Category: Poetry

Written by: Cuin Reagan Third Place Winner of the 2026 Wallace Stevens Poetry Contest Something hangs In the foyer, in the stained-glass solder— Its lead seeps from the florid panes Into tepid pipe water My pale daughter Would bathe in—if I had one— And the carpeted stairs bleed With colonial…

Written by: Ava Venuk Second Place Winner of the 2026 Wallace Stevens Poetry Contest The waiting room  has free glass-bowl almond packets.       As if stolen,  I slip one hundred sea salt calories in my pocket.      A woman calls me in.  Her office is a green couch,…

Written by: Elijah Polance First Place Winner of the 2026 Wallace Stevens Poetry Contest Not yet shivering,    camera in hand, the trail    slopes downward from me.       I spot a figure drifting   in the corridor of trees,       barren and wind-struck.   An ant beside those monster   legs, blink and he’s gone.       Vanished as the…

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…

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…

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…