De’Andre Holmes is an award-winning writer, educator, and Hachette Group Fellow. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Temple University and an MFA from Columbia College Chicago. De’Andre is currently working on his debut short story collection, Daddy, Do You Love Me?, and a poetry collection, Slippin’ Through Cracks in the Concrete. A recipient of the 2023 Hurston/Wright College Award for Fiction and a 2025 Pushcart Prize nominee, his work has appeared in Short Story Break, SONKU Magazine, Allium Literary Journal, Contextos Chicago, and Marginalia. His writing is forthcoming in Fiction on the Web and The Broken Teacup. When he’s not writing, De’Andre enjoys reading, traveling, exploring diverse cultures, and binge-watching animal documentaries.
Collection #3
Lavender Lollipop; Simple Sins; The Salt in this Water Used to Taste Sweet; What Happens To My Poetry When I Die?
Lavender Lollipop
An interesting flavor, no?
A taste closely resembling
The taste of grass. Gritty,
Maybe? You can only truly
Eat one while reading “The
Color Purple” or laying in
A lavender field, or pretending
to lay in a lavender field while
laying on concrete pavement.
I pity the man too masculine
To find happiness in sucking.
I would implore him to explore
The art of sucking and the power
That comes from sucking it
Dry. Really, what is this little
Joy I’m finding in this artifact?
Lacing my tongue and giving
Me a sugar rush… what is
This lollipop really? It makes
Me think things that shouldn’t
Be thought out loud, it is
Controlling me. Yet, I can’t
Stop sucking it even though it
Dissolved in my mouth hours
Ago.
Simple Sins
After CM Burrough’s “Our People I”
like saying “I hate you”/
leaving your child to cry
during the night/forgetting
your children’s age/playing with
your sister’s Barbie/telling your
partner you cheated/telling your
partner sorry for cheating and
cheat again/playing in dirt/picking
away at scabs and eating
them/forgetting to say excuse
me/laughing at your mother’s
funeral/falling out of love with
your partner/falling in love
while still being in love/licking
your sweat after a run/coloring
outside the lines/forgetting to
say grace/LYING/letting your
lies surface/playing in dirt/
touching yourself/touching
death/playing in dirt/forgetting
to love yourself first/forgetting
what love is/a love poem/
an unsatiated hunger
The Salt in this Water Used to Taste Sweet
In it there is a memory.
And it tells of a time when I loved my mother.
I loved her more than God loves us all.
I know this because I would have chosen to stay with her.
I would have chosen to spare her the pain of not having anyone to love her.
It’s a shame this memory is fading.
For it holds the last bit of sympathy I have for her.
And when it goes, she, too, will go.
Understand I tried everything I could to make this reality a lie.
I tried to remember the sweetness of her, the water in her womb.
Let the memory pass, please.
Let me forget, please.
I’m still thinking, I think.
What Happens To My Poetry When I Die?
Will you forgive me if every
Poem did not make you laugh,
Or cry, or scream, or faint?
“I write only for myself!”
As some of my writer friends
Would say, believing that we
Are not like others greedy for
Power and influence; that we,
As in the individual, think it’s
Idiotic to compromise who you
are to please the majority. Some
Part of us gets lost, but that’s
The only part I don’t believe.
I’d like to think somewhere in
One of these poems someone
will make the connection and
Say, “that was him, that’s what
He was about, there is his Truth,
Right there, right there, I see it.”
Somewhere in all these glorified
Words and pretty verses, my true
Self lingers. Have you found it?
I will know if you did. My bones
Will tingle, maybe shiver. In my
Deadness, I will feel cold. It will
Be the same cold that gave my
Poems immortality.
The Galway Review 