To celebrate Jewish American Heritage Month, we’ve curated this playlist of poems recently published in Shō Poetry Journal featuring Aileen Bassis, Loisa Fenichell, Shira Leah Haus, Daniel Lurie, Brooke Sahni, and Rebekah Wolman.
Two Poems by Daniel Lurie
From Smoking Crows
Sometimes I lit a second to exist outside
of myself, like sitting in my mother’s lap as a child,
watching dry storms usher in new birds.
We leafed through the guidebook
with an eagle on the cover and dog-eared
the pages when we found them.
From Luck of the Draw
I’ve never told anyone, but I found my dead mother’s nudes: polaroids stuck between movie posters in a Kodak box. I assume my father took them. What does one do with their mother’s vintage nudes? It’s difficult to imagine her life before the sickness, one in which she had sexual desire, dreams of art school, wrote long letters while waiting at train stations.
“Smoking Crows” and“Luck of the Draw” appeared in Shō No. 7
Daniel Lurie is a Jewish, rural writer, from eastern Montana. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Idaho. Daniel is co-editor of Outskirts Literary Journal, and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in swamp pink, Poetry Northwest, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, and others. He recently won the 2026 Mississippi Review Prize and phoebe’s 2026 Greg Grummer Poetry Contest awarded by Diane Seuss. He served as the 2025-2026 Ronald Wallace Poetry Fellow at UW-Madison and is a 2026-2028 Wallace Stegner Fellow. Find him at danielluriepoetry.com.
“From where I arrived” by Loisa Fenichell
It all begins when we are young
again, watching the blue whale
skin itself, watching time
recede. Little girl I once was,
called fat by little girls. Left behind
at gas stations, at delis with walls
the colors of pink dresses.
About this Poem: The poem started with an image of a blue whale — my poems usually start with images, though very occasionally poems will evolve from a line instead — and then I suppose as I was writing the blue whale became the past itself (I was thinking in a bit of an ecological way, too, if I recall correctly). The gas stations bit is very much inspired by a poem by Catherine Pond, “At the Sunaco in West Virginia,” and the ambulance image is inspired by a movie called “A Different Man.” Other moments are more autobiographical, like with the teacher…as with any poem (I think!) it stemmed from a myriad of places, from a myriad of sources of inspiration.
“From where I arrived appeared in Shō No. 8
Loisa Fenichell’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets, and has been featured or is forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Washington Square Review, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, all these urban fields, was published by nothing to say press and her collection, Wandering in all directions of this earth, which was a Tupelo Press Berkshire Prize finalist in 2021 and 2022, was the winner of the 2022 Ghost Peach Press Prize, selected by Yale Younger Poets Prize winner Eduardo C. Corral, and published by Ghost Peach Press. Her second collection, Folk Singer!, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. She is the winner of the 2021 Bat City Review Editors’ Prize, has been a finalist for Narrative Magazine’s 2021 30 Below contest, a runner-up for Tupelo Quarterly’s Tupelo Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the Dorianne Laux / Joe Millar prize. She has received support from Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop and Community of Writers and holds an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University.
“A Blessing” by Brooke Sahni
It was one of those afternoons where it felt a whole world
existed inside of me. And I sat in my favorite spot
learning for the first time that it was my favorite and I thought
of Wright’s poem.
“A Blessing” appeared in Shō No. 7
Brooke Sahni is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently In This Distance. Her debut collection, Before I Had the Word (Texas Review Press), won the X.J. Kennedy Poetry Prize and her chapbook, Divining (Orison Books), won the Orison Chapbook Prize. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in journals such as Alaska Quarterly, The Missouri Review, Nimrod, The Cincinnati Review, Boulevard, Verse Daily, 32 Poems and elsewhere. Her poetry chapbook, Letters, Dreams is forthcoming in fall 2026.
“Golden Gate Bridge” by Shira Leah Haus
An old teacher once told me never to use the word love
in a poem. An old friend once told me never to say
the word love to a man, because they, quote, freak out.
I tell the man, I love this bridge. I love the fog
and the sun breaking through it. He agrees.
About this Poem: Like many women, I struggle with judging how much to trust men, even if they’re kind to me. This odd little poem came out of me all at once after a long ride from San Francisco to Napa Valley with a very sweet Uber driver who did actually stop the car to show me photos of his kid. The conversation and the poem both widen to encompass aliens, love, spirituality, and God–but at the end, the poem narrows abruptly as the speaker is reminded of the potential–even if unfounded–danger of the situation, and modulates the freedom and confidence she expresses throughout the poem accordingly.
“Golden Gate Bridge” appeared in Shō No. 8
Shira Leah Haus is a queer, Jewish writer from Michigan. She earned an MFA in poetry from the University of Tennessee and is currently a copyeditor for The Offing. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry Magazine, Copper Nickel, Passages North, Poetry Northwest, and Wildness, among others, and her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best Microfiction. She has received support from the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference and was a finalist for the PINCH Literary Awards and the ONLY POEMS Leonard Cohen Poetry Prize.
“Self-Portrait as notes for a self-portrait-as-poem” by Rebekah Wolman
as abecedarian. Beehive. Corner cabinet, desk
detritus. Earthshine. Faultline. As gristle and gall.
Hummingbird, heron. As inkling, origins foreign
to ink. As jackstraw and jazzman. As kindling.
As littoral landscape, all lapis lazuli's blues.
About this Poem: Lying awake one night feeling frustrated by my prolonged attempts to write a self-portrait-as poem, I resorted to my intermittently effective insomnia cure, a migration through the alphabet. Sometimes, insomnia is productive.
“Self-Portrait as notes for a self-portrait-as-poem” appeared in Shō No. 5
Rebekah Wolman is a 2021 winner of Cultural Daily‘s Jack Grapes Poetry Prize, the 2022 winner of the Small Orange Emerging Woman Poet Honor, and a finalist for the 2023 Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in a variety of online and print journals and anthologies. A retired educator, she is based in San Francisco, California, on unceded ancestral Ramaytush Ohlone land, and reads poetry for Psaltery and Lyre. Her chapbook, What the Hollow Held, is available from Seven Kitchens Press.
“Not Knowing” by Aileen Bassis
Remember one winter
in that cold cold loft—we didn’t know
how cold we would be on Sundays when there was only enough
heat to keep the pipes from freezing and a single space heater
flickered red with a paltry groan of defeat—nothing
changing in that high-ceilinged open space wafting cat smells
and cooking oil from the topless bar below
About this Poem: This is a memory poem of a turbulent time when I was trying to figure out what I wanted out of life and how to follow my dreams of being an artist. This poem revolves around relationships, the “you” in the poem points to someone who is sharing this memory and traveling with me in that journey. Central to the poem is the marriage of Luis and Jane, a warning of the dangers of relationships gone wrong and the test of parenthood.
“Not Knowing” appeared in Shō No. 5
This poem appears in Among Sinners and Saints (Shanti Arts, 2026).
“Among Sinners and Saints is a book of refined sensibilities, probing questions, and a musicality that leads a reader through the author’s reflections on the stories of myth, the stories of personal mythology, and the stories that are important for the retention and understanding of our culture. This is also a book that examines the ways in which memory is the center of inquiry for the self, and the poem is the tool Bassis uses to transform personal reflection into something durable, beautiful, and whole.”
—Mark Wunderlich, award-winning poet and fellowship recipient, author most recently of Voluntary Servitude
Aileen Bassis is a visual artist and poet in New York City. She’s the author of two chapbooks, The Other Side of the Mirror (Unlikely Books) and Advice for Travelers and other poems (Black Sunflowers Press), and of the full-length collection Among Sinners and Saints (Shanti Arts, 2026). She was awarded two poetry residencies to the Atlantic Center for the Arts, a fellowship in poetry to Yaddo Foundation, grants in literature from NYState Council on the Arts, and the Queens Arts Fund.