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Red Flag is so much more than just postcards!

We also publish digitally, every other month, via the Poetry Express. This format gives us the freedom to publish work that won’t fit on a postcard but still needs to be shared with the world.

On this page, you will find all of our past Poetry Express poems with information about their authors. If you like these poems and want to get even more poetry delivered directly to your mailbox, head over to our subscribe page!

Jared Pearce: "She's grateful her neighbor's worse"

7/19/2022

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​She’s grateful her neighbor’s worse.
 
She was selling her
gold, her retirement
silver, to cash in
a car for her new job,
 
folding hotel towels.
Her divorce made her
weep, caught knowing
right and loneliness.
 
Without sleep
aids and only internet
men, she keeps
 
hovering for God
to swoop in, put
her feet to bed.

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Jared Pearce's books are Down Their Spears (Cyberwit, 2021) and The Annotated Murder of One (Aubade, 2018). Further: https://jaredpearcepoetry.weebly.com.
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Laurie Held: "Questioning the Armadillo"

4/26/2022

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Questioning the Armadillo

​Houston July 1980
Humidity: 78%
Boyfriend: Studying to become a priest. 
Job: Telemarketing home repairs aka talking to lonely old folks 
and selling cowboy boots
Mother: 24-hr job running preschools


MTV debuts
Did video kill the radio star?

Weekend in Dallas, cleanest city in America
Do they scrub the buildings daily?


bright Yellow roses
red white and orange Zinnias
Pink Gerber daises
Blooming in the  Botanical garden
It’s just a diversion.


Revelations at the Jung institute
Who was I in a previous life?


Day trip to Refugio with my cousin
Mom’s boyfriend driving the van in the sideways soaker
Should you drive days after a circumcision?
Changing the station to hear Jefferson Starship Miracles
Already wanting another shower


Why does the armadillo cross the road?
Skidding off the road to avoid him
they sure as shoo fly  pie love highway 180
And legs up means they’re sleeping or dead


Curious mammal
Hard shelled for protection
Tiny beak like face
Shelled spine
Bird like paws
As common in Texas as a rooster in the hen house.

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Laurie S. Held is a lifelong writer and poet with an extensive background in advertising, marketing and website creation. In addition to online courses at Olli UC Berkeley, Laurie has participated in writing workshops through Stockton University, Sedona Writers Workshops, and the Santa Barbara writer's conference. She is the proud mom of two Berkeley Bears and a Corgi, and loves travel and new adventures. 
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Larry Blazek: "In the Park"

4/1/2022

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IN THE PARK
 
several young ladies
carry a large cardboard
shipping container to
a lightly wooded area
they choose a flat
grassy clearing
they disassemble the box
creating a surface
on which to exercise
dance and otherwise
cavort
they laugh

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Larry Blazek lives in a tiny cottage on the side of a remote hill. He plays  his old guitar, gardens, and builds things. He has been published in Westerly, Channel Magazine, Shanghai Literary Review, and Sins of Coffee.
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Sorry for the Delay

8/23/2021

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Much like everything in our lives lately, Red Flag's Poetry Express has experienced some delays. We, the editors, want to apologize for this and ensure you we want to continue publishing great poetry through this division of the Red Flag Poetry project. You can expect new Poetry Express poems following the conclusion of our next Fall open reading period. We can't wait!
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Jordan Tyler Temchack: "regenerate"

3/15/2021

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regenerate
 
I want to grow antlers 
to lose in combat  learn patience 
and humility  attempt androgyny
like those boxes of memories
in the attic covered in decades 
of dust and bat guano  I need to clean
my ears  study the q-tip 
decide if there’s anything worth saving 
or if there’s only trashy thoughts 
repressed into wax-like sap
lacking maple’s sweetness  I want
to identify trees by the accents
of their whispers  know intimacy
like salamanders swim 
with new limbs or rainbow trout
taste shadows  crayfish don’t care
what you call them so long as 
they’re allowed to live purely 

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Jordan Tyler Temchack is a poet, folksinger, and illustrator. He lives with his wife and dogs in Central Pennsylvania, where they garden and wander around the Allegheny Mountains. His work can be found at Prime Number Magazine, Red Flag Poetry, Passengers Journal, and his website: https://jordantylertemchack.wordpress.com
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Sarah Lapean: "Mother Tongue"

2/2/2021

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Mother Tongue
 
The tongue that your mother put into your head
As you rocked in your cradle so soundly.
Spectral surgery she performed: 
Fleshy muscles and slimy veins sewn to your throat.
The dancing language twines with your attempts to tame it.
Tripping syllables hide among uncertain emphasis.
Cement lips when you try to speak, 
Wishing words were like milkweed seeds that could slip past your jaw. 
Does your mother tongue do acrobatics?
Curl and flex and press to form the simplest sounds?
Perhaps it is only trying to find a way to escape. 
From that crib, use your mother tongue 
To say Dada first.
Even biology is ironic. 

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Sarah Lapean hails from Vermont and attends Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. She is pursuing a double major in English and Psychology. She enjoys knitting, kayaking, and baking cakes. 

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Karolina Zapal: "Like a Pistachio"

11/19/2020

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Like a Pistachio
 
Consider something as fragile as a pistachio shell
At first, still locked to its moon-color
counterpart, it may hang loose, open to losing
its one green earring. Even if the pocket feels
secure, like a fly between seam and button
fingers can easily pry it open with one chipper 
pop! Much less violent and silly to peel an orange 
 
A smattering of halves imitates a broken heart
If we were giants, they could imitate units of wind
Cribs for ants, shelves for beetles, dog bowls for mice
Who are the mice’s dogs? Love, often disguised
as a pet, is its own meager sustenance 
We feed it, sleep with it, take it out to piss, yet it almost always dies 
before we do. When it gets sick, we put it down
 
Push pistachios down a hill and listen to their caroling
They sound like pebbles playing in a child’s hand 
or a gumball machine freeing colors. Eating
we are tongue-tied for once because we’re full 
not empty. But they can bang like gunshots, too many
kind words to a headache, or taste like dirt bombs
hair grease, and eyeballs too sore for midnight
 
Ears flicker, eyes flutter, ankles bend to catch the light
My Q-tip tongue licks the salt from paper boats
while Mother asks if I love him, and no
matter how hard I try, I cannot glue the shells back together
to repeat their function. They’ve been handled 
by toes or eyes, not an expert’s touch, not a sculpture
of the stars, one bright, hot thing on every block

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KAROLINA ZAPAL is an itinerant poet, essayist, translator, and author of two books: Notes for Mid-Birth (Inside the Castle, 2019) and Polalka (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018). Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Rumpus, Inverted Syntax, Tupelo Quarterly, The Seventh Wave, Mantis, Posit, and others. She has completed three artist residencies: Greywood Arts in Killeagh, Ireland; Brashnar Creative Project in Skopje, Macedonia; and Bridge Guard in Štúrovo, Slovakia. She works at the South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts & Humanities.
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Alexandra McIntosh: "The Names of Saints"

10/20/2020

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The Names of Saints 
 
The ones I remember: caramel-crested 
fields of wheat along the highway, 
Saint Jean, the sun, the smack 
of diving boards, a full stomach, 
my stuffed rabbit’s ears, Saint Cecilia, 
her blood collected on napkins, 
Saint Theresa, the neighbor’s daughter 
toddler-dancing in the grass, 
Saint Francis and his animals, 
the cotton collar on a windbreaker 
I hid under when it stormed, Saint Sebastian, 
his body in a Roman sewer, 
my dad’s calloused hand, a lullaby 
cassette tape my mom played before bed, 
Saint Mary, orchids, chicory, 
the squish of worms under rain boots, 
my baby cousin smiling, Saint James 
the Less, the wrinkles in the church carpet, 
the pictures my brother drew 
in hymnals to make me laugh, 
Saint Joseph with hair like my grandpa 
because they share a name. 

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Alexandra McIntosh lives and writes in Kentucky, her favorite place in the world. Her poetry and creative nonfiction can be found in publications including The Raw Art Review, Broad River Review, and Allegory Ridge. Her first poetry collection Bowlfuls of Blue is forthcoming from Assure Press Publishing later this year. You can find links to her publications and pictures of her dog on her website AlexandraMcIntosh.com
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Ashley Green: "Youth"

8/28/2020

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Youth

I.
We’d pass secrets to one another.
 
Hide them behind crooked teeth,
chew on them for hours until our jaws hung slack,
or swallow them whole and cradle the ache
in the pit of our stomachs,
but never once did we let them fall from our mouths. 
 
Our smiles made up of rotten truths,
our insides coated with horror,
our blood thick with each other. 
 
II.
I dipped my legs in tar.
 
Left skin and bone behind,
waded through thick waters,
until I was waist high in Death. 
 
She watched from the shore,
knees bare and pink
beneath the hem of a mourning dress,
and claimed she could not swim. 
 
III.
Her voice compressed.
 
A new tone, tangy and untrue,
rolled off her tongue and hung heavy
between us. 
 
I sifted through the sound,
searched for a familiar note, 
but all I gathered was goodbye
in splintered octaves. 
 
IV.
Our scars no longer matched. 
 
The ways in which I was torn and sewn
appeared slipshod compared to her                                                                                        
silver threads of tidy burden,
and so we both made the mistake
of thinking the other too weak – 
 
she with her secrets hidden
and mine so brazenly shown.
 

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Ashley is Southern California based writer, poet, and general weirdo with pieces in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Rabid Oak, and Sunday Mornings at the River, among others. Find her on Instagram @amoderncrone.
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Anna Nissley: "Ambivalent"

8/21/2020

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Ambivalent
 
I’m learning how to live both ways.
That is, with intense doubt and
Uncontainable joy— 
The kind that comes out in bursts of laughter 
That can’t be explained
As anything I’ve asked for or earned.
I haven’t asked for it, 
Or anything for that matter
But here are blurred skies,
Pop songs, an unprecedented love of succulents,
So many kinds of plastic,
Backpacking for fun,
And the sun (what is the sun?)—  
One day, I was hiking with my sister and a friend
We stuffed our mouths with blueberries
And I almost spewed them onto the forest floor
From laughter.
There’s a picture of it: sunburned face, cheeks dimpled and bulging with berries
And the blur of my hand ready to catch them 
In case they flew out.

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Anna Nissley is a recent graduate of Kutztown University who majored in Secondary English Education and Spanish with a minor in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Anna works as an 8th grade English teacher and spends her spare time writing, reading, cooking, and gardening. She is slated to begin a thru-hike on the Appalachian Trail in the spring of 2021.
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