I moved here, to this place where the woods intersect the desert, to write. Because, for me, to write is excruciating: the endless encounter of a dread that is never overcome. The dread of my own undoing. But the ground here is soft; each step an impression in blood-red loam. […]
Emily Rosko is a rising star in contemporary poetry. She has a gift for bridging the vast expanse that is often imagined between literature and philosophy. Like the great modernist poets who came before her, particularly Mina Loy, H.D., Gertrude Stein, and Marianne Moore, Rosko proves that form […]
G.C. Waldrep was born and raised in the South. He earned his BA from Harvard University, a PhD in history from Duke University, and an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa. His collections of poetry include Goldbeater’s Skin (2003), which won the Colorado Prize for […]
I love Sarah’s piece because the reader can actually see the brain’s neurons firing throughout. It’s reflective, beautiful, and lyrical. Sarah’s work reveals a writer and human in transition and we’re lucky as readers to get to witness this change in this piece. Read “On Self-Regard” by Sarah […]
After signing the marriage register, along with the four witnesses who thumb-printed, Ndidi Adiela tightened his black velvet clip-on bowtie, threw his arm about Chimka’s shoulders and asked the photographer to give them his best snapshots as the latest wedded couple in Port Harcourt city. The bald photographer had only […]
They had gotten through the worst of it, the cutting through metal, the bartering for supplies, the flirtations and later the sex with that demanding woman—oh, she was insatiable. Before their escape, they had joked about their exhaustion, their muted orgasms, mouths stuffed with discarded cloth from the tailor shop. […]
Beast, they called you, and so you became. From feet to face you grew out of scale. The slink of you increased. Hunched in your shoulders, tucked your heart tight within. You learned to lighten your footfall through the school’s sweat-stenched halls; learned to keep chin down. Used […]
G.C. Waldrep’s poems have widely praised for their lush musicality and vibrant soundscapes, and this new poem sequence is no exception. Yet what I find most striking about these poems is their expansive and heartening vision of what experimentation can be. In so much of contemporary poetry, innovative […]
I am in awe of the force of the electrons and intellect in Nancy Lynée Woo’s poems. There’s always a thread within these poems being tugged in all directions. The results are full of lightning and light. Read “The Line Between” by Nancy Woo >> Read […]
“Everything is telling one big story.” —William Stafford In a dream, we’re at a lake, skipping sunworn pebbles into the afternoon. The sky is always a hazy shade of pink. A child and a man glide alongside me. A ruffled white dress trails in the shallows, and no one […]