Wrackable as Arguments: Anne-Marie Turza’s “Fugue with Bedbug” Johnny Payne Essay -   “[Anne-Marie] Turza shows dramatic flair for summoning our attention, that of a town crier or carnival barker who was handed a surprise announcement at the last possible minute, and now must sell its premise before a skeptical gathered audience with all the bravado she can muster.” 10/13/2024
The Orthodox Church of Ukraine Reschedules Christmas and Judges 9:45 Dan Schall Poetry - “After supper,/God burps through his heartburn, eyes Gabriel/and—as expected—punishes: Two thousand years/hard labor for your antics, errand boy.” 10/11/2024
Hair Clip and Dread Talk Nancy Byrne Ianucci Poetry - “and I send her sunflowers on a sunny day./and I think of her children./and I sing with the Wailers.” 10/4/2024
“No One Is Ever Really Just One Thing”: Laurel Nakanishi’s “Ashore” Johnny Payne Essay - “What stands out in Nakanishi is that she possesses an acute awareness of the root poetic traditions of her native islands and brings them forward with respect while also being influenced, as she herself professes, by poets such as Californian Gary Snyder—whose verse, like hers, is thoroughly immersed in the natural world.” 9/29/2024
Gods and Angels and Other Poems Eric Fisher Stone Poetry - “The Sistine Chapel hived billions/of microbes, moss piglets/throbbing on God’s finger, frescoes flooded/with bacteria, angels fruiting cocci.” 9/27/2024
Étude: Perspective Photo Lyric Carrie Tangenberg Poetry - Beyond a life of seeing, saying, being, by sparest nudge or shimmer, I shall cease. I ask what for, the dying, what the living. I start recording. I collect and keep. 9/20/2024
Scribe in Disguise: Amy Beeder’s “And So Wax Was Made and Also Honey” Johnny Payne Essay - “[Amy] Beeder’s nimble adaptiveness and ability to key her lexicon to a wily set of speakers and dramatic personae in And So Wax Was Made and Also Honey are what make this rare book command attention.” 9/15/2024
Old Men Coughing Tim Nichols Poetry - “Coughing, ululating, barking, whooping./Can he cough out the memory of a lonely/girl waiting, wanting, watching, waiting?” 9/13/2024
Quan Yin Sally Wilder David Poetry - “Wife of himself/she taught him how to be in this world/as all women teach. The woman in you/will teach you, man king,/how to be.” 9/6/2024
Fierce Lyric in Karla Kelsey’s “Blood Feather” Johnny Payne Essay - “Blood Feather stages scenes of both unexpected victory and chronic defeat in the three featured lives, while allowing us to imagine an alternative history for these women, had they been listened to and given latitude to exercise their rightful prerogatives in the culture at large, rather than retreating into conventional expectations of femininity.” 9/1/2024
Shifting Patterns and The Rose Philip Miller Poetry - “Ever human-centric/We self-aggrandized/Anthropomorphized/And now agonize.” 8/30/2024
Ekphrasis and Eugene Datta’s “Water and Wave” Johnny Payne Essay - “Once the speaker’s psyche and voice are introduced via questions, the photo in a sense begins to dissolve, becoming secondary, important, vital in its own right, but not ultimately defining. Thus the fecund faithlessness of poetry.” 8/18/2024
Paying For Pleasure Ray Greenblatt Poetry - “The old man had paid dearly/he could still get lost in dreams” 8/16/2024
Homelands Glenis Moore Poetry - “The bright green of summer wheat/with the brown of the ducks that stalk the fair/dykes where the raft spiders search for things to eat.” 8/16/2024
Villanelle on a Theme from Rimbaud and Other Poems Mark J. Mitchell Poetry - “He feels himself watched/as he counts accents./He knows the painter’s/watching for the precise moment/when his blue ink freezes.” 8/9/2024
How To Write Lyric Poetry Johnny Payne Essay - “This lyre-derived heritage survives robustly in the lyrics of pop songs, guitars now taking the place of the lyre and the orality of the human voice singing taking precedence over all.” 8/4/2024