Italics
Italics is a collection of poems that makes no attempt to hide what it believes: that each living thing is a school unto itself; that our existence is a factual miracle; that our lives are our most important sermons; that the right words in the right order can nudge the world a little. Alison Davis reminds us that darkness is part of the […]
Seed Corn Must Not Be Ground
While Pat Browne was waiting to be born, her mother descended into madness. Living under non-negotiable requirements of perfection and cleanliness, Pat and her four younger siblings faced rules and expectations that opposed all notions “of the perfect Catholic family,”– the desired outward illusion. Sleeping perfectly still “like pieces of paper slipped into an envelope” […]
Devil’s Backbone
Julie L. Moore’s Devil’s Backbone is a fearless, morally urgent reckoning with American history, white supremacy, and the self. Moore confronts inherited cruelties, national hypocrisy, and personal responsibility with unflinching honesty, confessing that she is “more than / complicit” as “a fragile, white / woman” who would like to “carve [herself] out of this story but can’t.” Though the poet realizes she has “no tool / to make the crooked path straight” and “can’t stop the killing,” her resonant diction, controlled […]
Life Amplified
At forty-six years old, Lila begins living life at a higher frequency. The world feels different to her, the grass looks greener, the flowers smell more fragrant. Her life view has changed. She founds an art foundation in her community. Lila was unrecognizable two years prior, when her world felt like it was crashing in […]
Hard Listening
Hard Listening is a testament of hope, celebrating the fierce feminine in song and on the streets. The collection is filled with odes—to a pair of girls hanging out on a neighbor’s porch, a naked woman in the locker room of the gym, a mother lifting the weight of her own pain off her child. […]
The Gospel of Salome
In 38 CE Alexandria, Salome, a skilled physician with a past she’s fought to suppress, struggles to navigate the complex landscape of first-century womanhood and the rapid progression of dementia threatening both her memory and medical practice. John Mark, a follower of the fledgling Christian movement, is sent to preach the hope of Yeshua’s message […]
To Phrase a Prayer for Peace
To Phrase a Prayer for Peace wrestles with what is holy, with the world as we humans have constructed it, with war and violence, with love and friendship, with communication between people (and nations) who might not agree, with being comfortable while others are dying, with the felt fears of a Jew and thus the need […]
The Watch
Sometimes the most ordinary object can open a door to life’s greatest mysteries. For Paula Sager, it’s a wristwatch—one that takes on a life of its own after her father’s death, prompting questions concerning synchronicity and the nature of relationship. Paula walks alongside her father to the threshold of life, bearing witness to every step. […]
Seeing Things
With its focus on memory, illness, and their ramifications, Seeing Things explores overlapping roles of a daughter whose mother is entering the beginning stages of dementia and of a mother whose daughter is struggling with depression. These poems also witness a woman juggling her own memories of abuse and survival who lives in a world […]
The Unfolding
2025 NAUTILUS BOOK AWARD (SILVER MEDAL) In The Unfolding, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer startles us with the wonder, beauty, and sacred connection that blossom out of living wholeheartedly. Here the aching heart goes dancing. Written after the deaths of her son and father, these poems embody paradox—simultaneously somber and playful, brokenhearted and uplifting, even solemn and sexy. […]