Thomas Nguyen’s poem makes of the readers own body a delicate collection of pine needles and mud. With greens and blacks and marbled whites, “mythologies” reveals a world dark, haunting—we’re all, by the end, thirsty with prayer. mythologies &…
This pair of poems by Asa Drake offer a harmony unique to themselves—one magnifying the other, and both about love, both filled out with Drake’s assured confidence in the strange. The Wasp Doesn’t shelter herself in work. Who is…
Charles Kell’s poetic missive leaps across associative gaps with subtle ease, tip toes through history, through violence. “Oblivion Letter” is all dark corners and boys named Night and is a little scary, to be honest—eyes gazing across the couplets like…
Kai Carlson-Wee’s single stanza poem lands on the page with weight and space and time. “Mental Health” works to unfold the banality of medicated routine, while never losing sight of the drugs that punctuate its hours, or the slow fog…
Duncan Slagle pins his body to these poems, without seeking right or wrong—everything turns on the body. From the beautiful ghazal, to the simple couplets, Slagle shows a range of both voice and technique, with a consistent painful imagery threading…
We fell in love with this unique poem immediately—DeLuca’s “the numbers don’t add up” performs its subject by ingeniously motorizing the whitespace. Her hand-drawn arrows feel simultaneously like detective notes and choose-your-own-adventure directions, producing a tension that lifts up this…
As Reeman’s title suggests, “IN BOSTON” travels the unsorted emotions of modern romance—& reports back ambivalence, saturated bodies, solo cups. The poem weaves tenderness and despair into every couplet, until we end up like the speaker, “suspended” between the two.…
Rachel Mindell explores the suggestive power of meat here—plugging the poem in to a word, an image, an experience as basic and ancient as breathing. “This is eating,” the poem declares with a wink—because it’s more than that. Just look…
J.L. Wall crystallizes here a dark passion on the bud of existential doubt—his poem, “Counting the Omer,” is a deeply familiar why God in the face of inexplicable tragedy, turning softly on Wall’s fresh imagery and sincere ambivalence. Counting the Omer…
Poetry has a way of elevating character profiles into something more, and Zilka Joseph’s clear, relatable narrative here does just that. “The Suburban Car Dealership Shuttle Driver” is both a person we know and an experience we’ve had; his hard…
