Fraught Woods: Chelsea Rathburn’s Still Life with Mother and Knife
These are the woods through which we walk from an early age.
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On Love and Dogs: Cleanness by Garth Greenwell
Greenwell tells his story on the narrator’s terms, and that makes all the difference.
Great Pain, Great Pleasure: Here All Night, Nightshade, and Blazons
All three remind readers that what is imagined is not always real and the world is not as expected.
A Decade of Surface over Significance: Sleeveless by Natasha Stagg
A former editor at V, Stagg is no stranger to the slippage between life and editorial.
The Fraught Nature of Belonging: Nathalie Handal’s Life in a Country Album
Each poem opens a window into cities and vocabularies of exile.
Calling It Like It Is: Leland Cheuk’s No Good Very Bad Asian
No Good Very Bad Asian is a letter to the future, to a reality that has begun taking shape in Maryann but has yet to be fully realized.
To Survive the World: Build Yourself a Boat by Camonghne Felix
She wants us to know the mental and emotional labor is exhausting.
Stay Free: Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha
Cha constructs a Los Angeles sharply different from most representations of the city.
Exceptional Pain and Power: Lima :: Limón by Natalie Scenters-Zapico
See how visceral? Before I opened this book, I felt I was already inside it.
Metamorphoses: The Uninhabitable Earth and The Overstory
And then, from this scorched landscape, transformation.
Scientific, Healing Magic: How to Know the Flowers by Jessica Smith
A poem by Jessica Smith yields the feeling that atoms of meaning vibrate, then come together.
Agency and Wonder: Amina Cain’s Indelicacy
To read Amina Cain is to enter tide pools of the mind.