Weijia Pan’s latest work wrestles with the moon like a monk wrestles with prayer. It asks in the moonlight: what poet has not translated?—has not archived and assimilated?—has not turned a poem’s ending silence into their fitfully aspirant beginning? Betrayal:…
A meditation on a fruit that opens into defiance against the pressure to assimilate, this poem by Kandala Singh is unflinching both in its beauty and in its reverence for its speaker’s background and belonging. Narangi I roll my eyes…
It’s difficult to make myths new, but Gustav Parker Hibbett’s haunting interpretation of Ariadne’s longing for escape does just that, offering a complex and elegant glimpse into the at-first fresh, and then nagging and expansive impulse to “set out.” Ariadne…
Exploring conversations around race and erasure through the framework of the poem’s title object, Teja Sudhakar writes a scathing and striking lament and a plea to “keep your eyes soft,” to see first the “veil” and then through it. punctum…
M. Ezra Zhang takes us an exquisite and strange journey in which swallows hold trouts in their beaks. This poem, in a turn eventually unifying the you and the child of memory, portrays a relationship that evolves over time and…
Jacob Boyd writes a sharp, semi-ekphrastic poem that addresses love alongside mental health struggle, sandwiched between the present and a memory. With the rhythm of song, this poem in couplets turns lyrics and idioms inside out and into surprising glimpses…
This poem flows across even its absences, emphasized in caesura. Sodïq Oyèkànmí writes into transformation with the echoes of the past and the fears of the future joining into a request for togetherness. i am becoming more & more like…
Animated by its speaker’s distinct voice, this poem by Samia Saliba catalogues feelings of alienation that eventually draw us into a moment of ekphrastic revelation. at the lakeshore trader joe’s they were playing the x files theme song & i…
Alight with a sense of intergenerational connection, Arah Ko’s “Catching” enters its speaker’s childhood and expands into a pursuit of a family history—“a long line of flame-mongers”—and resistances. Moving the reader through sharply woven couplets that blend past and present,…
Please join us in congratulating Kathryn Hargett-Hsu, winner of the 2023 Frontier Breakthrough Chapbook Contest. Hargett-Hsu’s manuscript was selected by Kemi Alabi and will be published in spring 2024. And congratulations to our outstanding finalists and longlisters! We’re confident we’ll…
