Parker Coyne

Parker Coyne is an aspiring writer with a huge focus on mental health awareness and trauma. She has been writing for a while but only started publishing in 2025 when a school assignment forced them to. Parker has recently graduated with a BA in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing and is pursuing their MFA in Writing at the beginning of August 2026. She hopes to publish more than a handful of pieces but has to gain more confidence.

Who are you as a poet and what are you working on?
I guess to start off, I'd say I'm definitely a Jack of All Trades (master of none) when it comes to writing—I like to play with different genres and ideas. Mainly, as a poet, I try to focus my poem on some sort of mental health awareness matter. Whether it's men's mental health, surviving trauma, or just learning to be kinder to yourself—I throw it into a poem.

Right now, I'm working on different poems to add to a chapbook I hope to publish before I graduate with my MFA. I'm playing around with life after trauma as an overall theme to one and living life through grief as another. So far, there's about an equal amount for both ideas (and still not enough) so I can't really say which one is getting the most attention. I have ADHD so this is usually how my writing style goes: just two projects or more all at once. I don't really write with the intention to fit a rhyme scheme or iambic pentameter (even though those sorts of poems hit harder I believe), but I do write my poetry in a style that I believe feels like a poem even if it doesn't fully look like a poem. I like to say I just write free-verse poetry all the time because I, in fact, don't know how to rhyme. 

I've published three poems: two are from Arrow Rock Literary Journal at Lindenwood University I'm Not Talking About Dirty Laundry and There is no green here in 2025 and 2026. I have also published another poem Would You Wait in Issue 2 of The Orange Rose Literary Magazine. I also have a short story published at Arrow Rock and a pending essay about gender roles in America to be published in an essay collection at a later date. I haven't submitted a whole lot, and that's because I'm bad at initiating where rejection can be a reaction.

Tell us about the piece you sent over. ‍ ‍Two of the poems are from an interwoven inner monologue of a narrator who has been through abuse trying to love again while the other is about grief through someone else's lens. Playing with point of view is one of my favorite things to do when it comes to poetry, even if all three are written in first-person, there's the relationship between the narrator and her own trauma in Undressed, the reactions and feelings of the partner in Breathe while the narrator also describes their own feelings and assuming the other's, and The Box Labeled "Cancer Crap" is about a situation that the narrator isn't directly involved in. This shift in point of view is something I like to play around and experiment with, and a lot of the time it makes the poem different than what the first draft once was.

Undressed refers to physical aspects of trauma and the relationship the narrator is now in—stuck between flashbacks and waiting for something bad that just isn't coming. The physical experiences bleed into the emotional experience and back into the physical because they can be and are one when it comes to trauma. The human mind processes stress and trauma emotionally at such a high severity that it causes physical changes in the human body. They usually go hand-in-hand.

Breathe is a reference to a calming tactic known as the "box breathing theory" but also refers to having space to just exist. The narrator describes an emotional torment that they're going through of not knowing how to just be in a relationship without trying to self-sabotage it. This one is meant to be more of that emotional weight rather than experiencing much of the physical symptoms (even though there are many present because, again, they go pretty hand-in-hand).

The Box Labeled "Cancer Crap" is genuinely the odd-ball but a passion poem I wrote based off a couple I genuinely knew. The narrator expresses her interest in the family and describes a man she doesn't know well and his late wife whom she's never met, creating this outsider perspective on a very real and unfortunately-more-common-than-it-should-be incident that happens sometime before the time of the poem.

These are some poems I don't plan on sending out to publishers but may try to include in a future chapbook—but no matter what, they're sort of my love poems to those who've experienced incredible hurt in their lives.

The Box Labeled “Cancer Crap” 

I travel through the crowded garage 

past the box that contained only pain. 

It sits buried under tools and junk, 

smothered in dust. 

He explained the story to me 

when we met to discuss business 

with a softly strong grin, a smile 

that gently caressed his cheekbones 

but in a painstakingly, unmistakable 

aching heartbreak that flowed from his eyes like

water. It sounded so long ago, 

the tale he told. 

I walk through the empty halls of his home 

caring for the ghosts of memories 

while he works out of town 

and pays me way too much to just be present. 

One day he called to ask a favor 

and got distracted by the story 

of the poker table he tried to sneak past 

his dying wife. 

She scolded him with what I assume 

was an amused smile on her face 

based on the somber yet mischievous tone 

he offered over the phone. 

I pause at the wedding picture hung closest to the

bedroom a moment in time I’m sure he replays in his

mind over and over 

like the repetition of a heart monitor.

She just looked so happy

adorned in lace and jewels. 

Marrying her best friend 

who stayed with her through it all. 

And although I never knew her 

and have not witnessed someone I love

fade slowly from the disease 

I frown at the still-frames 

kept frozen in time 

and curse cancer under my breath each time I visit.

~ parker coyne

—-

Breathe 

he comes into the room 

yelling and emotional 

the fruits of my labors 

by pushing him to his edge 

and pressing his buttons 

while withdrawing 

yet he's surprising 

while i cower in the corner 

not knowing what to say 

scared and full of my own feelings 

and i watch his shoulders slump 

and he casually steps towards the chair beside me

to sit down 

and asks how to fix what's going on 

moving forward 

his love 

gentle and patient 

is not a love i’m used to. 

he's quick to react 

when i push the limits 

of his patience

but calms just as fast 

when the waves of my self-destruction

pass 

i cannot claim to be perfect 

or blameless 

but i don't know how to love softly

when the demons inside me demand

a new victim 

but his presence 

—and his presence alone 

stills the demons 

and quiets the screams 

and allows me a moment 

to breathe 

~ parker coyne