miCRo: “Caul” by Cristi Donoso Best
Cristi Donoso Best’s “Caul” opens in medias res with the birthing of a calf. As the child-aged speaker observes the scene, the poem moves cinematically between the birth and the act of watching.
miCRo: “What I Know about Space” by Melissa Bowers
Melissa Bowers’s hybrid piece “What I Know About Space” uses descriptions of the cosmos as a distancing tactic, its vignettes functioning as satellites swirling around a deeper issue for the speaker.
miCRo: “Haunting Season” by Cindy Juyoung Ok
Cindy Juyoung Ok’s “Haunting Season” opens with a declaration that “the hunt” has begun. What follows is a series of reflections on the concept of the self, especially the self under surveillance, the self as an Othered reflection.
miCRo: “End of the Year Poem, 2020” by Zhihao Zhang
Translated by Yuemin He, “End of the Year Poem, 2020” by Zhihao Zhang begins where many of us begin our days (regularly, but perhaps especially during a global pandemic): looking at our phones. This mundane act gives way to a reflection that, like the year 2020 itself, is filled with rote action, uncertainty, and contradiction.
miCRo: “The Hoard” by Dev Murphy
The speaker of Dev Murphy’s hybrid piece “The Hoard” uses the words of literary figures to examine and reexamine love and desire, creating a hoard within the text itself, which she reshapes throughout the piece.
miCRo: “Sonnet and a Half for Conceit of the Heart” by Satya Dash
This poem’s form is a sonnet-and-a-half that drives the reader onward; in the end, we’re left in the middle.
miCRo: “Two Moments Above and Below” by Austyn Wohlers
“Two Moments Above and Below,” like many stories, begins with a bird—but instead of the singular, symbolic flash of color that many birds seem to be in books and movies, the opening pigeon is iridescent, indefinable.
miCRo: “A Young Woman Made Up of Dirt” by R. Cross
In this twist on a creation myth, R. Cross’s “A Young Woman Made Up of Dirt” explores self-definition and womanhood through the speaker’s musings on her formation and destruction.
miCRo: “It Is” by Danielle Badra
Every line of Danielle Badra’s contrapuntal poem “It Is” complicates what it means to speak grief. What is the form that can carry it?
miCRo: “The Man I Do Not Sleep With” by Daniella Toosie-Watson
The uniquely bright-blue sky, the grass, butterflies, and turtles in the poem are all part of a world that reimagines the typical relationship between lovers, but also between nature and the body.
miCRo: “Burger King was once home” by NaBeela Washington
At each level of poetic craft, Washington draws a stark contrast between the speaker’s deliberate reflections on home-making, on love, and other children’s frantic consumption in a fast food restaurant.
miCRo: “Mother” by SJ Sindu
By pairing repetition and lists as the narrative moves through time, Sindu forms a striking portrait of a mother-daughter relationship complicated by generational differences.
