The Poetry Distillery is The Poetry Barn’s literary journal. Established in 2018, we harvest a diverse sampling of some the most exciting poems generated in our community, working closely with our authors to distill their poems to perfection as an extension of the workshop process.

I Am the Girl

I am the girl with the bad-ass band
I am the girl with the suck-it-up face

I am the girl with her face in the soup
I am the girl with her fingers in the pie

I am the girl with the smoke and the mirrors
I am the girl with the cookies and cream

I am the girl on the merry-go-round
I am the girl who frightens the clowns

I am the girl with the harpoon in her tongue
I am the girl with the boilerplate bones

I am the girl who’s the Jew in the mosque
I am the girl with all the commandments

I am the girl who started the fire
I am the girl who is sometimes a liar

I am the girl who preaches to the choir
I am the girl who was damned at the altar

I am the girl who melted the ice caps
I am the girl who changed the climate

I am the girl with the slip of the tongue
I am the girl who spilled the covfefe

I am the girl with the Russian words
I am the girl with the Kremlin mouth

I am the girl who serves the subpoenas
I am the girl with the slam-dunk case


Cindy Hochman is the president of "100 Proof" Copyediting Service and the editor-in-chief of the online journal First Literary Review-East. She is on the book review staff of Pedestal Magazine and has written reviews for American Book Review, Clockwise Cat, great weather for MEDIA, and others. Her solo chapbook, Habeas Corpus, was published by Glass Lyre Press, and her most recent chapbook, a collaborative work with poet/collagist Bob Heman, was published by Presa Press.

What to do with a Stone

My Litany for Survival