Produce, Bear, Surrender
“Keep your / lantern nearby, for when the lake goes dark / there will be no mercy”
Blog
“Ornament” and “A Century of Surnames for Witness”
“should you cast your eyes heavenward, / your body shrugs off the symmetry // of this shift in weather, and your name lifts to a hush / of mulberry trees;”
You, a Figment
“Desert camels and ice cream sundaes flash oblique shapes / across the ceiling — / Yes, you say, I see it all in color.”
Interview with Divya Victor, Judge of the 2026 Ekphrastic Poetry Prize
“Your style is how you negotiate becoming worthy of a reciprocal gaze. Your method is how you teach yourself to navigate that irreducible, illuminating distance between you and the object you write about.”
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,”
Aubade
“the sway of her sweetness— / cassia and camel’s thorn—allow her root and labor—provident / place of first fruit—”
Cherry-Tipped Triptych
“stay beautiful, skin rabbits, / luster in the hollowness. look / how the wolves circle, wanting, sifting what’s left / by the wound-winds / whispering”
Wave
“From above, everything looks delicate. / From above, / it looks like love: the light, / the peach cheek of the flower,”
2025-26 Rejected Poetry Prize: Winners & Finalists
Please join us in congratulating these remarkable poets. Winners were selected by Mai Der Vang.