Jae Nichelle has made a poem that does what a poem ought to do: stuff the barrel, place a stack of words and truth between the bullet and its target. Terrance Hayes describes the rules behind the Golden Shovel’s structure…
Some poems land with a whimper, some with a wrenching—”Combinatorics, 2″, by Raphael Luis J. Salise, lands with a blade gripped between its teeth. Combinatorics, 2
Exuberant in its decay, crushing delicacy, hopping over spilt blood and the ruins of bodies and cities and pointing a gun directly at you, the reader, face lit by a screen of metal and glass: Michael Imossan’s “This city was…
“If it doesn’t smell like bleach,” the speaker asks, “how do you know it’s clean?” Keri Withington’s “Southern Summer #1” is a poem that defines its own clean smell: of green things and wet things and the way young bodies…
Congratulations to all the finalists and honorable mentions of the 2022 Frontier Digital Chapbook Contest, selected by Tom Sleigh, and a sincere thanks to everyone who submitted. Thank you, also, for your patience while we reviewed all the extraordinary work…
Sometimes, you’ve got to make way for the joy, the sweep of it across your sense of sweat and time. Thank you, Mayank, for giving our team that, and for giving us your poem to share. When we were…
Jane Morton’s latest poem burrows into the reader’s body and ripens there. In the end, “Distance” is a poem that tries to wrap around the gap of loss, asking us what it means to let go, to move on, to…
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,…
