Photo by Louise Pilgaard on Unsplash Understand I can no longer consider the alternatives. I’ve run in every direction at once and found myself out of breath, but not out of harm’s way. I know harm’s way, all her horses’ names. Pills and Noose and Knife and Love, always Love the last to leave […]
Photo by Ruslan Valeev on Unsplash I told the mortician to mix our ashes I wish to see you as a speck of sand maybe a fistful of waves gnashing until white stone all the lilies bursting from this rapture your opal lips shiver like two harp strings I pluck a symphony from the […]
Photo by Torbjørn Helgesen on Unsplash For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow . . . —Gerard Manley Hopkins The place under the awning where it hasn’t rained. The seat belts in the taxi all with puzzling or hidden buckles. The daffodils inside my shadow. The glass of melted ice. The spiderweb that […]
Photo by michael weir on Unsplash I look at my childhood & imagine what isn’t there archived blank pages partially erased artifacts we all live in a barter system trading our favorite worst memories I social you a tongue I appeal you a slanted pear orchard throat & we share it gladly I research […]
It seems it’s been taking me longer and longer to complete these reviews lately, and not for lack of interest or quality of the work but rather a reluctance to leave the work behind. I relish such time and space where the day is not accounted by such mean labor counts of the work clock […]
In her tenth book of poetry, Your Kingdom, Eleni Sikelianos offers an exploration of life’s evolution from stardust to small-celled organism to humankind, with its attendant extinguishing forces. For Sikelianos, the evolution of language complicates this narrative, as past meanings fail to fill the holes that humanity is insistently creating. As such, Your Kingdom attempts […]
Winner of the 2023 Colorado Prize for Poetry, selected by Felicia Zamora In Mountain Amnesia, Thompson’s poems rebuild a new world—and self—in the wake of destruction and loss. Influenced by the landscape of rural Appalachia, these poems depict a nature relentlessly working on its own disappearance for survival. Decaying plants and animal remains are housed in […]
Barbara Tomash’s new collection erases Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady. From the outset, it’s a compelling project. What happens when you erase a novel that itself claims to be a portrait? When you manipulate the materials that aim to convey a person’s character? Or a character’s person? The cover image of the collection […]
In her sixth book, Wave House, Elizabeth Arnold’s unpredictable poems mimic the incalculable movements of a world in flux due to social inequity, political instability, and climate uncertainty. Far-flung regions of the world take center stage, and Florida is a place that the speaker never wishes to return. Time is merely a suggestion, and the […]
This debut collection is a fascinating study in form and a powerful meditation on family. Rosanna Young Oh grew up just miles from where I have lived most of my life, but a world away. I probably purchased food in her parents’ market but likely did not see them. Their invisibility is part of the […]