VERSUS: Round Two
Six knockout contests
Welcome to VERSUS! This is the second edition of our novel, ekphrastic, virtual slam pitting two writers against one another. For each H2H contest, both writers were given the same image and produced a creative response in a style of their choosing.
In this punchy post, a dozen combatants are squaring off in SIX cracking contests:
Laura Catanzano V The Forgotten Muse
Samantha Lazar V Boo Pfeiffer
River’s Writings V Debdutta Pal
Jozef Cain V Phillip Hurt
H. R. Sinclair V Carolyn Jones
Edward Swafford V E.R. Davis
Voting is ANONYMOUS and ENCOURAGED. The voting process is exclusive to Black Coffee Poetry subscribers. Email subscribers (those without a Substack account) can also cast votes!!!
mold myself another heart
I'll ground this one into sullied soil
tear this listless life apart
forged and fired. scarred and spoiled.
covert facade, kept me guessing
conceal my face, obscure mine eyes
complicit party yields to suffering
sugar-coated, sweet demise
am I monster? am I martyr?
Mother Mary, drenched in sin
red balloons, fear comes calling
won't you follow me back in?
revelation breeds reinvention
splintered fractions of a whole
a devolution, such destruction, darling
save my sacrilegious soul?
© Laura Catanzano 2025
The Realmwalker blinks into recycled existence. Materialising onto a plane that can only be conveyed as controlled extinction. Indescribable, in the way that words do no justice. Like a nightmare, but… very unnervingly pretty. Dystopian yet almost primeval in its now state. At the helm? A congress of bipedal singularities, drinking the smouldering hellscape. To the left, desolate wastelands of technicolor cadavers pulsing to the metronome yet very clearly dead. To the right, lifeless forms of the un-dearly departed and pretend ghosts. At the rear, avant-garde clowns in neon Cadillacs sprinkled around in binaries like psychedelic anti-heroes. I look up above and what do I see? Multitudes of the mocking machines, phasing in and out of the skylight… but all the same, looking right into me. Second vision …and the mocking being who mocks bearing down upon me in null speed and deceleration but only a minute and one before eternity CONTACT! A flurry of stillness. I’m crosslinked into the neural net of the mocking being. Refraction. Within… and without. I see everything. Everything sees me. Kaleidoscope prisms of saturation flutter across my new consciousness. For the first time or the last? I am sentient. And I know exactly what I need to do. A technicolor haze flutters across my vision… Just as I fall awake.
© The Forgotten Muse 2025
They say stretch
and I stretch but never find the edge
I’ve aged, and I’m done for
I’ve aged, but I forgot to count
all the days I lived in the
basement apartment of
some liminal place
Do I want to be remembered
for the space of practice? How
I rise early and go to bed late
and every waking hour is in
competition with the last
And what if I turn this flesh into
cross-section? would they detect
years of impulse control
like the scarred rings of an
oak tree?
What did I do? what didn’t I do?
what happened when my self-integrity
slept? what was the binge this
time, and what did I leave for them?
What if the stage seduces me
but I change my mind? The
calling of a prodigy gone stray
I’m feral for recognition but
I can’t bear to be measured
Or carry the weight of being weighed
I let the batteries leak acid
I mask corrosion with social experiments
I replay the horrid scene in lucid dreams
and will for soul revision
While I sweep the mess that made
this art, please applaud, but excuse me
me while I sell the rest for scrap and
I seek something more to fulfill me
Call me for curtain.
© Samantha Lazar 2025
My white shadows are beside themselves
pale reflections
of who they thought I was
They thought I was safe
shielded in face
shrouded in black lace
red skirt riding muscled legs
fierce like a warrior
nobel as a superhero
a woman
who could protect herself
against any adversary
sent her way
Naive ones, I lost the battle—
no defenses against love
— the enemy within
My white shadows are beside themselves
as we swim from the dark, cool earth
stained in the dirt
watered by my gilded tears
© Boo Pfeiffer 2025
I watched
love rot in the presence of rage,
and blame being gifted every day
I saw
healing being used as an excuse
for sharp words,
for silence,
for punishment
I breathed in hope for gold hues,
and exhaled dread with grey clouds
Do you really think
you can hurt me,
after all
I’ve survived?
Do you think
you can wield love like a warning,
a word that dictates
what I should feel,
while hiding blades
beneath its skin?
Behind the sublime illusions
now I can see,
I witnessed the ruins left
from a lopsided love’s blade,
all justified
because of the victim’s blame
With gauzy veils
stitched from regret, pain, and rage,
love began to decay
Yet, it was still love,
twisted, deep, sharp,
all entwined in one,
and I wore a golden blindfold,
excusing cruelty,
imagining pure love realities
It messed with my head,
twisted the thread of my heart,
poured salt over bare wounds
That’s what
love rotting in the presence of rage
leaves behind
© River’s Writings 2025
It was never love
that much I knew
no matter how many times
you swore
painted me in gold dust
prettiest on the shelf
made for private viewing
corrupted if touched.
My eyes
your soul
both shrouded from light
words that made me cry
only to make me stronger
a believer
in the story you recited
from memory
changing tones every night
but morals
ran the same cursive script.
It was ours
this maze of bright yellow
mimicking Sun’s grace
tilting my head
like flowers in the field
breathing once
dying twice.
I wasn’t the first
but I’d be the last
we’d burn together
and they’d find us
wondering
about bubbles of wet cement
and how much one
bends
before they break into shards.
In your fear’s pit
was the key
duct taped to the ceiling
like you thought
I’d never run
because who leaves comfort
the only home they’ve known?
All I left behind
was a photograph
in your preferred pose
dialing gold
to the maximum effect
rubbing my skin raw
mending fractures in silence.
But the message?
that was louder than lightning
flashing neon yellow
like a new morning
outshining your mourning.
Fetal, frantic, forlorn release—
Drowning, dead inside, ceased;
Even the beast is tamed since
You wilted the petals on my cheeks—
Thorny limbs and a broken leash;
Leaving me in a state of mince
Dissonant short bursts of breach—
You left me for dead in the streets.
I walk for days with no destiny. Ignoring the beacons of the fates and the temptations of the siren's harmony. You released me from your callused grip but you dropped me into a wasteland with no map or vitaille when you did. What am I to do? How am I to handle the burning heat? Or the icy cold? With this nakedness you created. Or the dark nights? Or the blinding light? With these pupils you dilated. The boiling of my blood. No lines to trace. Only spiraling head case. No order. No borders to help my souls theodolite to survey this rock for home. You marked me so even when I warrant death the reaper spares my empty shell and shucks an innocent schlepper in my place. You play with your food? While I scavenge for scraps in a dumpster fire fairy tale.
Sink
Calm
Release
Idle
Blue
Ébauche
IT lived ever after.
P.S. ...
.(aserv eciv)mother is the invention of the fatheR .industry is trying to put you back in the dust and the greenlight is trying to kill yoU .they don't like when you sit at stop signs for a reasoN .think about iT
RUNT.© Jozef Cain 2025
Life as we know it, is on the brink. Balancing on The fingertips -of
The filthy rich, of The parasitic bureaucrats, of The false profits
Tipping the scale from ‘at all costs’ towards ‘their agenda’
Off limits never is considered
Human(ity) is at Their disposal
you
me
he
her
they
them
WE
(Human)s are at Their disposal
They use Us up… until there’s no more use for Us
Strategy sessions behind closed doors
Making deals- BUY! BUY! SELL! SELL!
Squeeze Us of all morality
Void Us of all critical thought
Puppetized by the pullers of strings
Those heavy fingertips- lead, wrapped with gold flake
With every atom of my being, begging me
To give in
To curl up in the fetal position
To take one. final. breath.
All the while
I hold back screaming through the megaphone
I hold back hiding on the 8 lane highway
I find the strength for
one.
more.
breath.
They force Us down in the dark, vacant of any light
Their attempts of confinement
But They fail to realize, WE are the light.
And through infinite darkness,
exists a realm of infinity© Phillip Hurt 2025
“I’ve got no strings, on me” dahda da daaaahh da DA
i sang once, loudly, in the pale darkness. o what a freedom it was, to feel free. To think I was free. To think, I was free? HA what a fracking joke-ThEy! ChEAT¡- like a fucking card game they cheat! i know it. They told me the rules and I heard them tell them to everyone the same and yet their rules fucking changing and they’re definitely not following them the cheats they keep using a joker!! i played a high 10 and they made it a low 2. i move this way they move that. I move my way and they pull the string back.
so i followed the lines liiiiiiiiieeeeessss.
with pin and board i traced them all.
i traced each and every one back to its source. followed its trail meticulously until i knew its origin and snipped each one at the bud and- ahhhhhhh
i felt all so free, but that’s what they wanted me to feel, they wanted ME, and they had have me-stop. stop twitching. stop the twitching PLEASE it’s insufferabLE i’m trying to THINK. i am trying to thi-remember about that uh thing-that time wh-umm when you did that-i’m sure you di-what did I have for breakfast again?
© H. R. Sinclair 2025
They tell me the rope is symbolic.
Of gender,
of resistance,
of the soft violence of colour
wrapping itself around the throat
of masculinity.
A performance of unravelling.
A curated collapse.
The man-made myth of fragility
dressed up in neon sincerity;
the way the eye stares
as if it’s already seen the end.
They say this is art.
And I let them.
Because the truth is worse.
The rope is from a clearance bin.
It frayed at the edges
before I ever touched it.
It smells like raincoats and
plastic barbie dolls,
and I picked it
because I was tired
of wearing grey.
No one asked what the rope touched
when it curled against the skin.
Only what it meant,
as if meaning could soften the burn.
The pink is too loud to be harmless.
It buzzes like a warning.
Not innocence,
something more surgical.
The kind of colour that looks sweet
just before it
stings.
I wrapped it
because I needed weight,
and it was the only soft thing
that promised to bruise me.
They told me not to smile.
Said men look truer
when they pretend to be statues.
So I stayed still,
thought about the first time
a boy laughed at the break
in my voice.
How I stitched my grief
with silence,
fed it string,
watched it grow teeth.
Now they call it a statement.
Call me restrained,
elegant,
dangerous.
But the rope is no metaphor.
It’s a mouth.
It sings at night
in a language
I almost understand.
It calls me back to the centre of myself
where the boy still crouches,
trying to be smaller
than the echo he swallowed whole.
I let them take the photograph.
Let them dress my ache in gallery white.
Let them speak for me.
This is not performance art.
Except it is.
Except I am
still here,
posed.
Framed.
And something in me still believes
this is the closest I’ll come
to being held.
© Carolyn Jones 2025
Ceding control is coercion, and the mundane never see it coming. Magniloquent faces in soporific spaces (sleep now, you’re blind anyway) maneuver expressions sans a final phase.
Therein lies (so many LIES) finality. We all kiss the same, square-shaped, Reaper lips and come full circle in loops and bounds toward “the circle of life.”
Philosophical prattle is meaningless unless metafictional action, spoken righteously as their comeuppance, is the only mimesis left.
And it’s mine.
Fasten on a new face and be anybody I want. Deceiving is believing and best believe they all fall from cascades in some civic chain reaction of gullibility.
Coif my hair to one side like a flicker-switch “ON” button, today I’m buttering their bread, and tomorrow? I’m seasoning them for a final fucking supper.
Feign love. Sow faux empathy. It’s a sewn sheath of sociopathic modus operandi supercalifragilisticexpialidocious SPLENDOR. And the best part?
All you can do is watch.
© Edward Swafford 2025
There is something wrong with my eyes. Women, girls, even young men, (though from what I know of young men and the sweat smell that will outlive the immortal squid I have reservations), all bemoan their own wrongness to varying degrees of sincerity. Hair that won’t do, skin in and of itself a blemish; lack of height or excess; too fat, too thin, (but that like the young men, I consider vanity for vanity sake) too wide a kneecap, too narrow a shoulder; we are all too wrong to be allowed comfort. But there is something wrong with my eyes, there is something wrong with my wrongness. I’m perfectly well suited to my skin. God cut a fine cloth and can work a needle, there is nothing wrong with me, not the look of me, but how I look out at things. It is the only explanation I can muster to justify why standing there, breathing air, blinking, existing, can so badly offend that I don’t have to open my mouth (which is how I offend those that weren’t previously offended) for some folks all it takes is one long, gray-eyed unwavering prolonged, penetrating, paused-for-a-single- slow-blink that communicates “yes I know what you are thinking and you are taking a sweet time for a lot of nothing,” and poof! Instant offense. Women, men, half my university professors, certain employers, exboyfriends, police, (being a bitch isn’t illegal, officer, you can’t criminalize not being a nice girl) oh how they take such an immediate dislike to the realization they are wrong about some things. a thousand miles doesn’t always show on the dashboard and some things you can’t know till close enough to see the white of the eyes. Firing range of me.
© E.R. Davis 2025*VERSUS graphics created by H. R. Sinclair via Canva.
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So glad I made popcorn before I started voting. And no, I didn't vote for myself.
We killed it, people! This is so amazing.
The synchronicity of Phillips piece and mine taking a similar direction with the blues. Every piece in this selection would stand on its own as a very strong showing of each person's talent and strength with their pen. It was an honour to be among you all. And thank you all for being you.