Edi­tor-in-Chief Sean Cho A

I first met AJ White through his work. His poem “The Poem You Asked For” land­ed in the sub­mis­sion queue at Over­heard, and I remem­ber being struck by its vivid open­ness and leaps into mem­o­ry. Read­ers of The Account may also remem­ber AJ’s work from our Spring 2025 NaPo­Mo issue, where we had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to show­case two of his poems. 

His debut col­lec­tion, Blue Loop, won the Nation­al Poet­ry Series, select­ed by Chelsea Ding­man for Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia Press. 

The col­lec­tion nav­i­gates the lumi­nous wreck­age of addic­tion and its after­math with a steadi­ness that nev­er pre­tends clarity.

It does not mat­ter what we will be, 

only what we refuse to be.  — “Blue Loop” (36 pg.) 

The col­lec­tion’s speak­er is filled with hard-won wis­dom, apply­ing pres­sure to under­stand­ing the world’s log­ic while still grap­pling with how to inhab­it it.

In late Feb­ru­ary 2026, AJ and I were in con­ver­sa­tion dis­cussing top­ics rang­ing from mem­o­ry and time as lit­er­ary archi­tec­ture to the apos­troph­ic “you” as both eth­i­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty and open door. 

SCA: AJ! Thanks for doing this. We should prob­a­bly give some back­ground for the folks at home: since pub­lish­ing your work, we’ve been dig­i­tal pen pals. You’ve always said smart and insight­ful things, so I was inter­est­ed in tak­ing our con­ver­sa­tion out­side of a Gmail inbox and into the pub­lic sphere.

In an inter­view with rob mclen­nan, you men­tioned spend­ing a decade work­ing on Blue Loop. I imag­ine you were a lot of dif­fer­ent peo­ple dur­ing that time. I’m inter­est­ed in hear­ing about how you were think­ing about mem­o­ry and time. I’m think­ing about indi­vid­ual poems like “No More Sto­ries, No More Mean­ing,” where we open on an image from the speak­er’s childhood—a rab­bit in their backyard—then move toward this strik­ing image:

“I am thir­ty years old lying in sweat & vomit 

 in a motel in this home­town, stum­bling down the street.” (14 pg.)

Yet we end with the revelation:

“after I for­get this, after my sis­ter for­gets this, after my mother 

 & father for­get this—will this still have hap­pened to me” (14 pg.)

Read­ers expe­ri­ence a lot of tem­po­ral leaps. Mem­o­ry and the act of remem­ber­ing seem to hold a vital place in self-mak­ing for the speaker. 

How did your own rela­tion­ship to mem­o­ry shift over that decade of writ­ing, and how did that shape the way you struc­tured these move­ments through time?

AW: What a bril­liant and grace­ful ques­tion, Sean. And not even some­thing we’ve real­ly talked about before in all our con­ver­sa­tions! I’m so glad to begin here.

This book—and my cur­rent, ongo­ing work—is more about time than any­thing else, I think. It’s been dif­fi­cult to talk about, because my work is per­haps more obvi­ous­ly about oth­er, neigh­bor­ing con­cerns: addic­tion, recov­ery, loss, med­i­ta­tion, survival. 

In the ten years in which the con­cerns of this book were tak­ing shape, I was mov­ing through dif­fer­ent peri­ods in my rela­tion­ship to my addic­tion, alco­holism. I moved from what I would call pre-active addic­tion to active addic­tion to post-active addic­tion, which I would call recov­ery. Through these move­ments, what I recognized—and, more impor­tant­ly, what I felt—was the impact of time on my life. Time had (and in many ways still has) a hold on me. I was mak­ing fre­quent, near­ly inces­sant alter­ations, inter­rup­tions, to my plans and life out of dif­fer­ent kinds of fears about time (i.e. bore­dom, anx­i­ety, regret, dread, loss aver­sion, empti­ness … I could go on).

When you are under the sway of any kind of addic­tion, you are always wait­ing. You are wait­ing to use again. You are wait­ing for the high to wear off and pre­empt­ing and com­bat­ting that by using more. You are then, extra­or­di­nar­i­ly painful­ly, when you can’t phys­i­cal­ly use any more, wait­ing for the most acute with­draw­al effects to sub­side. These can be dead­ly and require hos­pi­tal­iza­tion for a heavy drinker. Then, when you are very active­ly try­ing to recover—through meet­ings, ther­a­py, med­i­ta­tion, willpow­er (none of which worked, on their own, for me, through years of try­ing to get sober), you are wait­ing, wait­ing, wait­ing to become the per­son you are try­ing so hard to become. 

After you enter recov­ery, you are still anx­ious­ly wait­ing, often: antic­i­pat­ing crav­ings, antic­i­pat­ing relapse. Time anx­i­ety con­tin­ues to dic­tate choic­es and the emo­tion­al­i­ty of those choic­es. You have to learn, as the book says, to dis­tract, to delay. These are time maneuvers. 

All that is to say: oth­er poets have oth­er obses­sions, exter­nal pow­ers, or bewil­der­ments they write about. I know what has held my (invol­un­tary) atten­tion and inten­tion for many years. It’s not what I con­sid­er a deity. It’s not anoth­er human or group of humans. It’s time, and think­ing about time, and being anx­ious about the pas­sage of time, that co-authors my feel­ings, actions, and subconscious.

I don’t pri­or­i­tize struc­tur­ing these thoughts. I don’t con­scious­ly struc­ture much about those poems that feel very free-rang­ing in scope and time. I try to hold all moments togeth­er. I remem­ber, I antic­i­pate, I act in the moment. To move between moments in time does not feel like a plan for me. I sup­pose the side-effect of hav­ing time as an obses­sion is that you also kind of unlock it as a lit­er­ary weapon. Because you are, anx­ious­ly, unstuck in time, you are also poet­i­cal­ly unstuck and have ready access to mem­o­ry and to future antic­i­pa­to­ry occur­rences: auton­o­my of move­ment across time.

SCA: I love this, AJ. I liked the rep­e­ti­tion of “wait­ing” through­out your response here. Blue Loop seems to sug­gest the inevitabil­i­ty of waiting—waiting as a state of being rather than a means to an end.

In this wait­ing state, the speak­er often finds him­self in repet­i­tive reflec­tion: lines are repeat­ed, then fol­lowed by new insights. For exam­ple, “Lots of the­o­ries now I love” is fol­lowed by 

toma­toes like darkrooms

det­o­nate from inside out

watch the sun’s arms pump

their nec­tar into flame. — “Blue Loop” (37 pg.)

and lat­er, is fol­lowed by “The one where exis­tence is / Trans­for­ma­tive hap­pen­ings” (“Cloud Absolves,” 71 pg.).

In an inter­view with Bin­gUNews, you coined this as the “self-cento”—a riff on the cen­to in which lines from else­where in the col­lec­tion return again on the page. It feels espe­cial­ly apt for a book so full of self-reflection.

How did you find your­self writ­ing in this form? What did this rep­e­ti­tion afford you in your work?

AW:  I would call them self-cen­tos, yes. Cen­to, from Latin, derives from a word for quilt or piece­meal gar­ment. A cen­to is quite an old form, but a tra­di­tion­al cento’s poet­ic quilt, as you say, is made of small pieces of fab­ric from oth­ers’ work, whether they be lines from poems, songs, or oth­er media.

There are lots of ref­er­ences to the work of oth­ers in this book, but the self-cen­tos (the five poems titled “Blue Loop” that, togeth­er, con­sti­tute most of the book’s cen­tral sec­tion) are there because I was try­ing to quilt a present-day life togeth­er from pieces of both a for­mer (unsta­ble) and a future (sta­ble) life. I want­ed them to be right in the mid­dle of the book so that rough­ly half the lines, at that point, are lines the read­er has seen before, while half the lines are lines the read­er can antic­i­pate see­ing again lat­er in oth­er, so-far-unknown con­texts. This tech­nique, hon­est­ly, goes back to time: it mir­rors, for me, the way the past (long­ing) and the future (anx­i­ety: or wait­ing, as you say) impinge equal­ly upon the speaker’s wellness.

This is a ver­sion of a sto­ry I hear a lot about poets and the forms that make their books unique: I had one self-cen­to. It was a brand new thing. For a lit­tle while it was the book’s first poem. But I was get­ting feed­back, both from oth­ers and from myself, that, like, no one knows what this is. It’s all alone, for­mal­ly. So I wrote the oth­er four self-cen­tos, final­ly, the day before I sub­mit­ted this book to its last round of prizes. I knew I had to get them done and in the book. I knew where I want­ed them to go. So I print­ed the whole book out, I under­lined and cut out with scis­sors every super-reac­tive line I could find, then I start­ed arrang­ing those lines into poems. The poems’ pat­terns (struc­ture), while not iden­ti­cal, are sim­i­lar. As a lot of poets and writ­ers also know, when you’re on, you’re on. Espe­cial­ly work­ing with your own favorite lines of your work. You know not only how they oper­ate, but how they can operate.

I like that, in many instances like the one you quote, they show fur­ther pos­si­bil­i­ties of the same lan­guage. These poems are about you (the for­mer part­ner, one sub­ject of the speaker’s long­ing) in a lat­er poem becomes, in a blue loop: these poems are about you: the past you can­not see clear­ly, & the future you can­not see through. Time, again, as a pri­ma­ry sub­ject of the book.

SCA: That’s awe­some, AJ. I liked how you brought your process into the phys­i­cal world with the scis­sors and col­lage method. The whole process of using your own reac­tive line(s) to turn on the writ­ing, or hit a type of flow state, feels like a good start to a writ­ing prompt.

The end of your response brought me to anoth­er point I want­ed to dis­cuss: the “you” through­out your work. There are poems like “We Were Nev­er Real­ly Going to Get Away” where the “you” feels con­crete­ly leg­i­ble to the reader:

we had been apart a few months

the last time I saw you I let you

know I had been sober 8 weeks

for the first time in 8 years you

said fan­tas­tic we had cof­fee you

said you look good where did

you get that shirt you said do

you want to get a drink you

said you know we were never

real­ly going to get away 

-“We Were Nev­er Real­ly Going to Get Away” (13 pg.) 

But else­where, such as in “The Poem You Asked For,” the “you” is mul­ti­fac­eted: the for­mer self, loved ones, maybe even a call to soci­ety at large. I’m think­ing about moments in Blue Loop where the speak­er and the “you” seem to oper­ate as one, the speak­er pro­ject­ing onto the “you,” ver­sus moments where the “you” car­ries dif­fer­ent log­ics and inten­tions than the speaker.

I won­dered how the “you oper­ates” in both the writ­ing and the writ­ing process as a whole. I was think­ing about the “you” vs. the speak­er and how the two oper­at­ed as one (the speak­er pro­ject­ing for the “you”) but how the “you” may oper­ate with a dif­fer­ent way of think­ing as the speak­er in the world of the collection.

AW: I love this ques­tion. I espe­cial­ly love the gen­eros­i­ty (and wis­dom) to ask about the “you” not just in the oper­a­tion of the poem, but the oper­a­tion of “you” in a poet’s writ­ing process.

I think about the pro­noun “you” in the con­text of verse poet­ics con­stant­ly. I clear­ly also think about it dif­fer­ent­ly than many oth­ers, because while this ques­tion has come up, in many dif­fer­ent forms, rel­a­tive­ly often, it’s not a ques­tion I ask myself. The way poet­ry-cre­ation works in my mind, it’s like ask­ing a car­pen­ter or a brick­lay­er why they use the same nail or the same mor­tar again and again. It’s the right nail; it’s the right mor­tar: it works.

I also try to describe it thus­ly: “you” is sim­i­lar to “god” to me. In the con­text of lit­er­a­ture, “god” is an allu­sion that describes, with­in one sim­ple word, a very cogent rela­tion­al sit­u­a­tion that invokes pow­er and knowl­edge dis­crep­an­cies. “You” is an effi­cient, short pro­noun that very cogent­ly evokes a very wide, use­ful range of rela­tion­al val­ues in poet­ry: inti­ma­cy, direct address, famil­iar­i­ty, gen­eros­i­ty, per­son­hood, ongo­ing­ness. It also car­ries a kind of sit­u­a­tion­al irony that I like for my work: the read­er knows the “you” is not present, but the poet keeps address­ing this “you” as if they, in some way, are. As a poet, you get the ben­e­fit of all these asso­ci­a­tions plus that ten­sion sim­ply by using the word.

Then, fur­ther, using “you” demands respon­si­bil­i­ty of the poet. As you say, the real “you” does have dif­fer­ent log­ics, inten­tions, self­hood, and prob­a­bly an entire­ly dif­fer­ent take on events than does the speak­er. I have to craft poems to a “you” that take into account the you’s per­spec­tive, even though that per­spec­tive is inac­ces­si­ble to me. I like and need that responsibility.

Final­ly, as is always my inten­tion in poems, rather than keep­ing read­ers out, “you” invites read­ers in. “You” is open. You know many “you”s. If a poet writes “my son,” “my hus­band,” “dear beloved,” it fore­clos­es pos­si­bil­i­ties. No one reads a poem by Sap­pho, or by Emi­ly Dick­in­son, or by Jean Valen­tine, and is, like, with­out know­ing who these yous are, I can’t enter the poem. We can enter the poem more ful­ly not know­ing, or par­tial­ly know­ing. Poet­ry is about what we don’t know.

Most of the poems in ques­tion are iter­a­tions of apos­troph­ic verse, also called, sim­ply, apos­tro­phe. Apos­tro­phe is anoth­er ancient form in which some­one or some­thing dead or absent is addressed as if it or they is/are present. We don’t prac­tice apos­troph­ic verse so often these days as we do ele­gy, say, so it feels a lit­tle strained to us, per­haps. Or, as you say, the strain comes when the poet jux­ta­pos­es apos­tro­phe with poems that use “you” less con­crete­ly and with­out sig­nal­ing that shift. All my “you”s are apos­troph­ic, though. The for­mer self, the future self, the read­er, the beloved, fam­i­ly mem­bers who have passed on, fig­ures of author­i­ty: these “you”s are inac­ces­si­ble. And yet, and yet. Using “you” brings them back and, use­ful­ly, often painful­ly, close.

SCA:  Yeah, I love think­ing about the “you” as both a respon­si­bil­i­ty for the poet and a door­way for the poem: very smart.

Okay, last ques­tion. I had a lot of dif­fer­ent direc­tions for this, but your respons­es through­out led me to think about your imple­men­ta­tion of research. In a read­ing of “The Sus­ci­ta­tion of God”, you men­tioned your inter­est in Bud­dhist med­i­ta­tion guides. The title of the col­lec­tion is named after an astron­o­my abnor­mal­i­ty. Even in this inter­view alone, you’ve men­tioned Latin roots and ancient forms. Clear­ly there’s a lot of pre-work work being done here before the pen hits the page. 

How does research work its way into your writ­ing process? And how did poet­ry become the “prod­uct” as opposed to oth­er forms of writing. 

AW: Research is life! My desire to know and—much more impor­tant­ly, to under­stand—is insa­tiable. So much so that, in fact, I think it absolute­ly informed or con­tributed to my ill­ness. If you are nev­er sat­is­fied in your immense lack of under­stand­ing of peo­ple and events, you may turn to unhealthy out­lets to cope with that dis­sat­is­fac­tion or con­sid­er it a per­son­al defect, if you are a con­sis­tent­ly self-crit­i­cal person.

And yet, I find prac­tic­ing poet­ry so peace­ful because intel­lec­tu­al knowl­edge must take a back seat, in poems. It must inform, shape, out­line, but not be the vehi­cle of deliv­ery. The vehi­cle of deliv­ery, of course, must be an emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence that is also a bridge or net­work between poet, speak­er, lan­guage, and reader.

Anoth­er poem in the book, “Let­ter of Six Inten­tions,” fol­lows the Bud­dhist guru Tilopa’s sev­en-word, com­plete guide to how to live with inten­tion, peace, and toward enlight­en­ment (and toward a prac­tice called Mahamu­dra—or the expe­ri­ence of mind-empti­ness). It is:

1) Don’t Recall (don’t live in the past)

2) Don’t Imag­ine (don’t live antic­i­pat­ing the future)

3) Don’t Think (don’t live through intellectualization)

4) Don’t Exam­ine (don’t ana­lyze, like for cause and effect)

5) Don’t Con­trol (seems obvious)

6) Rest (is obvious)

This teach­ing is very very dif­fi­cult to prac­tice! Most of my actions and reac­tions invoke, auto­mat­i­cal­ly, sev­er­al dis­cour­aged ten­den­cies at once. I love, of course, and find shel­ter in know­ing that there is only one thing we are encour­aged to do—we should all seek more rest.

Poet­ry, again, is a way of liv­ing, think­ing, feel­ing, and prac­tice that encour­ages and enables me, how­ev­er, to live clos­er to these guide­lines. I have always tak­en on intel­lec­tu­al infor­ma­tion and formed and reformed par­a­digms very eas­i­ly. That’s part, both, of who I am and of who I intend, dai­ly, to be. But I also need bal­ance. I need ways to live less con­nect­ed to ideas and more con­nect­ed to feel­ings and to emo­tion­al knowl­edge and wis­dom, both mine and oth­ers’. Poet­ry helps me do that, because an increas­ing­ly intel­lec­tu­al poem is not an increas­ing­ly suc­cess­ful poem. A poem that feels ever more deeply, rich­ly, orig­i­nal­ly, authen­ti­cal­ly: that is how our trea­sured art advances.

AJ White is a poet and edu­ca­tor from Geor­gia. AJ’s debut poet­ry col­lec­tion, Blue Loop, was select­ed for the Nation­al Poet­ry Series by Chelsea Ding­man and pub­lished by Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia Press. AJ has won the Fugue Poet­ry Prize, The Willie Mor­ris Award for South­ern Poet­ry, and received sup­port from the Sewa­nee Writ­ers’ Con­fer­ence. His poems have been pub­lished recent­ly in The Account, Best New Poets, Black­bird, Over­heard, West Trade Review, and else­where. AJ lives and teach­es cre­ative writ­ing in New York.

:: Tame/Wild ::

	
The woman with the wild mustangs 
buys them at auction, some as low as $1  
 
if you'll take them, tame them or not, just take them  
from BLM land to a place other  
 
than where they’ve always been. In her stalls, 
the horses still, they took a saddle,  
 
what the woman calls gentling, 
no need for that older, darker word. 
 
Intelligent creatures, horses learn  
the pressure of a leg means  
 
go this way, that. When we brush them, 
the dirt from their backs  
 
coats our pants and hands 
as we work the knots in their hair, pulling hard  
 
with the comb. Still, shifting, 
they avoid our feet. 
 
In the fields,  
the untamed ones cluster.  
 
Wild creatures, they’re black, 
brown, dotted, turn at our approach 
 
like one head bending, 
sinuous, elemental.  
 
They know we’ve got food,  
chalky man-made rocks  
 
they’ll velvet lip from a hand,  
move quickly off.  
 
When does a wild thing pass to tame? 
When a woman looks at the horizon, 
 
we say she’s gone far off, but we know  
she won’t bolt if we come closer.  
 
These horses have long eyelashes  
like women, so it’s easy to believe they’re sad. 
 
When we turn back, the wild ones follow  
at a distance, then flood around us,  
 
Are they wild now or tame? 
Some will never take a saddle,  
 
others do and will. The horse woman  
names the ones she’ll try to gentle next. 
 
I don’t know how she tells the difference. 
Is it the tension in a back, the way  
 
the dust rises when they run? These wild horses  
know the feel of the earth by hoof. 
 
Soft ground means first light; 
hard dirt, sun, no water. Could wet mean mother? 
 
I’m far off now. Their language gentles. 
Heartbroken, I can’t say anything.  

From the writer

:: Account ::

These poems are part of an on-going, spo­radic series I’ve writ­ten for years now. It’s not some­thing I’m active­ly work­ing on, but rather a device I keep com­ing back to for its gen­er­a­tive pros­per­i­ties. Each poem bears a title with a slash that I think of as a “hinge” that swings between the two words or phras­es on either side. In writ­ing these poems, I run along this hinge, swinging back and forth, explor­ing the plea­sures and pain of being in-between. 

Ruth Williams is the author of a poet­ry col­lec­tion, Flat­lands (Black Lawrence Press) and two chap­books, Con­veyance (Danc­ing Girl Press) and Nursewifery (Jacar Press). Cur­rent­ly she is a a Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of English at William Jew­ell Col­lege. 

:: Camp ::

	
I refresh the camp registration screen seven times 
between 7:59 and 8 am. This is my life now. When 
the box goes green, I’m hot out the gate. Session, 
name, address, guardians, school, saved payment 
method. Fuck yes. By 8:05, she’s set. I used to 
 
do this for concert tickets. Before that, I waited 
in line, cash in pocket. Before that, I walked 
to the park down the street, made my way 
to the picnic tables where kids in neon camp tees 
made bracelets. Pretended like I was just curious, 
 
just saying hi, until Amanda whisper-waved me 
over, as if sitting close enough to her would make 
me invisible to the lip-glossed, ponytailed teens 
in charge. I never stayed long enough to learn 
the box knot, always left before lunch. Outlaw 
 
in plain sight, I sat straight and did the bit where 
I belonged. One time, Chrissy couldn’t take it. 
I made a bracelet. I made Amanda laugh. I made 
my eyebrows dance at two counselors flirting. 
Chrissy’s hand flew up as if it weren’t July but I 
 
leaned fast across the table, whisper-warned her 
you better shut the fuck up you fucking baby and 
Amanda cackled into her palm and I stood up 
because I was about to leave anyway. Walked home 
slow. Pet the wet noses of other people’s dogs 
 
though chain link fence. Sang quiet. Then loud. 
Sang myself into a different summer, a bigger 
story, a farther place where I was alone because 
I left on purpose. 

From the writer

:: Account ::

I am steeped in child­hoods. I am a par­ent. I am an ele­men­tary school teacher. I am a children’s book author. And so per­haps it is not sur­pris­ing that childhood—imagined, observed, and remembered—also often makes its way into my poet­ry. The poems in this sub­mis­sion deal most­ly with my and my kids’ child­hoods. In some, the child­hoods are exclu­sive of one anoth­er. In oth­ers, my own child­hood or even adult­hood is clar­i­fied through my role as a par­ent bear­ing wit­ness to my kids’ expe­ri­ences. Being a kid is a very big thing. The enor­mi­ty of that heartache, that love, and that won­der is the thing that makes us. Grow­ing up is a strange and often ter­ri­ble thing. I don’t real­ly under­stand grownups who choose to live and work sur­round­ed only by oth­er grownups. Instead, I high­ly rec­om­mend a liv­ing that allows con­stant access to child­hood. Even the hard parts. 

Mk Smith Despres writes, teach­es, and makes art in west­ern Mass­a­chu­setts. Their poems appear or are forth­com­ing in  Frozen Sea, Hunger Moun­tain, Radar, Sala­man­der, South­ern Human­i­ties Review, and else­where. They also write­books for kids. Their pic­ture book,  Night Song, was one of Bank Street’s Best Children’s Books of the Year. 

:: Sleep ::

	
My friend, return yourself again to sleep. 
Let the night’s rain amend your sleep. 
 
Green leaves at the window brush the door 
of the heart, gently attending to sleep. 
 
Is a lapse between two sorrows a kind of joy?  
Love’s face seen as prophecy when asleep. 
 
A rupture in thinking mirrors my woe. O, 
how I longed for a friend before sleep. 
 
After the long, long day, consciousness 
unfurls in a bed of leaves against sleep. 
 
Megan, don’t fear a night’s dark dreams, rest 
your mind against the page, then sleep. 

:: Light ::

Lay down your woes in these long days of light. 
Pale lavender sky, the evening’s play of light. 
 
When did your green first stir my dormancy? 
Clouds yielded rain, then a shock of May light. 
 
Shadows across bark, a dance of maple leaves 
quiet the mind’s chatter, now swayed by light. 
 
Each morning, I greet my joy, waking to find  
your face framed in a warm pane of light. 
 
My soul waits for its summons from its shy 
heart, who sees beauty in a disarray of light. 

From the writer

:: Account ::

Fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion and tour of my debut col­lec­tion, Saints of Lit­tle Faith, I need­ed to find my way back to the page. I want­ed to write poems that felt new to me, that pushed me into dif­fer­ent kinds of syn­tax­es and songs. I re-read Agha Shahid Ali’s Call Me Ish­mael Tonight and real­ized that ghaz­als were a place to start—thematically and musi­cal­ly orga­nized by a refrain vs by a nar­ra­tive thread that ran through the poem. While I loved nar­ra­tive poems, and leaned heav­i­ly into study­ing them while writ­ing my first book, I need­ed to find a coun­ter­bal­ance. I wrote these ghaz­als in the late sum­mer, mov­ing back and forth between these two and a hand­ful of oth­ers. His­tor­i­cal­ly, sum­mer has been a dif­fi­cult time for me write poems, because I become dis­tract­ed with trav­el, par­ties, etc, but the ghaz­als felt some­how more nim­ble. I could work on them one cou­plet at a time, mak­ing slow progress in my note­book that was not quite lin­ear, and yet would come to accrue its own depth. 

Megan Pin­to is the author of Saints of Lit­tle Faith, from Four Way Books (US) and the87press (UK). Her poems can be found or are forth­com­ing in The Los Ange­les Review of Books, The Acad­e­my of Amer­i­can Poets Poem-a-Day, Ploughshares, and on The Slow­down pod­cast. She has received the Anne Hal­ley Prize from the Mass­a­chu­setts Review and an Amy Award from Poets & Writ­ers, as well as schol­ar­ships and fel­low­ships from the Bread Loaf Writ­ers’ Con­fer­ence, the Martha’s Vine­yard Insti­tute of Cre­ative Writ­ing, the Port Townsend Writ­ers’ Con­fer­ence and Sto­ryknife. She lives in Brooklyn.

:: Her Hospice Nurse Calls  ::

	
                                                                                  Nature’s first green is gold, 
                                                                                  Her hardest hue to hold. 
                                                                                                                                —Robert Frost 
 
This wavering April weather won’t hold. 
Daybreak, I rush for the first train. 
Snow lines the road sides; it refrains 
from any promises of tree-top gold. 
Mother’s nurse called at 5 a.m., the light 
a trick on the horizon. This wick 
 
of color that drapes black limbs, a wick 
that will be snuffed before I hold 
my last return ticket, a glimmer of light  
that gives me hope. The northbound train 
I ride to her is full of dawn. It pours gold 
over nodding heads, a rhythmic refrain 
 
as the scenes change. A lyric’s refrain 
she sang to me as a child: I watched a wick 
pour wax into the saucer, the gold 
pooling around the candle, to hold 
it firmly, solid in the cold night. A train 
would whisper its distance as light 
 
failed. She soothed me, a trick of light 
that let her leave. She taught the refrain 
of breath and silence that still trains 
my sleep. Passing lights quiver, wick 
the worry from the trip. Memory holds 
her voice saying my name, her gold 
 
kitchen walls, white curtains against gold 
ripple like long petals, a flickering light 
that brings April breeze inside and holds 
its promise. I promise, my refrain 
as I gather my bags, let the wick 
of memory pull me off the train 
 
that pauses only a minute, a train 
whose clang will be a whisper, a gold 
candle for other children tonight, its wick 
black ash at dawn, the trick of light 
forgiven in dreams. Forgive me, a refrain 
I chant to her, as she leaves my hold. 

From the writer

:: Account ::

“Her Hos­pice Nurse Calls” col­lects mem­o­ries of car­ing for my moth­er, who suf­fered from demen­tia in her last years, in one fic­tion­al­ized final jour­ney forced to move for­ward by the train, just as her dis­ease forced me to find light in remem­brance. With the ses­ti­na form, I felt the same insis­tent movement.

Mar­cia L. Hurlow’s chap­book of poet­ry, Dog Physics, was pub­lished by Main Street Rag Pub­lish­ing, fall 2024.  Her newest full-length col­lec­tion, Prac­tice Rap­ture, was pub­lished in May 2025 by Pine Row Press. Her poems have recent­ly appeared or are forth­com­ing in Bal­ti­more Review, Chi­ron Review, After Hap­py Hours, Free State Review, Mud­fish, Puer­to Del Sol, Relief, and I‑70 Review, among oth­ers. She is co-edi­tor-in-chief of Kansas City Review.  

:: Cardinalis Twice ::

	
Cherry blossoms are bonelaced
   across the sky and carrying a
      northern cardinal nest with babies gun-
   shy of flight. Into
      whose hand will they fall if
   I cannot catch them.
      Into which horizon
   thick with fingerthin petals
      will they leave me
   for? A part of me
      cannot handle being a human
   in spring. The blossoms pink
      and dead already in my palm.
   What spring knows is
      the cardinals will leave
   and I will not be able to go
      after them. That they cannot tell
   the difference between a gun and
      my palm. I have only shot
   a gun once, at clay pigeons in central Utah.
      It was spring and the buckshot splintered
   the red clay to white rubble
      falling to the dirt like
   petals or wings. I asked
      is this safe? not sure of
   what I meant by this. Each time a shot
      rang out, cardinals scattered
   like bloodsplatter against the sky.

From the writer

:: Account ::

I am inter­est­ed in a kind of poet­ics that does not believe in the bina­ry of the human world and the nat­ur­al world. A poet­ics where form, tra­di­tion­al and post-mod­ern, weaves the eco­log­i­cal onto the page. Beyond that my work ques­tions how we name things, and how nam­ing things presents a kind of pos­ses­sion in which our anthro­po­mor­phiza­tion assumes knowl­edge about the being (plant or ani­mal), rather than learn­ing from the being how to bet­ter engage with our world.

John Shoptaw writes in his essay “Why Ecopo­et­ry?” that ecopo­ems must be both about nature, and give an urgent unset­tling sense of some­thing need­ing to be done. I think some­times the thing being done should be pon­der­ing how we have come to talk about our land­scapes, the ani­mals we harm by overde­vel­op­ing, and how we think dif­fer­ent­ly about the plants whos names we do know ver­sus the ones we do not. The pon­der­ing itself, the rumi­na­tion on the human pow­er dynam­ic with­in the nat­ur­al world can be valu­able in how in then helps us to move through the world more consciously.

Tay­lor Fran­son-Thiel is the author of “Bone Val­ley Hym­nal” (ELJ Edi­tions 2025). She is a devel­op­men­tal and edi­to­r­i­al coor­di­na­tor for Poet­ry Dai­ly, the Assis­tant Poet­ry Edi­tor for phoebe and the EIC of BRAWL. She can be found @TaylorFranson on Twit­ter, @taylorfthiel on Insta­gram, @taylorfthiel.bsky.social on BlueSky, and at taylorfranson-thiel.com

:: Sticky Fingers ::

	
Before minimum wage increased, & I had to think about taxes 
& salaries & little treats, we lived in a neighborhood with three 
designs the builders liked to repeat, where I would shoplift 
lipsticks down at the local drugstore, the Walgreens where (eventually) 
I got a job behind the beauty bar, but often, when we were short-staffed, 
I’d sell Marlboro Reds to the local boys with their fake I.D.’s, 
or, on Friday nights, cases of Coronas to the men who spent their weeks 
sleeping in empty rentals in the city, who’d give me wide smiles 
& check out my ass when they thought I wasn’t looking. 
Corporate had installed cameras in the rafters, but I could spot them, 
too good at hide & seek; so, no one ever caught me swiping colors 
on the backs of my hands, or sneaking the bullet tubes into the pockets 
of my pants, but when the assistant manager & I were found in the break room 
with my top down & his cock out, well — 

:: To the Software Engineer Who Has Seen My Sex Tape  ::

 
I wonder how you found it. 
Was it a chance encounter in an endless stream of files? 
Those videos recorded & delivered by the self-driving cars 
your company set loose in San Francisco. 
Did you get excited? Have fun 
watching me, three shots of Buffalo Trace deep, 
climbing on top of the man in the backseat 
who suggested rawdogging as we accelerated 
slowly down Divisadero. 
 
Did you imagine the irony 
of touchscreens glued to headrests 
begging for five star reviews? 
Did you wonder why I did it, 
or think of me like one of those girls 
starring in a Fake Taxi scene 
or patiently waiting for direction 
on the casting couch. 
 
Truth is, I did it because I could— 
because I was wearing the kind of wrap dress 
where all I had to do was push aside the polyester fabric 
& tug down the lace cups of my get-lucky bra. 
Unbuckle his belt & swing a leg over 
his gym rat thighs. For one night, embrace 
the thrill of a different life. 
 
Of course, I forgot we could be on camera. 
 
I hope, when you watch it, I look great. 
Tits sitting high & back bent just right. 
Maybe, I got lucky before you got your copy, 
& someone was kind enough to blur my face.  

From the writer

:: Account ::

“Sticky Fin­gers” is a son­net based on a true sto­ry, where I was encour­aged to resign from my min­i­mum wage job as a teenag­er because the (adult) assis­tant man­ag­er and I were caught mak­ing out in the break­room dur­ing one of our shared shifts. At the time, I was sev­en­teen and in high school, while the man was twen­ty-five and had lied to me about his age. While I was pun­ished in response to our actions, he con­tin­ued to work in that job for years. I think it is inter­est­ing how inescapable it can be to be a woman—to be both a sex­u­al object and virginal—depending on who one is inter­act­ing with. 

 “To the Soft­ware Engi­neer Who Has Seen My Sex Tape” is an epis­to­lary piece, addressed specif­i­cal­ly to the white col­lar employ­ees at Way­mo in San Fran­cis­co. When the cars were ini­tial­ly pilot­ed in the city, the aver­age cit­i­zen didn’t have a lot of knowl­edge about their design, beyond their autonomous nature. Months lat­er, the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle pub­lished an arti­cle about all of the cam­eras in the vehi­cles and how many peo­ple had been caught hav­ing sex in the cars. It caused me to reflect on the nature of sur­veil­lance cap­i­tal­ism, espe­cial­ly with­in a city so dri­ven by tech­nol­o­gy. In a con­tem­po­rary soci­ety where near­ly every­one has a cam­era on them at all times, we’ve become numb to the strange panop­ti­con we now reside in. Inci­dents like sex in robot cars are fun­ny, but rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the greater inva­sion of tech­nol­o­gy into auton­o­my. 

Jor­dan Cobb (she/her) is a queer Amer­i­can poet. Based in NYC, she com­plet­ed her MSc in Cre­ative Writ­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Edin­burgh. Her work has appeared in The Shore, jmww, The Storms Jour­nal, Rise Up Review, The Colum­bia Jour­nal, Jet Fuel Review, Camas Mag­a­zine, Out­skirts Lit­er­ary Jour­nal, Cher­ry Tree, and Fugue Jour­nal. She is @on_the_cobb on Insta­gram.  

:: Annual Physical ::

	
First, it’s good you’re still alive 
even though there’s more of you to love.  
I have, however, detected something hidden  
worming its way through you.  
Have you recently heard a cock crow?  
I wouldn’t worry, unless someone brings you  
a deathbed beverage. The digital rectal exam  
will tell me what I need to know. Are you  
still supplementing God’s work with vitamins?  
Juggling a dozen pills a day 
will keep your mind sharp. I won’t mention  
the forty-five pounds you need to lose,  
basically a kindergartner. I see  
you still breathe heavily, but your hair  
seems healthy for a person your age.  
Any concerns about the clavicle?  
I’m prescribing a cold wind to keep  
the fever down. Also gum. You should  
subscribe to the Farmer’s Almanac. 
A lukewarm cup of tea each evening 
will ease your rush-hour tension. Also,  
take the solace of darkness, grind it  
to a fine powder and stir it into a soup.  
This will ungird your simmering tiger.  
Now, while I slip into something more synthetic,  
go ahead and pull down your pants,  
bend over and think about wild geese  
soaring above darkening water.  
Unlike duck hunting season 
this won’t hurt a bit.   

:: Evensong with Mid-Life Crisis  ::

After a night of rest, everything hurts.  
My right rear quarter panel reflects light 
like a dirty diamond and I know 
people sneer at my poor emission standards.  
Yesterday in the elevator some  
flatulent galoot ripped one and all eyes 
turned to me. A child peered through my windows 
and left with cold fireplace vibes. I don’t  
belong here anymore but the lack of  
assassins sustains me, swordfish poised  
for the slightest provocation, such as  
a throng of hipsters mid-merriment or  
white Jesus buried among unhindered  
children. The waitress reminds me of my  
first sin. I stare at the shimmers in her hair 
then accidentally order tulips 
and ice water. Before we never see  
each other again, I order a moist  
cake and mumble about our dessert fathers. 
Match by match these candles are lit. 
On the way home my windshield inverts a bug, 
everything over in a blink. I don’t  
belong here anymore. The city moves on. 
  

:: Dark Night of the Spleen  ::

I’m on my knees on the sanctuary’s 
plush kneeler praying for residual 
Jesus lining the communion cup, 
realizing this is the right amount of faith  
for me right now—fumes of Christ,  
Christ’s halitosis. Some days  
you are not up to it. Do I always 
have to prove I’m not a robot 
just because I’ve forgotten my password? 
Not sure about my blood type, think 
my name is Tim. Now that winter is here 
autumn should’ve had better music. 
The liturgy of wet silk. Alas, fair wretch! 
Trumpet, blow! If the music returns to me 
here on this kneeler, then I will rise 
and remember that I am dust, 
and not a bad singer  
for such a stretch of desert. 
  

From the writer

:: Account ::

Grief brought me back to poet­ry in 2017, after a fif­teen-year hia­tus. Almost every poem I write is infused with grief. Rarely do I sit down to write a spe­cif­ic poem, rather, I sit down and cre­ate the space for poet­ry to hap­pen. The tools: a bowl of my favorite words; spare poet­ry parts; my jour­nal; the emo­tion­al state of the day. Many poets respond­ing to pain through poet­ry under­stand­ably attempt to pack­age the chaos of grief in orga­nized word box­es. I did the same thing in poem after poem, but ulti­mate­ly that was unsat­is­fy­ing. Instead, like the expres­sions of grief in the Book of Job, it seemed more appro­pri­ate to share a bit of the chaos instead of try­ing to con­tain it. 

These poems come from a man­u­script titled “When the Crick­ets With­in Me Whis­per,” a tan­gled biog­ra­phy in the wake of grief. Poems like “Dark Night of the Spleen” and “Even­song with Mid-Life Cri­sis” fil­ter my Catholi­cism through my addled brain and crum­pled sense of humor. Oth­er poems, like “Annu­al Phys­i­cal,” take mun­dane expe­ri­ences, or Texas expe­ri­ences, and dri­ve them through the same fil­ter. In my head, I’m a seri­ous per­son who con­tem­plates seri­ous issues. For some rea­son, when I write poet­ry, my rebel­lious cor­pus­cles show up and com­man­deer the nar­ra­tive. This is my fault, for the afore­men­tioned writ­ing process that allows any­thing to show up and enter the work.

Bri­an Buil­ta works for the Soci­ety of St. Vin­cent de Paul in Dal­las and lives in Arling­ton, Texas. His poet­ry has been pub­lished most recent­ly in Inn­is­free Poet­ry Jour­nal, Dodg­ing the Rain and 3^rd Wednes­day. He is the author of four col­lec­tions of poems and more of his poet­ry can be found at brianbuilta.com.

:: From WINGED ::

	
In this story, your mother swallowed an egg, screamed,
	and birthed a monster. After the fishermen had their way

with her, a mapmaker loved her. Would bring her lace gloves
	and lavender perfume. Copper pennies to line her mouth.

She wouldn't be the last thing that crawled from the mud
	and learned to fly, but she was the prettiest, once you rinsed

her off in the bath. Once you remembered how the swamp
	swallows all sound. A feral stillness filled with wriggling

and writhing things that could kill you. Her feathers were thick
	with algae, nails crusted with dirt. Places on her body still

unmapped by his hands even after a decade. Places in her heart
	dark and unreachable as a grove of cypress in moonlight.

You'd hide beneath her skirts at the table while she sipped tea
	in a room covered in flowers. Lie down under the settee

breathing slow. Soak in the clawfoot tub and cover yourself
	in petals. In which you'd make a garden of your body,

                        in which you'd make a grave.

~

Mostly, you longed to be one of the women
	who could carry the sky in her bones. Could curtsy

and shift their weight to the other foot. Could root through
	the garden and find only church socials and sweet tea recipes.

Praline sweet and scented like lavender. To be clean and close
	to god, who rustled his feathers in the rafters every now

and then, watching as you touched yourself. Everyone touched
	by something—holiness, madness—no one knew which.

Hoarding the bones of mice in small piles under the bed. Birthing
	tiny eggs you'd hide in the closet, then bury in the ground.

Whether they hatched, you never knew, eaten by snakes or
	smashed by starlings. You'd wear sleeves in the summer to hide

the filthy down that covered your arms. Would open your mouth
	and something crawly would slip out wriggling and drop to

your desk. You'd stare in horror while the other girls
	picked feathers from your hair and cooed.

From the writer

:: Account ::

I’ve repeat­ed­ly found that, as my work evolves, the sub­ject of trans­for­ma­tion comes up again and again. Specif­i­cal­ly women turn­ing into mon­sters or mon­sters turn­ing into women. The idea of trans­gres­sion and lim­i­ta­tion held in bal­ance with free­dom and evo­lu­tion of the self that fas­ci­nates me. I’ve writ­ten many poems about women that become oth­er things—dog women, mall zom­bies, bird girls, rav­en­ous vam­pires. About myths where women are blessed or forced to become deer, sirens, trees. To bend their shapes into new con­fig­u­ra­tions to escape fear, vio­lence, con­trol. This par­tic­u­lar set of poems is set in New Orleans, which is my sec­ond favorite city to Chica­go, and where I prob­a­bly would live if I could not live here. A city filled with mon­sters and ghosts and mag­ic from which the women in these poems emerge, feath­ered and starv­ing. Set­ting it in the 1930s is prob­a­bly a result of repeat­ed the­aterview­ings of Sin­ners and an obses­sion with the Hadestown Broad­way sound­track, but there is some­thing about the Depres­sion era that res­onates with these char­ac­ters that seems a per­fect fit. 

A writer & book artist, Kristy Bowen lives in Chica­go, where she cre­ates a vari­ety of poet­ry hybrid works and exper­i­ments that enfold text, visu­al art, per­for­mance, film, and more. She is the author of numer­ous books, chap­books, zines, and artists books, includ­ing CLOVEN, a new col­lec­tion of poems and col­lages cen­tered around the Greek fig­ure of Iphi­ge­nia. For the past two decades, she’s blogged about writ­ing, art, hor­ror films, thrift­ing, and oth­er­mis­cel­lany at DULCETLY: NOTES ON A BOOKISH LIFE. She also runs DANCING GIRL PRESS & STUDIO, where she makes and sells all man­ner of art, books, paper goods and acces­sories. Raised in the wilds of north­ern Illi­nois, she inhab­its a beau­ti­ful, but drafty, art deco build­ing near the lake with sev­er­al mon­grel cats, her hus­band, too many books, and a vast col­lec­tion of thrift­ed finds—only some of which are haunt­ed. 

:: Earth ::

From the writer

::  Account ::

As a writer and a visu­al artist, I’m drawn to the way that peo­ple exist with­in land­scapes and inter­act with them. I’m also inter­est­ed in the way that stat­u­ary and sculp­ture immor­tal­ize and memo­ri­al­ize human beings. Plac­ing images of sculp­ture into imag­ined land­scapes brings those nat­ur­al and inter­nal worlds togeth­er for me. When I came across this image, a Lau­rana bust of Isabel­la of Aragon from the 15th cen­tu­ry, I was enam­ored with her expres­sion— a tired wari­ness, a know­ing deflec­tion. Plac­ing her in a dark lay­ered land­scape, cut with black insect con­trails, made her the per­fect cen­ter­piece for a know­ing and resigned Moth­er Earth. A plant with exposed roots cov­ers her mouth— both a silenc­ing and a word­less hope of blooming. 

Don­na Vor­rey­er cre­ates and writes in the Chica­go area where she hosts the online read­ing series A Hun­dred Pitch­ers of Hon­ey and is co-founder/ed­i­tor of Aster­ales: A Jour­nal of Arts & Let­ters. She is the author of Unrivered (2025), To Every­thing There Is (2020), Every Love Sto­ry is an Apoc­a­lypse Sto­ry (2016) and A House of Many Win­dows (2013), all from Sun­dress Pub­li­ca­tions. Her mixed media art has been fea­tured on the cov­er of her book Unrivered as well as in North Amer­i­can Review, Waxwing, Thim­ble Lit­er­ary Mag­a­zine, Pit­head Chapel, Gone Lawn, The Boil­er, and oth­er jour­nals. You can find her at http://donnavorreyer.com

Trans­for­ma­tion is a through-line in this issue. From the cher­ry blos­soms in Tay­lor Franson-Thiel’s “Car­di­nalis Twice” to the mus­tangs in Ruth Williams’s “Wild/Tame,” many of the poems you’ll read here involve change, evo­lu­tion, nature, or meta­mor­pho­sis. There are poems about sur­veil­lance cap­i­tal­ism, sum­mer camp, moth­ers, midlife aging, love, leg­ends, and let­ting go.

In their accounts, sev­er­al of the poets talk about com­ing back to writ­ing after a time away from it. Late­ly I’ve been writ­ing hard­ly at all, though my hus­band and I have got­ten into watch­ing DIY YouTube videos put out by a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple who sim­ply call them­selves “mak­ers.” They do wood­work­ing, 3D print­ing, crafts, and eccen­tric engi­neer­ing projects. One of our favorite chan­nels is a cheer­ful­ly bonkers man named Col­in Furze who is dig­ging a steel rein­forced tun­nel under his house and garden—because why not have a trap door in your pantry that leads to a secret pas­sage­way? It’s fun.

That is my wish for every­one read­ing this note. I hope you have fun cre­at­ing some­thing this spring, whether it’s a poem or a batch of blue­ber­ry muffins or an explod­ing bub­ble launch­er. (See Emi­ly the Engi­neer for that last one.) I hope you’re able to stay in touch—or get back in touch—with what you enjoy about writ­ing and mak­ing. I’m try­ing to do the same.

This issue is also the last one for our Assis­tant Poet­ry Edi­tor L.A. John­son. We’re deeply grate­ful to Liz for all of her work over the past three years and for being such an excel­lent edi­tor and col­lab­o­ra­tor. We wish her every suc­cess as she launch­es two books: one she edit­ed and one she wrote. Swirl & Vor­tex: Col­lect­ed Poems by Lar­ry Levis is out now, and Liz’s first full length col­lec­tion, Lost Music, is com­ing in 2027 from Milk­weed Editions.

Thank you all for being here and for join­ing our com­mu­ni­ty. Let’s embrace, as Megan Pin­to writes, “these long days of light.” I hope you enjoy the issue.

Christi­na Stoddard

Poet­ry Editor