Marina Kraiskaya is a Ukrainian-American writer and editor-in-chief of the journal Bicoastal Review. In 2024, she won the Markham Poetry Prize and Letter Review Nonfiction Prize, placed second in the Joy Bale Boone Prize, and was a finalist in the Mississippi Review and Driftwood prizes. Find her in Poetry International, The Los Angeles Review, Southeast Review, Zone 3, The Shore, EcoTheo, Deep Wild, Leavings, and more. mkraiskaya.com
Whether “It’s a [family] story we don’t like / to tell” or the shifting of roles and a meditation on death “In the book we are reading together,” wisdom closes its hand over sentiment.