Citizenship
A ghost is not one who cannot let go but one who we cannot let go of…//Now I am neither one thing nor another” | by Kazim Ali
United States
Cathedral
“Who was I when I came here before./What were all the reasons I found all this…” | by Kazim Ali
Icarus Turns Fifty
“For us there’s no epic end, no begging the king of the underworld/to return the lost son, no father casting himself grief-stricken into the sea.” | by Kazim Ali
Ben Riggs
Ben Riggs is a writer, teacher, and podcaster. He traveled the world teaching in his 20s. During his journeys, he tutored a princess, saw both the Sahara and Mt. Fuji at dawn, and discovered his wife and fellow traveler, Tara. He has settled down in his hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he teaches English and …
Santee Frazier
A citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, Santee Frazier earned a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Syracuse University. He is the author of the poetry collections Aurum (2019) and Dark Thirty (2009). Offering non-romanticized and realistic portraits of great beauty, Santee’s poems afford a rare look at the truths of survival …
Celia Dropkin
Born in Belarus in 1887, Dropkin joined her husband in New York in 1912. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Dropkin’s poems appeared in avant-garde Yiddish literary publications. Her poems are infused with erotic energy, and their themes – sex, love and death – shocked her contemporaries. But they were enamored by Dropkin’s angry and passionate …
Zubair Ahmed
Zubair Ahmed is a Bengali-American poet and the author of City of Rivers (McSweeney’s, 2012). He lives in Oakland, California.
C.G. Hanzlicek
C. G. Hanzlicek was born in Owatonna, Minnesota, in 1942. He received a B.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1964 and an M.F.A. from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1966. He is the author of nine books of poetry: Living in It, Stars (winner of the 1977 Devins Award for Poetry), Calling the Dead, …
Uncle Jim
“His feet leapt inches from God-given ground./His smile was toothy, laugh snapped toothy joy./His head—his heart—his head was tightly wound:” | by Ben Riggs
My Mother’s Memory
“We live on separate planets now,/And she mulls and mulls,/Wanting to join me in my world,/Where sometimes I’m a son, sometimes not,” | by C.G. Hanzlicek
Mama’s Work
“Her work/in the quiet corners of barns on the hay, on hot days/when locusts launch themselves out of thickets.” | by Santee Frazier
Allen Shadow
ALLEN SHADOW’s poetry has been published widely in the small press, including two chapbooks. Billy Collins has called his work “Engaging,” while Library Journal has cited it for “startling imagery.” He has been a finalist in one of Poetry International’s Tiny Chapbook competitions, a finalist for the 2022 Omnidawn Poetry Broadside Prize, and a quarterfinalist …
It Was the Coffee in the Mornings
“the smell somehow staying with me//well beyond his walking into the living room naked” | by Allen Shadow
Anna Gasaway
ANNA ABRAHAM GASAWAY (She/Her) is a stroke-surviving, disabled writer that has been published in Mom Egg Review, the Los Angeles Review, Literary Mama and others. She has performed curated essays for So Say We All and recently received her MFA with an emphasis on Poetry at San Diego State University. She is currently working on her chapbook …
Goldberry Long
GOLDBERRY LONG is the author of the novel Juniper Tree Burning. Her work has appeared in Colorado Review, New Orleans Review, and The Rumpus. She lives in California with her family, where she teaches fiction writing at the University of California, Riverside. poems
Litany for My Mother’s Body
“We sew my mother’s body into the blanket. I make stitches. My sister makes stitches. My brother’s wife, my half sister. Other women.” | by Goldberry Long
Christian Campbell
CHRISTIAN CAMPBELL is a Trinidadian Bahamian poet, essayist and cultural critic, and the author of Running the Dusk (Peepal Tree Press, 2010), which won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, was a finalist for the Forward Prize for the Best First Collection and the Cave Canem Prize among other awards. Running the Dusk was also translated …
Steve Scafidi
STEVE SCAFIDI is the author of Sparks from a Nine-Pound Hammer (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), For Love of Common Words (LSU 2006), The Cabinetmaker’s Window (LSU 2014), To the Bramble and the Briar (University of Arkansas Press, 2014) and a chapbook Songs for the Carry-On (Q Avenue Press, 2013). He has won the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the James Boatwright Prize and …
To Gaze is a Ghost
“in a nest in the middle branch/of the pine sleeps. We find peace.” | by Steve Scafidi
Oregon Elegy
“for language swaying with the branches,/soon picked to silence by crows—” | by Christian Campbell