On Agadez by Fasasi Abdulrosheed Oladipupo

Poems

Fasasi Abdulrosheed Oladipupo is a Nigerian poet and the author of the micro-chapbook Sidiratul Muntaha (Ghost City Press, 2022). His work has been published or is forthcoming at Ambit magazine, Southern Humanities Review, Obsidian: Literature and Art in the African Diaspora, Oxford Review of Books, Stand magazine, Roanoke Review, Louisiana Literature, Olongo Africa, the Citron Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets anthology. Fasasi explores trans-Mediterranean migration, loss, sex trafficking, and, recently, transatlantic slave trade.

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Child Therapy by Laine Derr

Poems

Laine Derr holds an MFA from Northern Arizona University and has published interviews with Carl Phillips, Ross Gay, Ted Kooser, and Robert Pinsky. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming from J Journal, Full Bleed + The Phillips Collection, ZYZZYVA, Portland Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere.

Phenomenology by Stephanie Niu

Poems

Stephanie Niu is a poet and digital storyteller from Marietta, Georgia. She is the author of Survived By, winner of the 2023 Host Publications Chapbook Prize, and She Has Dreamt Again of Water, winner of the 2021 Diode Chapbook Contest. Her poems have appeared in Copper Nickel, Waxwing, Ecotone, the Georgia Review, and elsewhere. She is currently completing a Fulbright scholarship on immigration and labor history on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean.

The Score by Diane Raptosh

Poems

Diane Raptosh’s collection American Amnesiac (Etruscan Press), was longlisted for the 2013 National Book Award in poetry. The recipient of three fellowships in literature from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, she served as the Boise Poet Laureate (2013) as well as the Idaho Writer-in-Residence (2013–2016). In 2018 she won the Idaho Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. She teaches literature and creative writing and codirects the program in Criminal Justice/Prison Studies at the College of Idaho. Her newest chapbook, Hand Signs from Eternity’s Yurt, was published in June 2022 (Kelsay Books).

The Stages of Grief: A Guide by Kim Curts Mattheussens

Poems

Kim Curts Mattheussens studied German and English literature at Ball State University, the Katholische Universität Eichstätt, and Westfälische-Wilhelms Universität Münster, and creative writing at the Bluegrass Writers Studio at Eastern Kentucky University. She is an alum of the DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon. Her work is published or forthcoming in the Athena Review, Punt Volat, Southword Literary Journal, and the Common, among others. She lives in Los Angeles.

Photo by Sabian Symbols

To Sing in the Presence of Quaking by Diane Raptosh

Poems

Diane Raptosh teaches creative writing and co-directs the program in Criminal Justice/Prison Studies at the College of Idaho. Her eighth book, Hand Signs from Eternity’s Yurt, was published by Kelsay Books in June 2022.  Her collection American Amnesiac (Etruscan Press) was long-listed for the 2013 National Book Award in poetry. The recipient of three fellowships in literature from the Idaho Commission on the Arts, she served as Boise Poet Laureate (2013) and Idaho Writer-in-Residence (2013–2016). In 2018 she won the Idaho Governor’s Arts Award in Excellence.

RATATOUILLE: Sonnet for Shelly Bach by Eugene Mahon

Poems

Eugene Mahon, MD, is a training and supervising psychoanalyst at Columbia Psychoanalytic Center for Training and Research. He has published four books—Such Stuff as Dreams, A Psychoanalytic Odyssey, Rensal the Redbit, and Bone Shop of the Heart—and numerous articles on psychoanalysis. He practices in New York City.

Fire by Terri Greco

Poems

Terri Greco’s poems have appeared in Tar River Poetry, North Carolina Literary Review, San Pedro River Review, Jacar Press, and Main Street Rag. She was the recipient of a James Applewhite Poetry Prize (Honorable Mention, 2020) and an honorable mention in Kakalak (Main Street Rag, 2019). She was a James Applewhite semifinalist (2022). She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Skiffieworlds by Joanne Brooks

Poems

Joanne Brooks is a psychoanalyst and psychoanalytic psychotherapist, a member of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, and head of professional practice for the British Psychoanalytic Council. Based in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she has an independent practice, she is a training therapist and supervisor with the Scottish Association of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. She has an MPhil in Creative Writing from the University of Newcastle and has exhibited her work at the Northern Poetry Festivals in 2016 and 2017: in 2016 on the theme of Northern landscapes as part of a collaborative project between poets and artists and in 2017 for Steps in Time, a poetry app guiding users on a poem-walk across Newcastle. Her MPhil thesis draws on the work of Alice Oswald and explores the relationship between poetry, the creative process, psychoanalysis, listening, and voice. In her work as a psychoanalyst and poet, she continues to explore and develop these themes.

The Talking Cure by Nancy Kuhl

Poems

Nancy Kuhl’s fourth book of poetry, On Hysteria, is forthcoming from Shearsman Books in 2022. She was a research fellow at the Western New England Institute for Psychoanalysis from 2010 to 2019. She is co-editor of Phylum Press, a small poetry publisher, and Curator of Poetry for the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Summering in the Underworld by Linda Hillringhouse

Poems

Linda Hillringhouse holds an MFA from Columbia University. She is a first-place winner of the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award (2014) and the second-place winner of Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry (2012). Her work has appeared in Lips, New Ohio Review, Paterson Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, Oberon, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2020. Her book of poetry, The Things I Didn’t Know to Wish For (New York Quarterly Press, 2020), was longlisted for the Julie Suk Award and shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Book Award grand prize.

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CRAZIES by Naomi Janowitz

Poems

Naomi Janowitz is a graduate of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. Her articles have appeared in the American Journal of Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology. She teaches Religious Studies at the University of California, Davis. Her most recent book is Acts of Interpretation: Ancient Semiotic Ideologies and their Modern Echoes, forthcoming from De Gruyter. She has published poetry in Response and From the Depths.

Photo by Kunal Shinde

THERE IS MORE TO LIFE, THERE IS MORE, by Ayşe Tekşen

Poems

Ayşe Tekşen lives in Ankara, Turkey, where she works as a research assistant at the Department of Foreign Language Education, Middle East Technical University. Her work has been included in Brickplight, the Willow Literary Magazine, Fearsome Critters, Susan, the Broke Bohemian, the Remembered Arts Journal, Terror House Magazine, Shoe Music Press, Havik: Las Positas College Anthology, Deep Overstock, Lavender Review, Voice of Eve, the Courtship of Winds, Mojave Heart Review, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Tipton Poetry Journal, Rigorous, Rabid Oak, the Thieving Magpie, Headway Quarterly, the Roadrunner Review, Helen: A Literary Magazine, the Ilanot Review, and Pensive.

Illustration by Ichpochmak /Shutterstock.com | Edited by Mafe Izaguirre

CENTO: I KNOW YOU’RE TIRED, BUT COME. THIS IS THE WAY by D. Dina Friedman

Poems

D. Dina Friedman has published widely in literary journals and received two Pushcart Prize nominations for poetry and fiction. She is the author of one book of poetry, Wolf in the Suitcase (Finishing Line Press), and two young adult novels, Escaping into the Night (Simon & Schuster BYR) and Playing Dad’s Song (Farrar, Straus and Giroux BYR). She has an MFA from Lesley University and teaches at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Illustration by Ichpochmak /Shutterstock.com | Edited by Mafe Izaguirre

LIKE LIVING IN AN EPILOGUE by Linda Hillringhouse

Poems

Linda Hillringhouse holds an MFA from Columbia University. She was a first-place winner of the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award (2014), a second-place winner of Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry (2012), and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize (2020). Her work has appeared in Lips, New Ohio Review, Paterson Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from the Macdowell Colony, Yaddo, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her recent book of poetry, The Things I Didn’t Know to Wish for (New York Quarterly Press) was shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Book Award Grand Prize in 2021.

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2020 VISION by Gail Griffin

Poems

Gail Griffin is the author of four books of nonfiction, most recently Grief’s Country: A Memoir in Pieces, named a Michigan Notable Book, and “The Events of October:” Murder-Suicide on a Small Campus. Her essays, poems, and flash nonfiction have appeared widely and been honored in publications including Southern Review, Fourth Genre, Missouri Review, and New Ohio Review. A native of Detroit, she spent a long career teaching literature, writing, and women’s studies at Kalamazoo College, where she won awards for both teaching and creative/scholarly work. She is at work on a collection of personal essays on confronting whiteness; she is also digging through a stack of paper to see if a poetry collection is hiding there. From her vantage point in southwestern Michigan, she studies, and mourns, the cracking open of America and dreams of her next trip to the shore of a Great Lake.