Audio Feature: Becka Mara McKay (Shō No. 6)
Listen to Becka Mara McKay read “Golden Shovel as Anthropomorphism (Song of Songs 2:10)” from Shō No. 6 (Winter 2024/25).
Maja Lukic – Your Mother Knew Many Words for Beauty and Used All of Them to Call You [Sita Martin Prize Winner]
Winner of the Sita Martin Prize for Shō No. 6 (Winter 2024/25).
In shop windows, you are strange / to yourself, your face a drifting moon, / eyes and mouth dark shafts.
Audio Feature: Cortney Lamar Charleston (Shō No. 5)
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 …
Ranudi Gunawardena – Girl Cousins, Pixelated [Sita Martin Prize Runner-Up]
Read Ranudi Gunawardena's poem “Girl Cousins, Pixelated,” accompanied by a recording of the poet reading her poem. Runner-Up of the Sita Martin Prize for Shō No. 6 (Winter 2024/25).
The fruit / hung bending the branches, like a hundred // small stomachs, bird-eaten and naked / where the beaks had pierced.
Black History Month Playlist 2025
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.
Audio Feature: Ellen June Wright (Shō No. 5)
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.
Audio Feature: Claire Zhou (Shō No. 5)
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
Audio Feature: Elontra Hall (Shō No. 5)
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
Audio Feature: Maja Lukic (Shō No. 6)
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). You can also read Maja’s poem here. Audio recorded by Reed Turchi at Second Take Sound. Maja Lukic is a Brooklyn-based poet. …
Audio Feature: Ranudi Gunawardena (Shō No. 6)
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. You can also read Ranudi’s poem here. Ranudi Gunawardena is a Sri Lankan poet whose work explores the wombscape, childhood in rural landscapes, …
Audio Feature: Jae Nichelle (Shō No. 6)
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 …
Audio Feature: Danielle Shandiin Emerson (Shō No. 4)
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 …
Audio Feature: Alejandro Lucero (Shō No. 6)
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.
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.
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.