Poetry

We Contain Landscapes by Patrycja Humienik (Tin House, 2025) To ask questions not to receive answers, but simply for the pleasure and perversity of asking them—this is the endearing stubbornness of We Contain Landscapes, Patrycja Humienik’s debut collection of poems. This book is propelled by an endless curiosity, shimmering throughout its pages like clear springwater …

Marginal Verse by Jamie Silvonek (Game Over Books, 2025) Marginal Verse is Jamie Silvonek’s debut poetry collection, which I had the honor of reading as a galley. I was stunned by Silvonek’s poems — which are vulnerable, evocative, viscerally felt, and demanding. I could feel each image pulsate, each line break shatter. Marginal Verse is …

The naked snow slouched serenely through the crystal-cold canvas of my well-weathered window. The Artist’s sky today was painted battleship gray though brightly lit without shadowing. Frozen in temperature. Frozen in time Frozen in place Handprints on the glass forensic evidence of years spent viewing the outside from within trying to revisit my old world …

The heart is the soul and power – Motivation each artery is connected to nouns – Life each vein is a goal or task – Purpose Every book read evolves new streaks – Darwin  every friend made strength is grown – Strife every love skips a beat – Diagnose Time stops for no one – …

The length of the sojourn is unknown  The link to the world is only a phone My eyes of the world are not my own They are brother, sister, mother I have grown in knowledge, others in earth tones Memories like webs hold like ketones Life is wasted away like a melting snow cone  sweet …

The shrink prescribed me three little blue tablets. Told me to take them every morning with water. Take them to fend off reality. The brute. Also, a little pink and gray capsule. God only knows what’s in that one. But it, too, must be taken, she said. Who am I to question her? She is …

Jeanne Yu is an emerging poet, life-long environmentalist, an engineer and a mom who loves to hike in the beautiful Pacific Northwest forests. She completed her MFA at Pacific University in January 2023. Jeanne’s work can be found in Rattle, Breakwater Review, Paper Dragon, Intima, The Inflectionist Review, New Letters, Otterhouse Arts, and the Oregon …

Absent billions, conjure dumplings: eggs, flour, gleaming hands interlaced, jam jars kept loose-lidded. Muster nectar. Open piquant quinces. Ribbons strung through unlatched vaulted windows,wind-waved, violet, umber, turquoise. Read, reread. Quote poets on needful matters, lunar kennings. Jump into handsprings, giddy for everything—drifting, clapping bells, alleluias. Anna Lena Phillips Bell is the author of Ornament, winner …

Please put the hearts on a skewer—you can call theman appetizer if you want to, charge me more than they are worth. I’ll buy it. I only have an appetite for what’s unwanted;all the foods I grew up on now made gourmet.It’s the fish collar I want, bony triangle of tendertucked between the gills, a …

I imagine my true tongue ignitinghis fist—see my future prophecy losing its grip, swinging to make blue-blackmy eye, but I won’t die. I call my sister, rehearsing what she’ll say: Run away.Come home. I’m nearer than the road suggests. I feel my chest heave a century of women leaving scared & singing with straight spine …