Somewhere Light
By Svetlana Sterlin & Rae White
“dormant injury flares fluorescence through insomnia / am I nothing but cat reclined in day’s fading sunbeam?”
Contest Winner
Catalogues of a Space Telescope around Boy Crushes, in 5 stages of Grief
By Charlie Wei
“There’s something elliptic about the way love dies in this compound: in west / wing, a college girl stacks another freshly killed into her ex’s jewelry box.”
Fire Season: Super Perennial
“in one dream, a rain shower in every room, matchbook tucked / into the hem of a yellow dress / fountain tumbling with smoke instead of water,”
False Aubade
By Lisa Compo
“Night collapsed into day. Silence fell, / somewhere a new dimension grew.”
Texas, May 1999
By Sylvia Fox
“Here I kiss the peach fuzz undersides of dandelion leaves, / of sharp-edged thistle for the tingle left behind, / my mouth a new land too”
2025 Nature Poetry Prize: Winners & Finalists
Please join us in congratulating these remarkable poets. Winners were selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.
2025 Micro Chapbook Prize: Winners & Finalists
Please join us in congratulating these remarkable poets. Winners were selected by Palette editors.
The Poem Formerly Known as the Poem Formerly Known as Stupid
“If I could, I’d be as tender with words / as with husbands & I’d hammer / out pine dining chairs into cellos”
A Short History of my Gag Reflex
“I’ve been trying to whip sore / wounds into weapons, if only through language; / the tight lisp of my new name,”