Posts Tagged: poem

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40.1 SNEAK PEEK: SHITTY FRIDA KAHLO POEM by JESSICA LANAY

SP_Lanay_Shitty Frida Kahlo Poem

 

Jessica Lanay is a poet, short fiction, and art writer. Her work focuses on architectures of interiority, escapism, history of psychoanalysis, and southern culture. Her poetry has appeared in Sugar House Review, Crab Fat Literary Magazine, Acentos Review, Fugue, and others. She has work forthcoming in A Bad Penny Review, The Normal School, and Prairie Schooner. Her short fiction was most recently published in Tahoma Literary Review and Black Candies. A short autobiographical essay was also published in Salt Hill Journal. Her art writing can be found in BOMB and ArtSlant. She is a Callaloo, Cave Canem, and Kimbilio Fellow; she is also a Millay Colony Residency recipient.

 

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Announcing the 2018 Poetry Prize Winner!

 

We are excited to announce that the winner of the 2018 Poetry Prize is Jan Verberkmoes for her poem “Elegy as Conditionality: Hornets Building.” Many thanks to everyone who submitted their work and made this year’s prize possible. The winning poem and a few finalists will appear in our Winter 2018 issue.

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Poetry Feature: “The White-Haired Girl,” by Sally Wen Mao

1945

I will return your spurn with a curtsy
whipped in boiling water.
Cut the red ribbon from my hair,
what’s left of my youth. Lotus seeds slide
down your throat—does it taste chaste?
The fugue of winter casts shadows
on the furnace—how it glowers
like the limpets buried in my hair,
handfuls of which you pull
towards shore, toward stagnation.
My destination is not this village,
where boars shear off bad skin
in the river, dung and alderflies
thirsting for flesh. Am I maid
or mendicant? The unwrinkled bed
is not what sky aches for. I am no swooning
debt. Next I say escape and small gullies
bloom before me—dendriform paradise:
mountain, grotto, kindling. The lightning
in my temple wards off wolves. I bow
only to pick the ticks off my shoes,
brand them clean across your cheekbones.

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