Freedom Anthology: Spring 2026

Written By Morgan Garcia

Photo courtesy of Sabrina Real

We are so excited to present our first Spring Poetry Anthology. We want to thank everyone who participated in making this happen. Throughout the semester, The Berkeley Pulse is a creative haven for writers to collaborate, build, and share their work. We believe in creative freedom as a principle of our publication. However, we set some parameters to challenge our contributors.

For this submission period, we ask the question: What does Freedom mean to you? What does it mean when it is lost?

It has been such an incredible pleasure to see the way your minds work—and in some cases, we got to see how your minds work together. I am so privileged to have been able to read your works. Let’s revel in the freedoms we have, share our discontent, use our voices to move mountains, and let poetry be our guide.

‍ ‍When you take the shackles off your brain

                                    You can see past the shell of you and me,

                                    You can make the lunatic feel sane,

                                    You just have to read some poetry.

With gratitude,

Jonny V,

Creative Writing Director at The Berkeley Pulse

Table of Contents

Freedom Isn’t Free

Freedom isn't free,
I can take out the "m" and the "e"
Then wonder what freedom thinks about me.

-Anonymous

Beyond the Streets

Beyond the streets, the seas
Over every mountain valley
We are free.
Borderless is our Earth
And boundless, our spirits

But deep within the corporate jungles
Below the colossal concrete watchtowers
Sit benches of sloped steel
You cannot sleep here,
Shouts one with a bed

Aren’t we free?
Heads bowed to bellies,
I am hungry for the America
That my teacher spoke of
Where the streets hum
A sweet song of hope
Daily community communion
“Take and eat”
This is the body of our Earth
Which comes without proof of residency

                                    -Amelia Daisa

Broken Shackle

The ornamentally virus has
Spread itself within
The fickle body.

It convinced its own
Deceiver to think.
No, but to feel!

The collapse has come,
A rumble and tumble
Of sedentary rock
Which knocked a lonely
Soul away from equilibrium.

They refused to lay their corpse
On the heavy pavement.
As warm blood rushes
Back through the veins
To revive a thriving heart
The night has fallen—no longer
A shackle at one’s ankle—
We shout with joy!

-Morgan Garcia

From Fear

From fear
or indignation,
On earth
and in naivety
we reside
Is demise
the only destination?

Yet to awaken,
Mired in torment
and despair,
Life endures
Births continue
There is beauty in that
Is there not?

As a sprout of vernal
mirrors
the descent
of autumnal
coexisting in harmony,
We chase a moment
etched in time,
So bold
in our climb
insecurity beckons,
Yet we’re
precisely aligned.

Freedom is not
eternal bliss
or enlightenment.
Happiness will rise
as it will fall,
Passion will burn
as it will break,
Light will seep
as it will dim,
Yet to be free
is not to detach
It is to align.

Shriveled in darkness,
Filled with
internal despair
There lies
unprecedented beauty
Upon unveiling a state
often rare.

The shadow
we must learn to tame,
Not to forget,
Better to reveal a blaze
pulsing through our veins.

You are flawed as am I
A troubled angel calls
As a christened demon cries.
The reversal will
make or break
a task we
vigilantly
must integrate.

Whilst sin is
not to prevail,
There will be pain
Suffering
Anarchy.

Clouded in all
is a sensation
nothing can abolish
This feeling cannot
be stripped,
It will not
fleet.

To each their own.
To me,
Freedom is a state
of inner peace.

                        -Will Jordan

Skin that’s mine

baptized by the sun
touched the corners of your grin
touched the liquid magic
between ocean and the heavens
touched the salt water sweat
of a love too sweet
skin that belongs to me
and earth alone,
not swallowed
in unforgiving seconds
by carved smiles, hallowed eyes.
skin that's mine
that's mine
that's mine.

-Lauren Lutge

Climbing

Toiled in circles, we
spin til we’re dizzy
Around the bush
and up the tree
We climb; we flee
these conversations,

As sticky as the world
we’ll leave

Is it ego or your soul
inflated?
To the moon you’ll
float with glee

Freedom needs no justification
Inside yourself you’ll just find
Me

-Trevor Lutge

What Does a Man Pay for Freedom?

The sun was relentless that day and there was no wind in the valley or in the mountains so the evergreen and pine trees stood silent as if the absent wind were the hands that played them. The leaves the strings to play.

I walked down the short gravel path that led to the sandy bank of the clear lake. I could see the lake from where I walked, high up on the mountain, calm like a clear ice had frozen over it and stopped the little waves from making their way to the bank. It made a mirror to the sky.

The path I took led me down past some blueberry and huckleberry bushes. I stopped at a rich bushel, and I ate the fruit they offered. When I put the wild berries in my mouth they popped and the juice was sweet on my tongue. And I finished the branch on my own.


When I reached the lake, I undressed like the men and women and children of old and I left my clothes on a bough that sat by the lake too. I entered slow with hands over my chest; The lake was cool and it shocked my skin, but it was respite from the heat. I swam out and I opened my eyes under the water, and I saw the gray and white and black rocks that were streaked with white light from refraction.

The baby rainbow and brook trout swam near my feet before they went away, spooked by my kicks that propelled me further from the shore. I pulled my head up from under the water and the shore was far and not a soul, save mine, had been there. The mountains that surrounded the lake were tall and ebony from fires. They stood proud like irregular tombstones to giants and giants of civilizations.

I swam out a little further, got on my back, and floated on the lake. A single speck of flesh on the mirror to the sky, and I rested and let the sun warm me and my lone heart.

I did not want to go back to shore until the stars came.

The sounds, if there were such any were disquieted as my ears were under the water and the white caps carried me out.

I swam back to shore and dressed. I stayed on the shore and napped and held the rock in my hand in lieu of another that I once held. I let the sun dry me and mark my skin with color.

When I woke the sun began the decent behind the mountains and the mountains grew blacker from lack of light but the sky began a change of colors, the bright blue became a darker hue, and the little bits of stars lighted like struggling fireflies, and the planets and galaxies began to make themselves known like hidden creatures coming out after the predators have gone.

Right on the mountain ridge-line, the color of fire grew warmer and ubiquitous. The sun gave out a disorder of light like red and orange and pink, a fight not to go gentle into guaranteed night. I stayed sitting.

I took out a cigarette I had in my shirt pocket and lighted it. It felt warm and good. The wind never came again so I listened to the river. I saw it too, pouring into the lake like the lake was a thing that was never satisfied with what it received, and the river was a futile source of hope to satisfy the lake.

But it poured violently into the lake still with hope, hopelessly.


I drove down the black road and under the stars that moved in their ancient arches. For the first time in a long time, I had nothing or no one weighing me down like a cross over the shoulders in which the question arose:

“What does a man pay for freedom?”

-Joshua Minas

We Communicate in Blinks

whatever invisible energy
exists between us
there is an emotion
we’re not allowed to name

we haunt each other’s conscience
something almost supernatural—
as if we’ve cursed one another

just remember:
you chose me
first
before I chose you.

                        -Tabina Tariq

Borderline

1

When the bbc posted “a guide to Iran”
I condemned this utopia
where only 28% of Americans can point it on a map
where fat fingers fall on the U.S.
while bombs fall on Iranian schoolgirls.

2

I regret telling you about the attack,
not because I couldn’t take how shook you were—
not because you didn’t deserve to know—
not because the world would have come down on you—
I would have saved your liver from the napalm.

3

You chose intoxication
and you weren’t your people anymore
and you danced for all the schoolgirls that
could have been you
and you wished your biggest concern were
tomorrow’s hangover.

4

I think of a world with no borders
but to what extent can a man march into another man’s house
uninvited—calling evil!—and collapse his roof
above his head—liberated are the people
from the chains of the ceiling
I wonder if they can see the light of day
through the dust.

5

Is it, then, about nation?
lines on a sheet of paper—
horizontal lines drawn on the globe,
vertical lines drilling down to the core—
the war pays itself.

6

Instead of looking through the rubble
for fallen governments,
for threats unheeded, for oil to power your lines
while Iranian systems are offline—
instead of deconstructing bodies,
should we deconstruct sovereignty?

7

It’s borderline possible
that words transcend borders
like currents do oceans,
like sorrow does justice,
like a man’s bombs—
are the poet’s tears acts of poetry?
They should not fall like rain on a sheet of paper
like bombs on Iranian schoolgirls.

-Laurie Walden

I Hear Silence

I hear silence, intense silence,
The air after a gun shot,
The mute of a witness,
The longing of a people.

I also hear chatter, and laughter,
Hollow, noisy, and void,
Because chatter and laughter must be there
To cover silence, intense silence.

                                    -Daniel Zizou

The following poems were written at our first general meeting.

As a part of our collaborative poetry workshop, we put strangers together to write a collective poem. They had no idea what the preceding line said, only the theme: Freedom.

Feel So Free

Fresh air resurrecting the soul, awakening the lungs,
Can’t be bought or sold, well shouldn’t be.
I’ve swam in the air of autonomy,
Mired in torment and despair, life endures, births continue.
I feel so free right now.

                                                -Freedom’s Disciples

Burning Stars

Freedom is the negation of negation of prohibition,
freedom, of freedom, the grand illusion.
And despite these burning stars and scars, I thrive and survive.
A lake without water and death to the surface.
If you are reading these words, one question: do “you” exist?

There is no absolute freedom, there is only freedom in contrast to oppression.
After all, what is freedom when everything is already determined?
So I breathe in right now and let go of these chains,
Let the rain in and we begin again to see
“you” the reader of these words, free. Well—maybe not.

                                                -Daniel, Emilio, Jamie, Cassius

Photo courtesy of Noah Mendieta

Morgan Garcia
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Winter Workshop 1.0