Current Issue

Self-Portrait as Rapunzel (Crimmins Poetry Prize Winner)

i. My mother built her tower out of baby teeth

Tough Bitches (Crimmins Poetry Prize Runner-up)

I don’t like girls—our big, ugly nipples, slumber parties, cucumbers damming

The Childhood of Wicked Stepmothers (Crimmins Poetry Prize Runner-up)

Like many beginnings, this is soft and small. Pink, smelling of flake soap and breastmilk.

Yield Signs Don’t Exist (Crimmins Poetry Prize Runner-up)

Rob ran a solid red, first car in pilgrimage to Rocky Horror Picture show. He flicked a gaze back.

Brotherly Love (Crimmins Poetry Prize Honorable Mention)

Philly all the emo with none of the moshpit. Philly free jazz in a trashbag.

Philosophy of Baking (Crimmins Poetry Prize Honorable Mention)

In the oven there are secrets: drippings, crusts burned and flaked,

DOG, COME HERE INTO THE DARK HOUSE. COME HERE, BLACK DOG. (Crimmins Poetry Prize Honorable Mention)

At night when barred owls ask who cooks for you, she sits by the window

Thirst (Crimmins Poetry Prize Honorable Mention)

From Mexico I brought you a silver and red heart:

In the Land of the Schustermans

“Let’s never keep secrets,” Annie’s future mother in law whispers to her at the bottom of the stairs in their house in Wynnewood, two hours before Annie’s wedding to her only son Jack.

Without His Fingers

The day was hot and humid, typical of a Philly summer. Bernie and John couldn’t wait for their ocean swim.

St. Andrew of Amalfi

Andrew cracked his butter knife through the shrimp’s pink shell. Droplets of olive oil flung across the table. One landed on Gillian’s cyan blouse. She had called the color cyan and had bought it for the honeymoon because she still tried to impress him.

For R

When I am dead, I will still be your lamb, still listening for your bleating.

Grim Story

For one whole decade I was a giant:

Nothing but Villas in Tuscany

when he comes home

The Fight

Down in the shoebox

In the Trenches of the Cimarron Canyon

When La Llorona met Billy the Kid in the trenches of the Cimarron canyon, the world was black with smokestacks, burning as buildings became tumbleweeds. The scars of the trees were brighter than the mountains, now rounded hills of charcoal and we were all mountain men, bleary-eyed and mad with thirst. From the gorge, under [...]

Breaking Bad Online Habits with…Online Writing Classes

In a desperate attempt to break my writer’s block (most notably my inability to sustain anything without getting sucked into the wormhole of the Internet, Googling phrases like “medieval brassieres” and “who is Demi Moore dating now?”), I signed up for an online writing class.  I was skeptical at first–thinking that it would be some [...]

Profile: Emily Rose Cole, Poet

Emily Cole is this year’s winner of the Sandy Crimmins National Prize in Poetry. She was kind enough to sit down with us and answer a few questions about her process, plans, and love of poetry and music.   Congratulations on winning the Sandy Crimmins National Prize in Poetry for your poem, Self-Portrait as Rapunzel. [...]