Amarys Dejai 4/5/26 Amarys Dejai 4/5/26

Amarys Dejai in Conversation with American Poet Rachelle Toarmino

“I see doubt and doubling down—or curiosity and faith, wanting to know and giving in to not knowing—as the two defining qualities of my experience of thought. My poems are an extension of that experience, like a mind eavesdropping on itself. How thought feels.”

Emma De Lisle 4/5/26 Emma De Lisle 4/5/26

Lightproof

“Have I seen you take a detour? Even / once? You hum. You look sometimes / at the camera. 9pm in July you seem / withheld, almost, and for that reason / lit. Emphasized. Available. Animal. Or you would be.”

Emma De Lisle 4/5/26 Emma De Lisle 4/5/26

I Would Call You Girl

“earlier— / between early & / now, when Larissa / was my problem. Hair to her shoulders / Larissa, / she’s the one wearing yellow, / you’re the one / so beautiful with your shirt that hangs / drippy at your waist like that.”

Giovanni Laera trans. Riccardo Benzina 4/5/26 Giovanni Laera trans. Riccardo Benzina 4/5/26

Mutism

“you and your mother’s / faults, your father’s, you and your dead / blues on the night stand, please forget now: / the pipe is not ours”

Eli Karren 4/5/26 Eli Karren 4/5/26

Changer

“Tonight / I’m crossing the bridge / and the city is empty / save for the bachelorette parties, / drunk and tinseled, / with a little cocaine”

Maxine Chen 4/5/26 Maxine Chen 4/5/26

Eternal Flame by the Bangles

“hearing you from the other room / I supergluemyeyestothewall / and only have to pay for eyelid surgery. / My astigmatism loosely buttoning the street / lamps to this hairy, milksome, / night, your / mouth whistling through leaves.”

Maxine Chen 4/5/26 Maxine Chen 4/5/26

In Which Ariel Is Selectively Mute

“Thought everything would be quieter because / they say it’s all just humming, Like a / shopping mall’s minute of silence / with the cashiers staring up at scaffolded / ceilings & Customers tucking in their chins / in the frozen aisle & God pinching hi-hats / with overgrown nails”

Colby Cotton 4/5/26 Colby Cotton 4/5/26

When I Think of the End

“I think of the brass / rings your father brought back / from Carcassonne, or Cassis, / where you could float / for years in the Aude”

Sammy Bellin 4/5/26 Sammy Bellin 4/5/26

The End of the Affair

“Lovers meet in the shade of a lotus tree / next to a bench splattered, muddied by water. / In the evenings, bold light showers us / as cardinals erupt from the gold-laced laburnum. / We shiver in the Carnegie looking for Klee”

M. Benjamin Thorne 4/5/26 M. Benjamin Thorne 4/5/26

Lilith, Lilith

“When the apple bit me, / sweet pooling into sweet, / I heard cherubim laughing, felt soft feathered wings / caress each cheek”

Henri Meschonnic trans. Gabriella Bedetti and Don Boes 4/5/26 Henri Meschonnic trans. Gabriella Bedetti and Don Boes 4/5/26

[I am a joy that moves towards you as we enter]

“when the war is ancient / the face hides from the face so / that the eyes are more beautiful”