We adore this new poem by Taylor D’Amico—how it flirts with the sonnet form, how it maneuvers so gently between the delicate subjects. “Cradle and All” announces an arrival for D’Amico: a poet here to stay. Cradle and All I…
J. David has so elegantly performed the cento sonnet here—each piece fitting in fair relationship. “Lilac Cento as American Sonnet” raises the bar high for contemporary engagement with form. Lilac Cento as American Sonnet Danez Smith, Stanley Kunitz, Rachel Eliza…
Every body is a frontier of survival, and Destiny Hemphill’s poem lays the map bare. The speaker builds a life out of memories pinned to her body, to the palm of her hand and to her ribs and to her…
Do love poems need love? Or just the anxiety of its proximity? Jessica Regione’s “Severity” works so well because that anxiety is delicately laid bare over a wintery afternoon. Modern romance: the unknowable ways we wish to describe the softness…
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…
Mark Wagenaar’s “Migrations”—a thundering, contemplative silence after the final period. Wagenaar has masterfully crafted a vital epic for our times, and the $5000 prize for 1st Place in our 2018 OPEN is well-earned. Migrations Sparrow, I answer, when our…
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…