Ars Poetica — Issam Zineh

Favorite Line

“Be the biggest presence in your own life, your own biggest ghost in your own cemetary of numbers.”

Craft Magic

• Powerful invective sentences
• Philosophical ideas embedded in surreal turns of phrases
• The revolutionary undertones in each line!

Read the full poem in AGNI

a Life/Mislaid — Allisa Cherry

Favorite Line

“Summer died into fall eighteen times and then she slipped over the bridge in her silver hatchback.”

Craft Magic

• Strong narrative focus that hooks you from the opening line.
• Simple sentence structure helps to flow through the poem easily.
• Concrete imagery linked abstract thoughts (“…an idea as thin as fog burning off a warming lawn..”)

Read the full poem in december mag

Happiness — Tim Tim Cheng

Favorite Line

“[Happiness] comes like an ambulance you hear from a distance.”

Craft Magic

• Captures place brilliantly through sensory evocations
• The theme of missing and memory is the focal point
• Amiguity is used beautifully between the “you” and the “implied-I” speaker.

Read the full poem in Berlin Lit

What We Thought Was the Sound of Heaven Was Only Just the Coinstar — Dare Williams

Favorite Line

“…bouncing toward the throne…even the dog got a bone…”

Craft Magic

• The rhythm here is to die for
• The visual arrangement matches perfectly with the content and feels wholly intentional
• Working-class poetry arising from personal experience yet reaching out towards the universal

Read the full poem in Split Lip Magazine

Orson and Akira — Ingrid Casey

Favorite Line

“Orson is in the higher academic stream, without enough brand knowledge or street smart or toddler recognition of corporations and pop stars.”

Craft Magic

• Prose poem that pulls the perfect strings to channel the best of lyric and narrative.
• Very funny in an intelligent, even cocky way.
• Unexpected — you can’t anticipate the next line — and thus enrapturing!

Read the full poem in Banshee Press

I Asked about Desire — Dorsía Smith Silva

Favorite Line

“There is no one to save me. I’m free to pretend this is an earthquake drill.”

Craft Magic

• Immediate, pulse-racing vibe to each successive couplet.
• The central question (Who will save me?) creates an anchor for the whole piece.
• The voice is bold and does not shy away from narrative while also managing to be surreal in an engaging way.

Read the full poem in Shenandoah

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