Vague Lights
By Donnalyn Xu
“without the rain i undress the night myself / like the skin of bruised fruit”
Blog
The Bookman
By Lise Goett
“Alden is a bookman. // The gift of a great bookman lies in his ability to pick out the right book for anyone”
Our Father, Who Art
By Gale Acuff
“after Sunday School this morning I / expressed my concern to my teacher and / her answer was tears and a silent weeping”
X-Ray Diptych in Ben Gurion Airport
By Tarik Dobbs
“The body compounds / lack: when the mother lacks light, does her child / inherit absence? Today, / I sleep in a room with no / blinds. Do I carry radiation/ like a sadness? Do I irradiate generations?”
Schizo Plays a Werewolf in a Black and White Film
By Jake Bailey
“I’ve heard / that water makes up most / of an argument / I’ll drink whatever / someone gives / this body is a sponge”
Hippocampus
“I couldn’t breathe. No one was to blame. / It was spring. Buds were busy / mocking me, proving we could live / through many deaths.”
On WITCH
In Witch, Philip Matthews’ debut collection, poems merge queer ecopoetics with religious disposition, speaking through a pantheon on mythic figures—from Jesus to Aphrodite—to commune or contend with reality. What emerges is a cumulative awareness of being a physical, energetic body in a fractured world, attempting to heal some part of it while exploring and embracing the gray areas of identity and ambiguity.
Planting Tulips
“we reenact old rites, rise as supplicants / on the cold ground of November, plant / our small intentions which will in time // become silken frame, ruffled apricot”
The Emerging Poet Prize Closes Sunday! $3500 Awarded, Judged by Ilya Kaminsky
For emerging poets, this contest only accepts submissions from authors with fewer than two full length collections out at the time of submission. The winning poet will be awarded $3000 and publication on Palette Poetry. Second and third place will win $300 & $200 respectively, as well as publication.