Poetry

Contest Winner

On Speaking for the Picture of my Aunt Wearing Boxing Gloves Next to a Tree That No Longer Stands

By Ross McKie
Winner of the second 2025 Mini Contest, using the words “garrulous,” “trellis,” and “cauterize.” / / /
Contest Winner

Faultline

By Justine Berezintsev
Winner of the first 2025 Mini Contest, using the words “mnemonic,” “crepuscular,” and “coifs.” / /

Mother, O Moon

By Ata Zargarof
Tehran, 1979. You were only 10 years old— a child, and the moon became exile. He took you to the market because you wanted some shoes; held you by the hand, like...

Two Signs I’m on the Path

By Cornelia Hoogland
My new thought is, I’m ordinary. An everyday mernie, another bozo on the bus. My father Jack predicted something similar when I was born and it looked like I’d survive. Plus, I’ve...

nyctinasty house party

By Hannah Polinski
night roses, my friends & i embrace folding like petals onto sofa, maybe beds, drug-fuelled nastic movements buried in purple LEDs shrieking we love & we love & we love sweat dripping...
Contest Winner

Logical Reasoning

By Jade Y. Liu
after the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) You are born into noise. / Your first memories perforated by the sharp slam / of kitchen cabinet doors, / throat-sung Tibetan folk songs, /...
Contest Winner

Last Father’s Day

By Carmen Wall
You craved mussels when you were dying. The dexamethasone made you ravenous in your first last weeks. We wanted to bring you home for Father’s Day, treat you to a rare feast...
Contest Winner

Pickle Jar Love Poem

By Sarah Wishloff
I am fascinated by your dog’s ability to find the filthiest corner of the earth & bury her face in it. Lodestar of trash. Always so verklempt to be pulled away from...
Contest Winner

This Counterfeit Year

By Medrie Purdham
There’s a stochastic parrot in the tree of life. he’s eating clay to calm himself; he wants to turn the brackish lagoon of his acidic, oracular mouth into a better semblance of...