Writing
Mika Maloney has been writing stories & poetry since childhood. Although she may never top the delightful and surprisingly well-paced short story Sammie & The Magic Eraser Band (about a musical group of desk supplies) that she wrote at the age of ten, she finds joy in trying.
She has written two chapbooks of poetry, ripscape and Spring Break, hosted Small Batch Poetry, a generative writing poetry workshop on TPG Radio, and currently leads poetry workshops at OffCenter Community Arts Project.
In November 2024, she’s restarting her newsletter sharing creative prompts, short essays, and exploring tarot through poetry. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Hear her read some of her poetry as part of Pictures of Poets by photographer Dean Davis here. Keep scrolling to read poems from both of her chapbooks.
Whether you consider yourself a poet or not, join Mika for a generative writing workshop! Using poems from a variety of writers as jumping off points, and flexible creative prompts, you’ll find the inspiration to take your writing in a new direction!
Upcoming:
2025 writing workshops will be listed soon!
Our flowers are still here,
outlasting us.
from Spring Break
After Jack Gilbert’s Failing and Flying
Icarus, victorious
has made it to the sun!
To see it’s surface sparkle, snap,
endless embers in an edgeless fire.
His skin knows a lovely, wild heat
that mine will never feel.
Worlds away, at some water’s edge, you and I sit.
You in gentle shade, me stretching in a slice of sunlight,
soaking up what warmth the distant sun can cast.
We’ve travelled together through rolling hills in spring --
all chartreuse and hope -- and through sharp mountains
at dusk, a dozen shades of the same grey green
blue hue different only by distance. Through
deserts, to beaches, along rivers towards home,
always to find a place like this to sit beside each other.
The space between us shifts each day,
as we tilt toward each other, fall
away. You catch
my hand as we walk toward home
one soft, slow evening. We move
easy, not wanting to slip too quickly
from this moment.
What luck! To find a match to spin
around this world with. What a choice,
to slow and speed and fit our steps
to someone else. To strike a natural
trajectory for that blazing, tempting sun
and let the cool gravity of steady rock
below our feet hold us instead.
But oh!
How warm and lovely
Icarus must have felt.
Triumphant, glorious,
I bet he didn’t even know that he was burning.
By Mika Maloney, from Spring Break
Small Guilt
I’m trying to write a poem about berries, because yesterday we went to the river together and you showed me where the blackberries were, I hadn’t even realized they were ripe already this year. And I could reach them better, so I picked us some and I got to hand them to you. I want to write a poem that understands what I felt when I got to give you something small and sweet and good.
But I need this poem to be smart and teach me something that I cannot seem to find, so I research about berries and learn: a tomato is a berry, a raspberry is not; a kiwi and a banana: berries, both. Blackberry, no. I read about bramble berries, I read about aggregate fruit (which in some languages means one thing and in other languages, means the opposite). I learn all these things only to forget them as soon as I look away from my screen. I wonder why we have so many words that mean the wrong things.
I do know the feeling of a plush blackberry bursting in my mouth. I know the gentle but stinging ache on my skin earned by reaching into these bushes. I know the pleasure of handing you the prettiest fruits of my search. And the small guilt of slipping the biggest, uglier but also juicier picks into my mouth.
I reach out to you with a small handful of what we know as blackberries, and say only, here.
By Mika Maloney, from Spring Break
Prompt
Take inspiration from Kim Kent’s poem Walking Along the Beach, High on Mushrooms, Christmas Day and think of a time you were in a group and
“all of us stared / amazed at different things”
Describe a time you were in awe or captivated by something others around you weren’t noticing.
Read Kim’s fantastic poem here & learn more about her here!
Listen to the Small Batch Poetry episode this prompt comes from here.