Audio Feature: T. De Los Reyes (Shō No. 6)
Dear Ryuichi, I live in a universe where / the sound of rain is your fingers tinkering / with the keys.
Audio Feature: Saida Agostini (Shō No. 6)
you beautiful beautiful stupid haunted girl / you lawless thief of daddy’s face and mummy’s grief / you daughter of the pomeroon
Audio Feature: Jackson D. Moorman (Shō No. 6)
prepared to be bare chested for the first / time in public. Fear I’ll be breaking / some cardinal rules.
Audio Feature: Monica Kim (Shō No. 5)
praise: for the sisters putting on rubber suits for each other / praise: for preparing the day’s catch with soy sauce & pan-fried onions
Audio Feature: Erica Dawson (Shō No. 6)
My excised uterus cramps with a phantom / womb’s labor pain, hard as that is to fathom.
Sean Thomas Dougherty – Hanzi in the Rain
I think I'm tiring of auditioning. / I'm not dancing for bread anymore.
Cover Artist Feature: Tanya Rastogi, Shō No. 6 & 7
Tanya Rastogi is an artist and writer from Iowa. Her work is published or forthcoming in the Adroit Journal, Gone Lawn, and others and has been recognized by the Scholastic Awards, Adroit Prizes, and NCTE. She is the founding editor of the Seraphic Review. In her free time, she enjoys nature walks and cute cafés. …
Audio Feature: Em Townsend (Shō No. 5)
Rolling fields kiss the edges of town, farmland / lying flat and fallow like the rest of us.
Audio Feature: Susan L. Leary (Shō No. 5)
There's a certain surrender / to being an optimist—one which begins / with the day but, in fact, begins // with the evening.
Audio Feature: Robert Okaji
When I say moon, I recall brown calves lowing / at night, sheltered under their mothers' calm grace / in star-studded pastures.
Audio Feature: Melissa Fite Johnson
We’re all something else / to someone else. Maybe he became better, a person / who hated sharing a body with the person he used to be.
Audio Feature: Laura Villareal
the turkeys arrive while I’m deciphering / the if this, then that of taxes.
Audio Feature: Kathryn Bratt-Pfotenhauer
"I was thinking a lot about human mortality and environmental catastrophe, and how we all are momentary in the world"
Audio Feature: Sophia Terazawa
One / becomes my aunt. Enter AUNT in wide / angle shots. Flickers form infinite / possibilities cast on that screen.
Audio Feature: Rebekah Wolman (Shō No. 5)
as abecedarian. Beehive. Corner cabinet, desk / detritus. Earthshine. Faultline. As gristle and gall.
Audio Feature: Mollie O’Leary
It’s true—the scene is charged / with a heat surpassing what I endured to arrive here.
Audio Feature: Luke Johnson (Shō No. 3)
“This poem is one of many calls and/or responses to the poet Megan Merchant. Our co-authored collection A Slow Indwelling comes out Fall 2024 from Harbor Editions and deals with a father and mother wrestling through cultural violence, the fragility of childhood, the preciousness of a parents love, and the beauty and pain expressed through the natural world.”
Audio Feature: Megan Merchant (Shō No. 3)
This poem is part of a larger epistolary exchange, "A Slow Indwelling", with Luke Johnson, and will be published this fall with Harbor Editions.
Audio Feature: Jeddie Sophronius (Shō No. 5)
I’m more broken than I’ve ever been. / This shell of a body, emptied / and longing.