Shō No. 6: Winter 2024/25

PRIZE WINNERS

MAJA LUKIC  Your Mother Knew Many Words for Beauty and Used All of Them to Call You — Winner of the Sita Martin Prize

RANUDI GUNAWARDENA  Girl Cousins, Pixelated — Sita Martin Prize Runner-Up

ROBERT OKAJI  The Starlings Were You – Winner of the Shō Poetry Prize

BUNKONG TUON  Wanting Kids — Shō Poetry Prize Runner-Up

 

JACKSON D. MOORMAN  At Lake Merritt I’m wearing a hoodie with nothing under it

KATY SCARLETT  At Thirty-Five

T. DE LOS REYES  living room spacetime; Aubade

NICHOLAS PIERCE  Four sonnets from Pierce Junction: Kennedy Heights; John R. Simmons; Exodus; How We Lived

JUBRIL BADMUS  Hope Street Reimagined

SAIDA AGOSTINI  a prayer for saida at age eight

M.J. GOMEZ  Litany in Which I Am Tired of Waiting for Judgment Day; Ayat

HANNAH TENNANT-MOORE  Queer Adolescence at 41

ALLISA CHERRY  Second Anointing; Idiom

ALISON PELEGRIN  Hurricane Irv

SHAWNTE ORION  Poem Yet to Be Written by Erik Bitsui

BRETT HANLEY  Only a Fin Remains When I Return for Teeth; Paroxysmal Supraventricular Tachycardia

MAJA LUKIC  Wings of Desire

BUNKONG TUON  My Ancestors Didn’t Scream

SADDIQ DZUKOGI  Bakandamiya VIII.; Bakandamiya IX.

BECKA MARA MCKAY  Golden Shovel as Anthropomorphism

CHRIS HOSHNIC  Event / Response

SAMODH PORAWAGAMAGE  Three postcard poems from To Punani Camp: My Antidote; Dear Husband; Proud Father of Niduk

ROSEMARIE DOMBROWSKI  Epistolary for the year of losses; Epistolary for the New Year

TIANNA BRATCHER  Misoprostol Warning Label

ARI B. COFER  Depression/Uterus; After the Hysterectomy

ERICA DAWSON  Portrait of the artist as sonnet for Dickinson’s line A wounded deer—leaps highest— [Audio]

MEG REYNOLDS  Milkstone

NICK MARTINO  Ars Poetica

NATHAN ERWIN  Envelope Poem

SUSANNA LANG  If I could pray anywhere

JO BEAR  Anti-Pastoral with Wolves; After the Gulls

ALEJANDRO LUCERO  Returning

WESLEY ROTHMAN  Negronis

CIARAN PIERCE  Grindr Etiquette

WILLIAM WARD BUTLER  Reciprocity

MICKIE KENNEDY  Finding My Boyfriend in Bed with a Stranger, 1993; American Porn, 1985

JAE NICHELLE  alternate timeline

ALYSSANDRA TOBIN  Egg on My Face

HANNAH FAITH NOTESS  Sea Biscuit; The Last March of the Ents

JARRETT MOSELEY  Before the News Hits

AMANDA MARET SCHARF  Lesson in Ceramics

KABEL MISHKA LIGOT  Love poem with climate catastrophe

Notes on Poems (View PDF)

Contributors’ Notes (View PDF)