Dear friends,

How are you today? I finally made some time for tennis this week and played some of my best games. There’s a particular joy in getting a little better at something you love. Humans are so cool in motion. As we’re teaching our daughter—who gets mad at herself while learning piano—the only way to get good at anything is through practice. It’s surprising that she already has far better control over her fingers than I do over mine.

I hope you, too, are finding time to practice artforms, craftskills, and/or sports you care about. This is one of the few rebellions still available to us, in our age of endless distraction: to get slowly, stubbornly good at something for no reason other than the doing of it. Which is also, I guess, why we continue to read & write poetry, even as the larger world, as I am repeatedly told, does not care about it. But what larger world?

Anyhow, I’ll curb the solipsist in me for now. For some of your precious eyes, I’ve been working on adding dark mode to our website. Unfortunately, because of the colorful & vibrant nature of our magazine, a fully dark-mode-accessible design isn’t quite possible, but I’ve managed to bring the function to our reading-heavy pages (poems, interviews, blog posts). So for those of you who read ONLY POEMS late into the night, your eyes can finally rest a bit easier.

As ever, thank you for being here. Spend some time with our second finalist for the Poet of the Year Award, and if his poems move you, don’t forget to share them with someone.

Yours,

​Karan​

Ryler Dustin

RYLER DUSTIN represented Seattle on the final stage of the Individual World Poetry Slam. He’s the author of Trailer Park Psalms, winner of the University of Pittsburgh’s 2022-2023 Starrett Prize, and Heavy Lead Birdsong (Write Bloody, 2008), forthcoming in an expanded edition this fall. He lives in Bellingham, WA with a dog he met while hiking.

from a bite or to be bitten

Death is awkward and sincere. It is like a desperate lover,
it touches us because it mistakes us for God.

The Softest Part of You

On tenderness, mortality & the poem as afterlife

"To me, writing a poem always feels like pulling off a heist. It’s not something I have a clear blueprint for. It feels improvised. How to find my way in depends on the job." Read the full interview →

Submit to the $2000 Bob Hicok Fellowship for All Poets, Everywhere

Send us a portfolio of poems that'll make us lose our minds. Submit now to the $2000 Bob Hicok Fellowship. Open to all poets writing in English, living anywhere in the world. All submissions are considered for publication. Final judge is Bob Hicok himself. Winner receives funding + year-long support for their writing & career. Full guidelines details here