DeAnna Stephens – Matrilineal
Matrilineal The candor of these mountains will fracture your footing. Flux of memory sways in the excavator’s cradle— spring grass and bluets choking beneath the rich earth. My darling, your baby teeth will outlast you. Your mother’s grandmother pondered smothering the fires she lit in her summer kitchen’s cranky black heart, yet she fed that […]
John Sibley Williams’ The Drowning House, Reviewed by Vivian Wagner
John Sibley Williams The Drowning House Elixir Press Reviewer: Vivian Wagner John Sibley Williams’ new collection of poetry, The Drowning House, is a book about personal, cultural, and generational trauma. It explores American violence, racism, and colonialism, telling multiple stories from a variety of perspectives about the intersecting traumas inflicted by this country’s people, as […]
Michael Montlack’s Daddy, Reviewed by Brian Fanelli
Michael Montlack Daddy NYQ Books Reviewer: Brian Fanelli Michael Montlack’s Daddy contains several types of daddies and mothers, important key figures in the poet’s life. This collection is also an exploration of desire, childhood, sex, and gay identity. It praises a loved one in one poem before acknowledging the fallen in another. Through this journey, […]
Phillip Sterling – The Miracle of the Hands
The Miracle of the Hands The children receive an unexpected box in the mail. It’s marzipan, molded in the shape of an eighty-two-year-old hand. Their parents are astonished; they open another bottle of Bordeaux, mix up a batch of waffles. To be fair, says the father, each child will get a finger, and the thumb […]
Chocolate Waters’ Muddying the Holy Waters, Reviewed by Ann Wehrman
Chocolate Waters Muddying the Holy Waters Eggplant Press Reviewer: Ann Wehrman Chocolate Waters’ Muddying the Holy Waters underscores the relevance of her unique first name, a nickname from childhood. Waters offers direct, mature poems about love and life that crack open the reader’s heart with their honesty and, ultimately, satisfy and warm like a cup […]
