Asterisk* by Brook J. Sadler Poetry - “Sinister pinwheel/stuck to a breezeless sentence/as sly ornament—” (2/21/2025)
The Wake by Cameron Rife Poetry - “I swore I heard willows cry/through the zig zagged fields,/traveling through my universe/as quickly as the moon touches our light” (2/19/2025)
Haunted by the Sonnet: Erica Reid’s “Ghost Man on Second” by Johnny Payne Essay - “In [Erica] Reid’s Ghost Man on Second, the real ghost man floating through the pages is the sonnet.” (2/16/2025)
Moth by Aki Duenas Poetry - “The city never sleeps: the isle of faces illuminated by cell phones/is proof its waking isn’t rising, only beeping, only static,/only the cashier in the convenience store, only flickering.” (2/14/2025)
Nostalgia by Kip Knott Poetry - the gilded tree that glitters in dusklight/like an upside-down chandelier (2/12/2025)
Witness. Target = Rubble by Lori Shridhare Poetry - “We thought there couldn’t be anything more./But hurricanes can collide with tornados, can join floods./Beautiful and horrific are the moment’s songs.” (2/7/2025)
Bruises Bloom Roses by Françoise Nieto-Fong Poetry - “Bruises bloom roses; the blind bird has fled./Ocean quiet bedroom night light turned dim,/the sting of his fist purple on her skin.” (2/4/2025)
The Speech of Herbs: Melissa Kwasny’s “The Cloud Path” by Johnny Payne Essay - “Yet what might in lesser hands become mere effusions is tempered with a wise, sometimes steely, sometimes self-abnegating, sometimes mournful contemplative voice that speaks of philosophical and personal concerns combined…” (2/2/2025)
A Woodpecker Pecks by John Repp Poetry - “the specific iteration of woodpecker pecking at yet/another juicy place, but I forgot to pack the guidebook” (1/31/2025)
Villa 351 by Jane Blanchard Poetry - “The news we got at first was dire,/the damage bad though not entire” (1/28/2025)
Hands Together Ghazal by Svetlana Litvinchuk Poetry - “Seek mercy for eggs we scrambled in a youth/spent banging pots and pans together./For the telling of clumsy lies, our voices/cracking like pecans together.” (1/24/2025)
The Treachery of Poetry by Alison Lubar Poetry - “How/it both is, and is not/a type of existence.” (1/22/2025)
Still in the Holler by Johnny Payne Reflection - “If a stranger comes around, if he’s wise, he will keep to the road and announce his business soon, clearly and loudly, then you’ll see what’s what. You’re not against him, but you’re not automatically for him.” (1/22/2025)
The Buster’s Hand: Sunni Brown Wilkinson’s “Rodeo” by Johnny Payne Essay - “In her exquisitely physical Rodeo, Sunni Brown Wilkinson takes her place among those superb modernists, early and late and post, who recognize the combination of mutability and continuity across poetic epochs that is a key to lyric’s continuing strength and relevance…” (1/19/2025)
Bruegel, Columbidae, and Walking Home by Joseph Hunter Poetry - “And then a tide of blood fell back in me/after that I walked with open ears/I found that the trees had voices, and/they sang like forgotten, sunless seas.” (1/17/2025)
Moon Bloom and Lithopedion by Ronald Zack Poetry - “Night flower,/short-lived lover/of darkness,/offspring of cactus,/desert jewel/lulled awake/by moonbeams” (1/10/2025)