Writing for a prize
For the hundredth time, I am writing about my stepdad. A 2,000-word essay,a cash…
Author: Gretchen Filart
Gretchen is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and essayist from the Philippines, where she embraces life while managing bipolar disorder and ADHD. Her confessional pieces unpack the complexities of grief, healing, motherhood, love, and intersections, garnering recognition from the Greg Grummer Poetry Contest and Navigator's Travel Writing Competition.
On your birthday
My skull does not intend to tilt on its axis, but every 24th an arrival & a departure squaring my moon: day we met, day we parted, day you were born.
On first trike rides and letting go
Today my ten-year old took her first public transport alone to and from school. And it was the hardest thing to watch.
To be light
To be light is to recognize your feet are stuck in the mud, and they must first be unstuck, before you can pull others out.
Chosen family
A poem for a beloved environmentalist friend. First published in The Alien Buddha’s The Buddha Gets Rejected 2 print anthology on Feb 2023.
when i write
Part love poem, part fangirling Ocean Vuong, part tribute to writing.
Loving someone is loving the people they lost, too.
It was a cold and dewy morning on the walk home, but the…
My cat is not Baron Humbert von Gikkingen
A poem inspired by the Studio Ghibli movie, The Cat Returns. It was first published in the pop culture mag,The Daily Drunk, on February 2023.
In my dreams Jiro Horikoshi did not make fighter planes
A poem inspired by the Studio Ghibli movie, The Wind Rises. It was first published in the pop culture mag, The Daily Drunk, on February 2023.
Returning to an old new
On returning to the road, to one’s old self, and the small joys that growing up and heartbreak threaten to diminish.
How a Scorpio loves (thoughts while you were sleeping)
The rain thrummed on the rusty red roofwhile my mind wandered to the…
Dear 2022, You F*cking Broke My Heart.
Dear 2022, If I can describe you in one word, it would be “trainwreck”.
Letter #23: Always
My most loved Lia, I sometimes kid how unfair it is that you…
Dear Jam
An epistolary poem for my friend who’s on a healing journey and celebrating her birthday.
Dear TJ
An epistolary poem for possibly the longest-running male friendship I have – and a guy who gets into my nerves sometimes.
Do not come to me unless you can
A poem on half-loves and half-tended gardens.