Author: John Rufo

“I was a house / I was a witch” : Muriel Leung’s “A House Fell Down on All of Us.”
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“I was a house / I was a witch” : Muriel Leung’s “A House Fell Down on All of Us.”

“I was a house. / I was a witch” declares the middle stanza of Muriel Leung’s “A House Fell Down on All of Us” from the newest issue of DRUNKEN BOAT. This poem, in my reading, functions to present intermingling transformations that perform whatever an opposite of distillation forecloses.

The Best Poem I Read This Month: Jayy Dodd’s “Black Philosophy #3”
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The Best Poem I Read This Month: Jayy Dodd’s “Black Philosophy #3”

“Black Philosophy #3,” Dodd’s new poem from the first issue of The Shade Journal, poses a series of “if…then…” questioning statements regarding blackness, black boys, death, dead boys, living boys, pretty boys, prettiness, and a manner of interrelating, interlocking, and uncompromising conditions between those terms.

Pictures of a couple of rows of books on a shelf.

The Best Poem I Read This Month: Joshua Jennifer Espinoza’s “Wrapped In My Body I Dream”

Apogee Journal’s new folio “Queer History, Queer Now” acts as an “altar” to “reject the whitewashing, the profit-making, and political tokenizing that warps queer struggles and tragedies.” For this month, I decided to write regarding Joshua Jennifer Espinoza’s “Wrapped In My Body I Dream.”

The Best Poem I Read This Month: Nikki Wallschlaeger’s “Blues for A Bar So Low That It Became a Cage”
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The Best Poem I Read This Month: Nikki Wallschlaeger’s “Blues for A Bar So Low That It Became a Cage”

Nikki Wallschlaeger is the author of the collection Houses and the graphic chapbook I Hate Telling You How I Really Feel, two arrangements that undercut artifice and underline activation energies. This month, I dove into one of her new poems from the most recent incarnation of The Journal Petra.

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The Best Poem I Read This Month: Sarah Sgro’s “Body as a Plant Expanding”

  I’ve read Sarah Sgro’s poetry for about four years, and remain a consistent witness to its various evolutions and concentrations concerning femininity, food, sexuality, and waste. In the past year, Sgro’s work has flourished, wreaked havoc, and run amok through many journals. Because her pieces keep sharpening their knives, it can prove difficult to…

Pictures of a couple of rows of books on a shelf.
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The Best Poem I Read This Month: “A performance for intimate space with strangers” by Saretta Morgan

  Saretta Morgan participates in “text-based writing,” and currently attends the interdisciplinary graduate writing program at Pratt Institute. Additionally, she’s a member of the Belladonna* Collective, a feminist avant-garde group founded in New York City. These affiliations begin to orient lenses and traditions through which to read her work; but “begin” is the operative word here,…