow
Feeding my insecurities
With their attention
Molding my likes and dislikes
My social personality
Into a weapon
To show others why they
Don’t deserve
Decency.
“It’s safe to drop your mask.”
She said
While holding my hand
And shedding hers
With the other.
So I studied the cracks
Double-barreled contradictions
Strengths and weaknesses
Rules and voices
Pride and fear
Hunger and preservation
Mirroring every one of mine.
And I understood
I finally understood
Why they keep us apart.
It wasn’t a flipped switch
Or an annihilating storm
Journey feels like
An insufficient term.
But it’s okay
Because I’m no longer
Walking alone.
And we’ll be okay
Because together
We’re more than
Enough.
© Debdutta Pal 2025
Poesía Eres Tú - H. R. Sinclair
To put into words how my eyes see you,
how my heart aches for you,
how my body yearns for you,
is a task I can only attempt,
knowing there is not enough ink in the world
to write my love for you.
Like poetry from the heart
you love passionately and unapologetically.
You dance in the same language and command joy in every step.
Like mother nature you nurture the life around you,
as bird song fills the air with music
you fill my world with harmony.
With you as its composer,
my heart beats to your symphony.
Like Aphrodite born again you walk as a goddess,
a beauty so compelling
no words possess what is deserved.
A smile that stops time.
A laugh that echoes pure happiness.
Like the mediterranean sun
I bask in your warmth,
flying to you as Icarus did.
Happy to fall for a lifetime with you.
To have met you is a gift
I will be forever grateful for.
To kiss as fireworks fill the sky,
an affirmation from fate,
is a memory I will forever remember.
In the midst of Winter, I find in you an eternal summer.
In the midst of darkness, I find in you an eternal light.
as you as my guide,
I love you with all my essence.
© H. R. Sinclair 2025
Hounded - Julia Kantic
Through the hound’s eyes
you are quaking meat with faltering step
You are weak (at the knees)
You give off the odour of fear
(beneath the sweetness of your perfume)
Are to be stalked, killed, and savoured
before the next meal.
The herd (you travel in groups but they in packs)
…are rumbling with rumours, ideals, and becoming…
offer “safety tips”
You are one among many without a real name
just there for the taking
your qualms allayed to the bay of the pack
by your mother saying there are rules to dogs
You need only obey them not to get bitten.
Yet your steps are not in kilter with the rest of the earth
because the rules make no sense as…
he lurks … he waits … he sidles…
a smile on the doggish face
drool from the side of a tooth filled muzzle
sniffing the air with a prosperous nose
damp with intention
not knowing where the next meal will come from…
…but free to eat…
entitled even
as something will come along
to be seized by mouth
…and dragged to their hollow places…
You walk quiet through the night
Try to hide in its silk, folded in shadows
Or smothered in light
You hear the howl echo
…there and back again…
…the pants and the pad of prowling feet…
Your sense of smell lacks the skilfulness of night
he lurks … he skulks … he smiles
pretends to sleep
and you … reach out a gentle hand
the right way up
a gesture of welcome
This one is scared of cats, you think,
and know nothing for the rest until,
He howls over your bones
shards broken and chewed,
…until the next appetiser
you gather your remnants,
you look to the sky
as you cover yourself in cloud,
rinse yourself in moonlight
and sympathy —
from all the others bitten
and hope the sun will bring you life again…
to be stalked … to be hunted … blooded
not thinking that you might shut the door,
forget the wilds and freedom,
protect yourself with hard walls and firmly closed windows,
light a fire in the grate…
(as if you did not have enough good advice already)
You put distance between you and your self
Because you can’t put distance between yourself and danger…
…Not all dogs …
Bite, or pounce, or tear asunder
But he will see, he will come, there will be no reprieve…
whereas you fail at every puncture
to not try
to pat the dog.
© Julia Kantic 2025 - Originally published in Lit Up and revamped for Black Coffee Poetry.
Sparta - Jeremy Marks
I want to talk about the Ancient Greeks, their masculine
example. How once it was Athens not Sparta the men
I knew admired for intellect’s discipline of muscle.
How deft use of the tongue
Was a sign that if you believed in the male mind,
dialogue was more erotic than the modern vaginal
monologue: O’Keeffe could keep her Jack
in the Pulpit, the poetics of Dickinson, one female eunuch.
The more erect the sex, the better to surpass marble
David for MMA, Jordan Peterson. Joe Rogan even Jim
Brown. It started with a pledge to place Harriet Tubman
on the twenty and grew to boasts about a Times Square
shooting
Like some Borgia pope, chasing off five young men
from Central Park, a love of Plato turned to raw liver, signature
beards and taking on a gorilla. Women could watch if they swooned
their lips and perked up the adipose with Kevlar insurance
From Lloyds of London. Their Spartan sons and lovers stacking
prisoners like cheerleaders before moving on to younger
models, phrases intoned in Doric Greek
a dialect no one speaks.
Like Lenin of old, I was told a man must pour wax in his ears
to avoid the soft breast of conscience, Scylla is a garter
and Charybdis something called social justice.
Beware anyone who writes their name in only lower case letters.
Flashback
Working the halls of New Athens, I never heard
speak of Socrates’ many underage lovers
or that Senator who liked to be spanked in a diaper
Now, in Sparta, my former colleagues pose shirtless,
arms around each other’s waists, their free hands
entwined together on the horns of a stag.
© Jeremy Marks 2025
Glamour Girl - The Life Lessons
If there was no party to go
to. She was the party. She was
its timeline. Its lifeline
and wherever there was a
line
She snorted it.
If there was wine?
She drank it.
Hard liquor?
Yes, please!
Heroin?
She drifted to its siren
song and was sometimes
found passed out in a back alley
with
no shoes,
feet, dirty.
If there was speed?
She took it and completed
everything on her “to do” lists.
LSD?
She tripped through the
universe, on it.
Marijuana?
It calmed her down when her highs
were too high.
She dazzled in high end
nightclubs wearing
Chanel dresses.
Chloe high heels.
Crocodile Birkin bag.
Five hundred dollar highlights.
Gucci manicures.
Prada eau de parfum.
Dior Addict Re(d)volution
lipstick and arriving in
her Daddy's car service.
She loved and craved
Cocaine,
Meth,
and the occasional life or death
game of Russian Roulette with a
Speedball.
Ecstasy?
Always gave her the love she
was missing from the world
and just took the pain
Awaaaaaayyyy………
All of these took her to new heights
and could also be found in her
pricey Fendi tote bag filled with
pharmaceutical and street
drug coping mechanisms.
After her highs wore off
she trick-or-treated at her
drug dealers and for a price
they supplied her with more.
When Daddy cut off her funding,
her body became an ATM and she
found herself on her back in
cheap motels with over starched sheets,
bent over grimy bathroom toilets or
on her knees in a stranger's apartment
crawling with cockroaches.
Everyday she told herself that she
wasn't an addict.
She could stop anytime.
She didn’t need help.
She was just having fun,
until a runner found her dead
body in the park. Stripped of
all labels and material wealth
her naked body was discarded
in some bushes just like
the trash that lay on the
ground next to her.
Days later at her funeral,
she went out in style. Her body
was wrapped in a limited edition
Tom Ford dress, her hair and makeup
was perfection. She looked like a
movie star and at the graveyard
she was laid to rest inside a designer,
one of a kind, rose gold casket. She
was only twenty-one and trending
all over social media.
© The Life Lessons 2025
Invisible Insanity - Tina Leavitt
our mouths have been sewn shut
by our own hand
a voodoo doll
a shrunken head
mouths stuffed with vanilla, clove, and cinnamon
to cover the scent of decay
even ghosts are to speak with the living
when we speak, we are a sphynx
speaking in riddles
men don’t love riddles
don’t love our voice
don’t love what we have to say
they would have cut out our tongue if they could
maybe they already did
we learned to give them only a smile
before they turn us over
dolls placed on a shelf
gathering dust, waiting until we are needed
when you are scared and alone
holding us as the lightning and thunder come down
we’ll make you feel better
the chips on our porcelain face
are when we were dropped
after we started crying
who wants that
when there are girls
skinnier than us
bigger breasts than us
who can dance better than us
with better lips than us
girls on call
girls you call nicknames you don’t call us
girls always smiling
we don’t want to be insecure
so, we sewed our mouths shut
we can’t speak - so we don’t
we can’t demand - so we don’t
we can’t ask for a like, an emoji, a tag, a comment, an outward sign we exist beyond the darkness
we learned long ago where our place was in a man’s heart
driven to madness
like all the childless betty drapers
chain smoking into the crematorium
brain rotten from too much nitrous oxide and amyl nitrate
ignored until 5 o’clock supper time of salsbury steaks, mashed potatoes, and peas
we were raises to speak multiple languages, to shoot guns, to drink hard liquor, to talk the same as a man - then pushed aside as we grew older because we were girls but never women
left to rot in the china hutch on display
use only as needed
© Tina Leavitt (Ginger Ghost Poetry) 2025
Pocket Full of Posies - Samara
My lover in a plague-doctor mask
strolling topless through empty offices
trailing her gloved fingers on counters,
toppling towers of paper and pens
Ashes ashes, we all
She came she came
She conquered she conquered
This was a gift from my mother,
she says. The sudden fall.
Some gift, I say.
She pulls up her beak
to kiss me. We are not
supposed to kiss. No one is.
It is a gift, she says. How else
to wake from a nightmare?
The sudden fall.
Ashes ashes, we all fall
At the moment of impact two worlds are created, one in which you die and the other in which it was a dream and you wake, startled. The body you woke in is new to you, but you do not realize. There is an uncanny moment as you settle into its form, accept it as something that has always been and will always be, but this is not so. It is a new body and a new world. You look at your hands and tell yourself they look familiar.
She straps the plague-doctor mask
around her waist to fuck me.
The church bells are ringing
again and again
What time is it, I ask.
Time is over, she says. Time
got sick and died.
The Past fled the scene, presumed guilty. The Present, tired of being ignored, went to the hotel bar and is three cocktails in with a handsome stranger and is not speaking to you. The Future was deployed overseas and was unfortunately killed in the line of duty.
I’m left with you at dusk
soft limbs and murmurs
We have no time
to lose, we have no time
to kill. We are alone
with something else
whose name I do not know.
It grins. It is patient.
Ashes ashes
We all fall down
We are all in this together,
they say.
We all fall down, and
We will all stand up.
She comes again and again
She came, she conquered.
Don’t be silly, she says.
Conquest is over. Conquest
is a function of time.
It’s snowing again
but then it will melt.
Spring will come in graves
pushing tulips in our face.
We planted seeds
for vegetables.
When Time died, it reincarnated as a zucchini seed and grew into a sprout and then a bush and then a fattening squash. I eat it and become pregnant.
We wait.
There go those bells again.
You touch my stomach.
A gift from my mother, I say.
Some gift.
It is a gift.
What will it be when it comes? she asks. More time?
No—an age of lawless miracles. Pestilence. Heroes. Floods. Fires. Friendship.
Are you afraid, she asks.
No, I just wish those bells would quit ringing.
Ring around the ring around the ring around the
We all fall down
I’m sorry. You asked for a nice story. This wasn’t. Although you liked the plague mask strap-on, admit it. Fine, I’ll try again:
“Once upon a time there was a little black cat in a big grey city. Her grandmother told her of a precious pearl, unimaginably rare, birthed of a whale with a sour stomach, belched and washed ashore, smuggled & traded & finally gifted by a suitor to a young lady who did not know what she was supposed to do with a pearl the size of a skull. She kept it by her bed on a stand.
In the night, the rats skittered up from the sewers and through the holes in the basement wall and up the spiral stairs, into her fine bedroom. They rolled the pearl off its stand as the young lady snored, down the steps, a rat diving beneath each step to soften the sound of the pearl, each letting out a wheeze as the weight clunked upon them. Back to the streets they rolled it, through the alley, to the sewer grate. A cat on a fire escape beheld the scene and reported back to the cat-people.
You must recover the pearl, the grandmother told the little black cat. If you don’t—”
© Samara 2025
Sylvia - Steve Elliot
A fathomless rage
flares from the page.
Storms on the moon,
claw tearing at cage.
Take a spoon
and null the pain.
Diamond tongue,
how delicately done,
wrought and finely spun.
Filigree sun,
catcher of rain.
Pearls of wisdom every one.
The oyster clings to its jewel,
clutched in silent depths,
clamped and tenacious,
jealous as Poseidon!
Sylvia stirs the sea
into a cataclysm of grief,
and extinguishes the stars,
one by one.
© Steve Elliot 2025
Soul [Girl] - SirenSkin
you're a girl, they said gave me pink bows and dresses grew my hair out long, told me how to impress why did I feel like a monster hiding in plain sight? its more than just playing with dolls and clothes its something inside your bones it never felt right, not a stuck shed but a chasm in my chest where your heart used to rest how do I hold myself in my darkest moments if I can't even recognize her in my reflection her gaze is distant, smile stitched on its infected she's a performer of the barest kind of the best time of the worst mind the most hurt kind dress up, doll up, pretty up if it doesn't fit, make it so girls are only girls when they play the part anything other than that is a menace a failure, a rotten core filled with maggots pay your penance for existing bury yourself in beauty and cloth pass the test, broke blood just to try but it will never be enough never be enough, so just cry and feel the rot spread inside look at that figure, she must be a man look at those eyes, a monster in disguise her hands are too strong, she's defective femininity is a requirement to be alive you're only free when you die “she's just a child!" I cry but no one bats an eye shes a product, a service something to be sold and purchased she's human, not a person, silly just a flesh commodity for society when she finally has enough and breaks at the seams its her fault for being broken when she screams for peace and authenticity you beat her down break her into pieces shes not her will, her mind, her fight, her light she is a husk for your depraved lust a vessel for her soul to haunt
© SirenSkin 2025
The Storm and The Shelter - Dondi Springer
You ever seen God
with her edges sweated out
and her hope hanging on by a thread of prayer?
She don’t cry pretty—
she bleed galaxies behind the stove,
still stirring strength into every pot she’s handed.
This world been heavy on her name.
Still—
she wear grace like brass knuckles.
Love like a loaded weapon.
Soft in places she ain’t never been safe in.
She the reason silence sound like survival.
She the mirror most men ain’t brave enough to face.
She been the map,
the road,
the reason.
Still they ask if she know where she’s going...
She do.
And if she don’t—
she gon’ make that shit holy anyway.
© Dondi Springer 2025Still, the curtain closes, our work is not done
*Opening video embed courtesy of Cottonbro Studio, closing video embed courtesy of Tima Miroshnichenko.
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These poems hit hard. I love the second volume as much as the first. Thank you everyone for sharing these incredible poems with us.
Killer. This collection is KILLER! A fuckin' huge honour to be amongst such fierce writing. This series is unmatched, and there's still another volume to go 🤯