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Jason Z Guest Poetry

In a world that pulls you in every direction, feeling disconnected is real. Through original poetry, essays, and craft insights, each themed issue helps readers reconnect with themselves, their stories, and the world around them.

Featured Post

The Kinship Issue

The Kinship Issue / August 15, 2026 Held Together, Matched Pairs, Blood and Land, Passed Along Today's issue is sponsored by 1440. Listen to the Issue → Welcome to The Kinship Issue. Blood is not the only way to belong. Sometimes you choose your kin, sometimes they choose you, sometimes it just happens without asking. I open this weekend with "Cattle Call," a poem that finds kinship in the last place you'd look for it, then a Scottish estate owner and an Oklahoma cowboy who never met but...

The Stillness Issue / August 8, 2026 Storm's End, Beyond the Self, Tree by Tree, Silent Travel Today's issue is sponsored by 1440. Listen to the Issue → Welcome to The Stillness Issue, where the noise finally loses its grip. May this week's issue reward those of you willing to stop moving long enough to hear your own life again. "Replenish," the poem that opens the issue, arrives in the five minutes right after a storm passes, when nothing has to happen next. Everything that follows keeps...

The Harbor Issue / August 1, 2026 Carved for Shelter, Same Day, Back to Port, Home from Sea, Refuge Today's issue is sponsored by mode. Listen to the Issue → Welcome to The Harbor Issue, where every safe place was built by somebody who almost didn't make it. This is the week for anyone who has been running long enough to forget what stillness even feels like. "Sonnet of Mason" opens the issue, fourteen lines of Texas frontier life carved out of a single 109-degree day just to answer the...

The Nearness Issue / July 25, 2026 Near You, Sixty Years On, Say This, Bear It Close, Pick Up Today's issue sponsored by 1440. Listen to the Issue → Welcome to The Nearness Issue, where distance finally gets closed. Today's poem, "Arenal," takes that idea and carries the reader up close to a volcano, where the mountain stops being scenery and starts to feel alive. Elsewhere in this issue, I go looking for people who closed the distance. In Echoes, two poets share the same July date, sixty...

The Audacity Issue / July 18, 2026 Storm Warning, Borrowed Time, Deliberate Error, No Thanks, Nothing Saved Today's issue sponsored by The Flyover. Listen to the Issue → Welcome to The Audacity Issue, where boldness gets examined up close, from the page to the podium to the home during a storm. Stick around and you will see exactly what daring costs, and why it is worth paying anyway. Today's poem, "Take Shelter Immediately," pours a Texas storm memory into fourteen lines of a Shakespearean...

The Reckoning Issue / July 11, 2026 Open Eyes, Old Debts, Weighed Twice, The Old Lie, Rings Counted Today's issue sponsored by 1440. Listen to the Issue → Welcome to The Reckoning Issue, where the ledger finally gets opened. A reckoning is not a punishment, but simply the moment when pretending stops working and something true gets to walk out from underneath everything else. Today's poem, "Some Things I See," takes that idea and turns it into a full accounting, line by line, of everything a...

Still There, No Permission, Threefold, Golden Door, Named It Liberty, Your Turn The Liberty Issue / july 4, 2026 Listen to the Issue → Welcome to The Liberty Issue, where a country turns two hundred fifty and measures itself against its own founding promise. Today's poem, "O Say Can You See," is funny in a quiet, deadpan way with a neighbor texting storm gossip and the whole weight of the national anthem quietly resting on a doorbell app. In Echoes, I watch a poet publish his own independence...

Know Me, One Passenger, The Sidelong Yes, Right on Time, Write Back The NOTICE Issue / June 27, 2026 Listen to the Issue → Welcome to The Notice Issue, where a thing that was there all along finally turns its face toward you and asks why you took so long. Today's poem, "Hill Country Cashier," sets you in front of a woman behind a roadside register whose whole body is a message you almost drive past, and it does not let you look away. For Echoes, I put you in a moving elevator with a young...

Words Matter, After the Teacher, Said Unsaid, Texas Caprock Poet, The Unforgotten, Looking for Feedback The Tribute Issue / June 20, 2026 Listen to the Issue → For my father, Jesse Kersey "Jay" Guest, Jr., called home on June 18, 2026. Until we meet again.Welcome to The Tribute Issue, where we sit with the oldest debt there is, the one we owe to whoever loved us into being, and ask what it means to pay it in words. A tribute is not flattery and it is not a monument. It is attention turned...

The First Catch, Reaching for Light, Rung by Rung, Carry the Lamp, Relit The Kindle Issue / June 13, 2026 Listen to the Issue → Welcome to The Kindle Issue, where we lean close to the smallest beginnings and breathe until they catch. Today's poem, "Let There Be Kitchen Light!," is a midnight raid on the freezer, a small pool of brightness flicked on while the house sleeps, and it hands you the sweet permission a person grants themselves when no one else is watching. In Echoes, I light a...