By Anh Lee 2nd place winner of the Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize We last beyond a century we are forgotten smelling of indigo bodies and abandoned plains enshrouded in sand We feel our desires flicker and wriggle perimeters kissed by thunder, shaped by doves and caressed by lingering legs We…
Category: Poetry
Aromantic’s Apotropaic
By Charlie M. Case (with a borrowed line from Nicky Beer) Winner of The Edward R. and Frances Schreiber Collins Literary Awards (Poetry) This is not something anyone can eke out of me, so stop asking. Put your hands on me and don’t misinterpret—let me touch you only so we…
Displaced
By Zeynep Özer Winner of The Long River Review Graduate Writing Award Three Women That’s when they started talking. Not when the man with the gun walked into the puddle of blood. Puddle of his wife’s blood. Not when the puddle turned cold turned light painted sirens red and blue. But when…
Online Video Series: Anna Zarra Aldrich with “Spring Cleaning”
Thank you to WHUS for letting us use their space, and of course to Anna for reading! Filming: Elizabeth Sankey Editing: Daniela Doncel Interviewer: Amanda McCarthy Spring Cleaning The cherry tree bursts open pink the scarred, twisted trunk gives way to a firework display. Blush petals surrender to the breeze,…
Online Video Series: Christine Byrne with “After Angela”
Thank you to WHUS for letting us use their space, and of course to Christine for reading! Filming: Elizabeth Sankey Editing: Daniela Doncel Interviewer: Amanda McCarthy After Angela Let’s be literal, a moment, talk about how no one disturbed her bedroom or how your father won’t say she’s dead the…
Online Video Series: Theresa Persico with “The Nature of A River is to Run”
Thank you to WHUS for letting us use their space, and of course to Theresa for reading! Filming: Elizabeth Sankey Editing: Daniela Doncel Interviewer: Amanda McCarthy The Nature of A River is to Run It’s not that I don’t love you, It’s the fact that doors have slammed So hard…
Online Video Series: Veronica Schorr with “Killer”
Thank you to WHUS for letting us use their space, and of course to Veronica for reading! Filming: Elizabeth Sankey Editing: Daniela Doncel Interviewer: Amanda McCarthy Killer You’re all smoke and jazz deep kiss and dark hair whiskey-burned bright hazel eyes You’re all sex and sass rainy street and reckless…
“Fears After the Indonesian Forest Fires” By Anna Ziering (2017)
Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize, Winner (2017) Death, of course. Having no God. Sunday afternoons, New England falls. Sleet storms like the one that dented the new car and traumatized the dog, who never liked loud noise; who, like me when I was young, couldn’t stomach fireworks. They made us cry—that…
“New Year on Pleasure Island” By Brian Sneeden (2017)
Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize, Second Place (2017) What I did not know to make made itself in vestigial hours between two o’clock and dawn, when the shapes of birds stitch together in my mind, and a single cicada peels the air. Each letter I write returns to water. I start…
“La Fusión” By Gabriela García Sánchez (2017)
It was reverence I felt then, and I did not cower as it vibrated through me. El ritmo bonded us by our pies, our caderas, ventilating the air with scales speeding by. The beats amplified between our pechos, whistling for our cuerpos to collide. So I took a breath that…