Skull 100, or, a Brief History of Barbarism
“even Time, the glutton, says enough, / withers leaks in in her mandible. / the merlot streams from the cavities,”
2025-26 Rejected Poetry Prize: Winners & Finalists
Please join us in congratulating these remarkable poets. Winners were selected by Mai Der Vang.
Bellbird vernacular
By Alisha Brown
“I tell it to the ducks, who have / no dialect beyond the lightness // of their bodies.”
singing → nobody supposed to be here up (↑↑) & down (↓↓) the elevator in my building
By Trace DePass
“born decrepit in my subject position quest / (←)ion, marked, punctuated. i swing from it. i wrote it / backwards, start penultimate, i’m par [← achuting,”
Featured Poetry
We are so grateful to every poet who shares their work with us—please enjoy perusing the stunning work in our poetry archive.
Cain’s Wife On The Fifth Day Of Rain
“In the morning worms rise / slick from the earth. / They haven’t seen the sun / since you drove your brother’s name / into dirt.”
Birds of Paradise
“Heaven is waiting: a pair of snow / leopards guard the entrance in sculpted marble and obsidian, each coiled round the other, muscles / tensed and ready. I open the door.”
The Invisible Hand
By Felix Eshiet
“the fair boy says he’s been peeling since manhood stripped him of innocence, but that’s not a / grief solvent enough to dissolve his whole”