Gowpen and Undertow by Elizabeth S. Gunn Poetry - “This isn’t a good look,”/I can only foretaste your reply, wind or blister/looking at me. Break glass in case of emergency./in each hand, precariously awaiting your reply. (11/1/2024)
The Dead Are Difficult: Jenny George’s “After Image” by Johnny Payne Essay - “The tone of After Image is simultaneously calm and feverish, as the bereaved one moves along a spectrum from numb to utterly passionate, up and down, yet never hysterical, never heaping ashes on her head.” (10/27/2024)
The Disappearing Sonnet by Johnny Payne Poetry - “Cicadas, dirty oil, dogs, Venus, gloves/clouds, manholes, fled storms, black notes, harmonies/float indiscriminate as my head throbs/then disappear on the next wisp of breeze” (10/25/2024)
The Lecher’s Lament by Shannon Winestone Poetry - “Comfort me with ginseng—with sacraments/of a youthful wine-flushed god,/naked and beautiful, chanting a lecher’s lament.” (10/20/2024)
My Red Schwinn and Bird Shot by William Stoddart Poetry - “While others cycled to dusty fields,/sported bats and mitts, shouted to claim/their favorite positions, I was alone,/my red Schwinn and me—no/deception of ritual, no useless chatter,/no bad calls, no vicarious parents.” (10/18/2024)
Wrackable as Arguments: Anne-Marie Turza’s “Fugue with Bedbug” by 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 by 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 by 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” by 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 by 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 by 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” by 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 by 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 by 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” by 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 by Philip Miller Poetry - “Ever human-centric/We self-aggrandized/Anthropomorphized/And now agonize.” (8/30/2024)