This poem, from Brandon Melendez just-released debut from Write Bloody Publishing—Gold that Frames the Mirror—is an affirmation, a confession of acceptance. And while the speaker’s body ripens with a choice: to hate, or to forgive, so much depends on the swing of a…
These three poems by Carlina Duan, demanding to be published together, intimately reveal family: “Portrait with Bok Choy in Pan” animates the kitchen, the cook’s tender art; “The Older Sister” aches with sibling affection; while “On Mackinac Island, I Cast…
The Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37) projects a mass resurrection of bones and death for the prophet Ezekiel—an incomprehensibly bold prophecy in today’s after-Auschwitz world, and one with which Sean McQuinney wrestles beautifully to find his voice…
Jessica Fischoff’s mythic poem leans into divinated romance, star-spoken inevitability. “The Fortune Teller” speaks with few lines, but pulls the wide galactic into the palm, the body. We want the fortune to be real. The Fortune Teller Give me…
Honored to share the two runner-ups to the 2018 Frontier OPEN: Elizabeth Oxley has won 2nd place and Sam Zafris 3rd! Expelling Venus by Elizabeth Oxley When the doctor says he’ll need to remove my ovaries, I consider performing a…
First, a sincere thank you to all the finalists for partnering with us. All of these poems deserve high praise, featuring work by Jocelyn Williams, Korey Williams, Hillary Martin, K.A. Jagai, and Oriana Ivy. E.D. Watson is also a finalist,…
Jenny Shen’s power in “preparing an elegy” rises as invitation to familial intimacy—the poem rolls forward like a stream of consciousness and captures a mother and her daughter in a fragile moment, in the kitchen, in a conversation with so…
Claire Eder sets the stage in “Anniversary” for “ordinary love”—a performance both endearing and familiar. Whose body has not been softened by illegal chemicals? Or trembled by illicit confession? Or soaked in the long river of “ordinary love?” Anniversary…
“Not Evening Now”—a poem of memory and the wet Florida air—is true joy in the mouth. Sound puts the meat on imagery, on memory, and Henry Brooks has invited us to feast in his night gazebo. Not Evening Now…
Poetry has always endeavored to create a space where land and body can reveal their unity, political and otherwise—Isabel Acevedo’s poem swims in this tradition. With “May 2018, Puerto Rico,” she’s invited us into that very specific pain of May…
