Every poem in its way is an incantation of reanimation, and Alex Webster’s: “No gunshot. No head wound. / No sound, but the moon— / Raw and shy.” Webster’s newest poem, “Song of Grief X”, piles visually like feathers tumbling to the…
Greek tragedies will always be grounds for modern exploration, a tradition Maxine Patroni engages beautifully here. A delicate poem that slides its intimacy behind punchy short lines and ghostly women, “When the Sky is Full of Desire, The Gods Are…
Existent because of Terrance Hayes, the golden shovel form lifts up two poems at once, held side by side, fingers interlaced. Sihle Ntuli’s “Eternal Sunshine” finds itself only within that embrace—only within the echoes of Nxumalo’s piece can the full expression,…
Leigh Lucas makes a providence of image, condensing so much meaning to a single, inevitable point—a destiny in 5 lines and 44 words. Notice and enjoy, just how much mystery “ODD HISTORY” releases from the tension within its one powerful…
One of poetry’s many superpowers is the ability to lend a voice to the dearly departed. “Inferno” allows Melanie Trinidad one last moment to speak to her beloveds, who survived the fire that took her life. In the last breath…
So much of our day to day lives are governed by the small and urgent gifts of longing–a lover leaving a shirt behind from the night before, walking around a park and watching the world shift from one season to…
What is the language of a fugitive? And who deems who someone marked by such a name? Through erasure, Smith moves through these questions, navigating what it means to be a woman, a body at odds with the state for…
In 1962, welterweight champion Emile Griffiths goes toe-to-toe with Benny “Kid” Paret in Madison Square Garden. The air is filled with salt and sweat and shouts as the fight roars on. Losing the fight, Kid called Emile a “fa**ot”. A…
The poet Nayyirah Waheed said once, “all the women. in me. are tired” and if all those women could speak at once, they would be this very poem. Embodying the state of fatigue, the speaker moves their readers through the…
A poem that effortlessly blurs the lines between dreamscape and the waking world, what is divine and what is commonplace, the speaker invokes echoes of Sappho through this piece woven as elegantly as a fine tapestry. The speaker situates themselves…
