Andrew Mobbs here reveals that uncomfortable truth: violence is seductive. A poem of war and explosion and desert, “Mirage” lingers beyond the edges of traditional combat poetry to deliver the experience and mind of today’s newly defined wars. Mirage…
Sallie Fullerton glides her words into the readers body, that the thing of flesh may be escaped, walked away from. “Four times over” is more than an exploration of what the body is for—the poem interrogates what the body is,…
The truth of the apocalypse is that our language will die with us—what if words, this dark future asks, are neither immortal nor inevitable? Margaret Ray here explores the edges of this question with both the awe and fear that…
This “letter to the editor” struggles earnestly to say what it can’t and not what it does—to not talk about race, or tribe, or ethnicity is still to talk about it. tokorima, a Master Artisan in the Art of Māori Carving,…
What is need? What is loneliness? Marlin Figgins investigates, discovering unexpected images and new questions along the journey: see his world of muddy bellies, his moon dangling tethers of want like arms of a jellyfish. “If What I’m Told is…
It shouldn’t be a surprise that a shoes can serve as such luminous tissue between cultures—here, Nene Giorgadze, a Georgian poet, covers them with sperm, with desire, with silence and nostalgia. “High Heels” is both an ode and a surrender,…
How can you a poet write of Rome without writing of its food? Anthony Tao takes us on a sprint through the spaghetti, the pandoro, the Caravaggio—we devour the language of “Christmas alla Romana” as we would the delicacies of…
Owen McLeod here delivers a poem both playful and sinister—a carnival mirror that shoves back uncomfortable truths in its twisting reflection. The hashtags and the copyrights give “Three Moments…” a certain childishness, like a drawing a kid would make for…
Today is the day! Proud to present Kirk Schlueter’s wrenching “The Anorexic’s Aubade,” selected by Victoria Chang for the $3000 prize. The poem is tender—medium rare—haunting like an empty stomach, and speaks in a voice like prayer across a handful…
We’re all very excited to share with you the winners of the 2018 Award for New Poets, selected by Victoria Chang. Today, we’re continuing with our second place winner, “Heart postpartum” by Cara Waterfall—wherein so much relies on the heart…
