This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Ty Raso, is from tether & lung by Kimberly Ann Priest (Texas A&M University Press 2025).
On Needing Someone to Be a Little Like God
My son falls into the arms of an overstuffed chair and imitates his father watching TV, remote in hand, seduced until he hears the knob turn on the trailer’s backdoor and lurches forward, out of the chair, bounding toward the groan and clack of hinges and feet, trembling with facts learned from cartoons and fingers flavored with crackers and cheese, charging into his father’s open arms, half a reflection of me standing in the kitchen with paring knife in hand, seduced— needing someone to be a little like God feeding, clothing, listening as we try to understand his absence from our day.
Kimberly Ann Priest (she/her) is the winner of the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry from the University of Nebraska Press for her book Wolves in Shells, as well as the author of tether & lung (Texas Review Press) and Slaughter the One Bird (Sundress Publications). A professor of first-year writing at Michigan State University, she lives with her husband in Maine.
Ty Raso (she/they) is a trans character, poet, and teacher. Her work has shared space with POETRY, Electric Literature, The Adroit Journal, Foglifter Journal, The Offing, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She feels most at home near rivers, and they were a 2023-2024 and 2025-2026 Poetry Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and a 2025 Djanikian Scholar with The Adroit Journal. Her debut full-length collection, MIRROR WOULD BE A BEAUTIFUL NAME FOR A CHILD is forthcoming with Noemi Press in October 2027. You can find her on Instagram @spaghetti_utopia.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Ty Raso, is from tether & lung by Kimberly Ann Priest (Texas A&M University Press 2025).
What’s Left
Imagine I am petting the soft head of a white peony, full bloom, first cutting—holding it
in the hollowed-out crook of my arm, like an unbroken egg, afraid of its yolk—the small chance
that it might leak inside the membrane, and as soon as I open the shell, its once whole soul
will spill out onto the floor. And I, in my hurried foolishness, quickly cleaning the mess,
rinsing it into a garbage disposal until its last string of yellow goo is sucked
through the drain’s black rubber teeth, as I stand over it in horror, shell fragments littering
the countertop like torn petals, all that is left of you— a sick reminder of me—
while the room grows wild with arms waiting to touch you, and I want them to touch you,
take you far away from my negligence. It happens so fast: the hospital gown, the heaving, all your shattered
pieces scattered in my lap, the bed begetting ghosts. My hands screaming for what’s left.
Kimberly Ann Priest (she/her) is the winner of the 2024 Backwaters Prize in Poetry from the University of Nebraska Press for her book Wolves in Shells, as well as the author of tether & lung (Texas Review Press) and Slaughter the One Bird (Sundress Publications). A professor of first-year writing at Michigan State University, she lives with her husband in Maine.
Ty Raso (she/they) is a trans character, poet, and teacher. Her work has shared space with POETRY, Electric Literature, The Adroit Journal, Foglifter Journal, The Offing, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She feels most at home near rivers, and they were a 2023-2024 and 2025-2026 Poetry Fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and a 2025 Djanikian Scholar with The Adroit Journal. Her debut full-length collection, MIRROR WOULD BE A BEAUTIFUL NAME FOR A CHILD is forthcoming with Noemi Press in October 2027. You can find her on Instagram @spaghetti_utopia.
MP Vare’s debut poetry chapbook,Daddio: An Iterative Erasure, was released from Bottlecap Press in 2025. Primarily a visual artist, MP Vare uses erasure, itself a type of visual poetry, and vast spans of negative space to display the effects of parental estrangement and pseudohostility. The source text is a bizarre letter addressed to the author by their father. This chapbook distills its source into uncomfortable, unspoken truths about neglect, absence, and legacy while holding the tension of a relationship that may never reach repair.
Throughout the text, child takes on ownership of the source material and the persona of the father to reclaim the role of “speaker.” The child figure is searching for the essentials of identity without the support of a stable parent, whose emotional needs swallow up all the air in a room. One poem immediately establishes an atmosphere of childlike self-soothing and self-discovery using the repetition of the lyric “I” and strings of affirmations: “I am / I like / I need / I can / I get” (Vare 16-17).Another comically reasserts the father’s ego with its own version of the self: “I / I and / I / and / so on… PS / I,” ultimately leaving “love you” unsaid (2-3). In perhaps the driest example of neglect, the poem “Corporeal” consists only of the word “Hey,” a passive greeting that represents the bare minimum of parental presence (18). The father-speaker justifies his tokenism with the aggrandizing conceit of “Walmart / more and more like / Notre Dame” followed by the resignation of “at least we have something” (14-15).
The ambiguity of child-speaker and father-speaker is perhaps the most compelling element of the chapbook, an unwarranted empathy and blurring of identity across generations. Which family member is left “wondering / still” only to realize “God / I’m invisible / look / they can’t see me. / This / continues / in spite of / me” (11, 25)? Which person feels “too weak / to be / me” (36)? Which one has “learned / to collect / debts,” and who is indebted to whom (5)? There is no right or wrong answer, as these are inherited sentiments. Just like the original letter, shame and loneliness are gifted from parent to child, a misguided attempt at alignment and understanding that result in comical conclusions such as “all of us nuts” (23). The disorder–both diagnostic and cosmic–that child-speaker and father-speaker share both unites and separates them, the very tension that binds these poems together.
However, child-speaker is grappling with more than what has been passed down. As the author explains in their author’s note, the medium of erasure not only represents their experience of sharing a bipolar 2 diagnosis with their father, but also the radiance of “what remains” despite the marginalization of trans* and chronically ill bodies (42). In other words, “Erasure encapsulates our estrangement” (42). The fragments of family found in these pages are physically disparate and scattered in space, but they make their own version of grammatical and semantic, even synaptic, sense, connected not only across but by the distance between them. Phrases like “they / even more / them” convey a sense of alienation and ostracization, but also gender euphoria and reinforced identity (39). Frugality and wonder flourish symbiotically when we are advised to “watch for / acorns / to become / homes” (20-21). Child-speaker still manages to extract wisdom and meaning from father-speaker’s disorganized legacy. Sardonic comments like “nice / antics… bail / love” could be an accusation of bailing on love, or an advisement to bail love out (28). By choosing to engage with the source text, the child-speaker gains valuable perspective, reflecting, “I was / away / from / me” and even declaring, “I own / my senses” (40, 29).
Whether the process of transmuting the letter into a poetry chapbook results in reconciliation is unclear. Now the reader is the one left “wondering / still” (11). The final poem, titled “In an Alternate Universe,” consists simply of a hypothetical harmony, brimming with longing: “I can call you / Daddy / still” (41). Even the unbroken insistence of reliability in “I can call you” feels somehow subjunctive. However, poetry and visual art alike rarely dabble in definitive resolutions, and if nothing else changed, both author and reader are transformed. The power of creating and engaging with art is in knowing, in the author’s terms, that “I’ll move through the world differently now, knowing I can do that” (42).
Zoe Korte is a queer and mad poet whose work has appeared in Roi Fainéant, Maudlin House, new words {press}, Foglifter, Room Magazine, Eunoia Review, and elsewhere. They have earned degrees in English, Spanish, and Ancient Greek from the University of Missouri. They live with their partner in St. Louis, where they work for Sundress Publications and the Missouri History Museum. You can find them on Instagram @zoekpoetry or Bluesky @mostlymosspoetry.
If you asked me what my first love was, I’d tell you it was tarot. It’s the reflexive answer I’ve given for many years without much thought, as I talk about it so often that it’s all I’m ever known for. But it isn’t actually true. Before I even knew tarot existed, there was a much younger version of me who filled loose-leaf paper with stories that were reminiscent of the Dork Diaries series, fell asleep surrounded by a vibrant Magic Tree House book collection, and wanted nothing more than to become a published author. Tarot came later, but it came on so strong that it eclipsed everything before it.
I’ve always done tarot readings for anyone I meet. There was something satisfying about sitting across from someone and helping them reveal things about themselves they hadn’t quite understood yet. Doing a tarot reading for someone has always been a cherished practice of mine because I get to listen to their story in real time and help them see a way toward something better. To me, it felt like a more personal form of storytelling.
So when I went off to college, I had settled on being an English major because no coursework existed that matched the passion I had for tarot. Idly going through an array of Shakespeare and Romanticism classes, one class had me completely captivated: a course on ghost stories and folklore. I was fascinated by different oral traditions and the preservation of stories because people are compelled to share stories about cultures and histories that might stay hidden otherwise.
That idea rearranged everything I knew about myself. My pull toward tarot and my pull toward literature started to feel like they were colliding. Both came from a need to uncover what goes unheard and a refusal to let it stay that way. It took me a while to trace tarot all the way back to that loose-leaf-paper-filling kid who wanted to be a writer one day. But I think they were always reaching for a way to hold on to stories that might otherwise go missing and to hand them to someone else with care.
My love for storytelling and amplifying voices that would otherwise be left unheard is why I was so drawn to what Sundress Publications does. I don’t come to literature and publishing with the same story that a lot of lifelong readers and writers share, and I thought that made my path unfit for working in publishing. Now I think it just means I found my way here through the belief that every story deserves someone willing to keep telling it.
Emma Flores is an undergraduate student at Binghamton University studying English. They have a particular interest in researching human behavior and society through storytelling, with a focus on cultural narratives and folklore. In their free time, Emma can be found doing tarot readings, wandering bookstores, or hunting down spiritual shops for the next deck to add to their growing collection.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from The Usual Arteries by Erin Dorney (Illuminated Press 2024).
The Usual Arteries, Version 5
why count noise its pillow small and nothing drawn open
curls between the fabric on sweet mornings
remember the look of God
how unrelenting our flushing scattered-in boys the quiet break of wonder
and I suppose I thought we were the night wanting to live against the scream
of rules we spun towards space
____________________ Author’s Note:
The Usual Arteries is a small, experimental folding object which contains poetry interacting with collaged images. This found poem was built by Erin Dorney with words touching the right hand margins on the right side pages of a withdrawn library copy of Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews, copyright 1979.
Published by Laura Rowley of Illuminated Press with design and production assistance from interns Jay Barrett and Scout Frost. Inkjet printed pages with letterpress & screen printed slipcase on paper from French Paper Company.
Erin Dorney (she/her) is a poet and artist based in Western New York. She is the author of Yes I Am Human I Know You Were Wondering (Autofocus Books), The Usual Arteries (Illuminated Press), I Am Not Famous Anymore: Poems After Shia LaBeouf (Mason Jar Press), and many zines and artist’s books. Erin’s writing has been published in DIAGRAM, Tolka, HAD, and other literary journals. Her literary artwork and installations have been featured at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and Susquehanna Art Museum. She is the co-founder of Fear No Lit.
Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from The Usual Arteries by Erin Dorney (Illuminated Press 2024).
The Usual Arteries, Version 4
the washings out so warm and I, looking ever to her, suspended spun so very well
people were shocked into the marble of same, to the meal of display
long like our sweet coming
a train and the whistle
and meadows enough to put tomorrow between arms already shining
Did I stay always eyes on her eyes? The smile back unfastened?
red welts bite my heart like years we weren’t allowed to keep
____________________ Author’s Note:
The Usual Arteries is a small, experimental folding object which contains poetry interacting with collaged images. This found poem was built by Erin Dorney with words touching the right hand margins on the right side pages of a withdrawn library copy of Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews, copyright 1979.
Published by Laura Rowley of Illuminated Press with design and production assistance from interns Jay Barrett and Scout Frost. Inkjet printed pages with letterpress & screen printed slipcase on paper from French Paper Company.
Erin Dorney (she/her) is a poet and artist based in Western New York. She is the author of Yes I Am Human I Know You Were Wondering (Autofocus Books), The Usual Arteries (Illuminated Press), I Am Not Famous Anymore: Poems After Shia LaBeouf (Mason Jar Press), and many zines and artist’s books. Erin’s writing has been published in DIAGRAM, Tolka, HAD, and other literary journals. Her literary artwork and installations have been featured at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and Susquehanna Art Museum. She is the co-founder of Fear No Lit.
Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from The Usual Arteries by Erin Dorney (Illuminated Press 2024).
The Usual Arteries, Version 3
I was born in her lap, snapped something twice
like long breath years after I’m gold—
a dedicated finger
vase our sleepy mouth clean as the day opposite each smile
this game the leaves our dirty years
rules on bare skin
____________________ Author’s Note:
The Usual Arteries is a small, experimental folding object which contains poetry interacting with collaged images. This found poem was built by Erin Dorney with words touching the right hand margins on the right side pages of a withdrawn library copy of Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews, copyright 1979.
Published by Laura Rowley of Illuminated Press with design and production assistance from interns Jay Barrett and Scout Frost. Inkjet printed pages with letterpress & screen printed slipcase on paper from French Paper Company.
Erin Dorney (she/her) is a poet and artist based in Western New York. She is the author of Yes I Am Human I Know You Were Wondering (Autofocus Books), The Usual Arteries (Illuminated Press), I Am Not Famous Anymore: Poems After Shia LaBeouf (Mason Jar Press), and many zines and artist’s books. Erin’s writing has been published in DIAGRAM, Tolka, HAD, and other literary journals. Her literary artwork and installations have been featured at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and Susquehanna Art Museum. She is the co-founder of Fear No Lit.
Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from The Usual Arteries by Erin Dorney (Illuminated Press 2024).
The Usual Arteries, Version 2
I was body and bed my waist the wall for reason in the sandbox
and I suppose I thought we were the night wanting to live against the scream
of rules we spun toward space
____________________ Author’s Note:
The Usual Arteries is a small, experimental folding object which contains poetry interacting with collaged images. This found poem was built by Erin Dorney with words touching the right hand margins on the right side pages of a withdrawn library copy of Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews, copyright 1979.
Published by Laura Rowley of Illuminated Press with design and production assistance from interns Jay Barrett and Scout Frost. Inkjet printed pages with letterpress & screen printed slipcase on paper from French Paper Company.
Erin Dorney (she/her) is a poet and artist based in Western New York. She is the author of Yes I Am Human I Know You Were Wondering (Autofocus Books), The Usual Arteries (Illuminated Press), I Am Not Famous Anymore: Poems After Shia LaBeouf (Mason Jar Press), and many zines and artist’s books. Erin’s writing has been published in DIAGRAM, Tolka, HAD, and other literary journals. Her literary artwork and installations have been featured at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and Susquehanna Art Museum. She is the co-founder of Fear No Lit.
Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere.
This feature, chosen by Guest Editor Catherine Garbinsky, is from The Usual Arteries by Erin Dorney (Illuminated Press 2024).
The Usual Arteries, Version 1
I kept colour down well once, was huge with laughter and perfumed-in
the washings out so warm and I, looking ever to her, suspended spun so very well
I was body and bed my waist the wail for reason in the sandbox
____________________ Author’s Note:
The Usual Arteries is a small, experimental folding object which contains poetry interacting with collaged images. This found poem was built by Erin Dorney with words touching the right hand margins on the right side pages of a withdrawn library copy of Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews, copyright 1979.
Published by Laura Rowley of Illuminated Press with design and production assistance from interns Jay Barrett and Scout Frost. Inkjet printed pages with letterpress & screen printed slipcase on paper from French Paper Company.
Erin Dorney (she/her) is a poet and artist based in Western New York. She is the author of Yes I Am Human I Know You Were Wondering (Autofocus Books), The Usual Arteries (Illuminated Press), I Am Not Famous Anymore: Poems After Shia LaBeouf (Mason Jar Press), and many zines and artist’s books. Erin’s writing has been published in DIAGRAM, Tolka, HAD, and other literary journals. Her literary artwork and installations have been featured at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts, and Susquehanna Art Museum. She is the co-founder of Fear No Lit.
Catherine Garbinsky (she/they) is a writer living in Knoxville, Tennessee. They received their MFA in Poetry from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where they are now a PhD candidate. Catherine’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She has written two chapbooks: All Spells Are Strong Here (Ghost City Press, 2018) and Even Curses End (Animal Heart Press, 2019), and her work has been featured in Yes Poetry, Coffin Bell Journal, Cream City Review, and elsewhere.
Here On Earth (NYQ Books 2026) is a raw collection of poetry that explores the hauntingly complex and beautiful experience that is life as we know it. Tony Gloeggler explores a system of themes regarding death, grief, health, aging, love, and familial ties, all of which are the most intricate yet humane ideologies we face at one point or another. The writing forms a vision about the growing pains that we experience throughout our lifetimes, brought on by connection and aging.
To think of what the title Here On Earth meant is a powerful idea on its own; I mean, what do I experience here on this moving planet? How big and expansive, yet so small and connected? After my own pondering, I was instantly pulled into the work and hit with a powerful composition of human experience. This book allowed me to walk through the lens of another’s perspective, to feel their grief and nostalgia, and for a moment, it felt wholly my own. That is the praise I want to emphasize about the collection–that the work is unique in its own perspective but written in a way that conveys connectedness through the aspects of life that are familiar to most. I adored the simplicity of the storytelling that twists itself into the existential ideology of what it means to live.
One poem that embodied the way our lives are so interconnected yet uniquely different is “Still Alright.” The poem starts off with the mention of a friend who has a seemingly traditional family unit, experiencing the paternal phase where his children think they have outgrown the need for his love and advice. This is the part that captured my attention at first, something I have experienced in my lifetime: dodging my mother’s kisses and avoiding her guiding words, rejecting the idea that we still need our parents. It’s not until we grow a tad older that we realize how much we still need the comfort they bring us. This poem really is ingrained with that parental love, but also shows that it can be given and needed in a not-so-traditional example. This is seen in lines like:
sad as he talks about his kids turning into teenagers, the girl who won’t lean over in the front seat to kiss his cheek when he drops
her off at school, afraid her friends can see, his son no longer wanting to play backyard basketball, a game of HORSE, sitting at the dinner table, head down staring at his phone, one word answers seasoned with annoyance.
Following the stanza about his friend Tony, we are introduced to Jesse. Jesse is twenty-six and is autistic; our speaker has a paternal bond with him, doing his best to maintain the kind of consistency Jesse needs. Even though the prior relationship the author had with Jesse’s mother has long been gone, he was still a present parental figure to Jesse throughout his life until recently. In these lines we see why our author is no longer able to visit Jesse and how much of a toll it takes on him emotionally even though Jesse is not his biological son–“but I’m still thinking about Jesse and me, / his mom and her email saying I can’t visit him / anymore because I write about him. Poems / like this.” This causes a similar disconnect as Tony is having with his teenage children. I think it is a beautiful example of how the kind of parental bond is not exclusive to situational circumstances but outlasts the tests of time. Very well-written in the way comparing Tony’s traditional family and his own non-traditional version of fatherhood. “I think of talking to my friend, not / sure he will understand what Jesse means / to me or why I didn’t simply stop writing / about him like his mom asked, how inseparable / is my life’s story from my poems anyway?”
The entire collection is an ode to connectedness, allowing readers to find solace in relatable themes that can sometimes be hard to digest. It explores the unique identity and experiences the author has been through, while also showing the vulnerability of hardship. Reading about the encounters another person faces in their life allows room for introspection, finding similarities and complex distinctions in our lives. A lovely read for all those looking for community in their own grief.
Miranda Spurlock is 21 years old and a cat mom of one, but if you count the feral cats who use their charming manipulation on her (their cute faces), she is a cat mom of 4-8 on any given day. She loves the color pink; she is very fond of fairies and escaping into a book is what she does best. Spurlock prides herself on creativity and has tried almost every hobby there is to try. She is currently a senior at UTK where she is majoring in Business Management and minoring in English.
