Established in 2002, revived in 2023
Listen to Cortney Lamar Charleston read “It’s Important I Remember That Even Beyoncé Got Cheated On—” from Shō No. 5 (Summer 2024). About this poem: Despite its seeding in popular culture, this poem is part of a larger project concerned with the ascent of fascism and, resultingly, how rips in our relationships limit our ability …
The fruit / hung bending the branches, like a hundred // small stomachs, bird-eaten and naked / where the beaks had pierced.
Listen to poems by Jae Nichelle, Saida Agostini, Ellen June Wright, Corey Baron, Mckendy Fils-Aimé, Erica Dawson, and Elontra Hall. These poems appeared in Shō No. 5 and Shō No. 6.
Something heavy lingers in the lines
/ of her cheeks and bags under her eyes. // No matter how she tries, she can't smile, / even as she offers us voluptuous, pink peonies.
You are what you eat. Your every sinew / born from the tomb of history: liver, / kidney, lungs, brain. Heart. Red as a cow's / tongue flicking
His body glistens from / etching pebbled leather / into his skin. My brother, // practicing his jump shot— / its gather, lift and release / reminds me of a samurai
Listen to Maja Lukic, inaugural winner of the Sita Martin Prize, read “Your Mother Knew Many Words for Beauty and Used All of Them to Call You” from Shō No. 6 (Winter 2024/25). Audio recorded by Reed Turchi at Second Take Sound. Maja Lukic is a Brooklyn-based poet. She received an MFA in poetry from …
Listen to Ranudi Gunawardena read “Girl Cousins, Pixelated” from Shō No. 6 (Winter 2024/25). For this poem, Ranudi was honored as the runner-up of the Sita Martin Prize for Shō No. 6. Ranudi Gunawardena is a Sri Lankan poet whose work explores the wombscape, childhood in rural landscapes, and the uncanny in nature, among others. …
Listen to Jae Nichelle read “alternate timeline” from Shō No. 6 (Winter 2024/25). “I began this poem thinking about the cyclical nature of time, specifically relating to my matrilineage and my family’s fraught relationship with the bodies of water around us as Louisianians. We face the persistent threats of floods and hurricanes while relying on unsafe …
Listen to Danielle Shandiin Emerson read “Sometimes, she listened to his stories.” from Shō No. 4 (Winter 2023/24). We nominated this poem for a Pushcart Prize. “I wrote this as a sort of release from a lot of complex father and mental health related emotions. It’s written in third person to sort of distance myself, while …
You should talk about the field of dying alfalfa, / the golden straws that scratch your grandmother’s / legs when she returns from the river, and the fleas / jumping to her swollen ankles.
Dear Ryuichi, I live in a universe where / the sound of rain is your fingers tinkering / with the keys.
you beautiful beautiful stupid haunted girl / you lawless thief of daddy’s face and mummy’s grief / you daughter of the pomeroon
prepared to be bare chested for the first / time in public. Fear I’ll be breaking / some cardinal rules.
praise: for the sisters putting on rubber suits for each other / praise: for preparing the day’s catch with soy sauce & pan-fried onions
My excised uterus cramps with a phantom / womb’s labor pain, hard as that is to fathom.
I think I'm tiring of auditioning. / I'm not dancing for bread anymore.
Rolling fields kiss the edges of town, farmland / lying flat and fallow like the rest of us.
There's a certain surrender / to being an optimist—one which begins / with the day but, in fact, begins // with the evening.
When I say moon, I recall brown calves lowing / at night, sheltered under their mothers' calm grace / in star-studded pastures.
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.
the turkeys arrive while I’m deciphering / the if this, then that of taxes.
