This selection, chosen by guest editor Alexis Ivy, is from Reacquaint by Allison Thung (kith books 2024).
Swimming as Allegory for Living
When I say I don’t know how to swim, I mean I never learned to do it properly. That they tried to teach me, but gave up when I couldn’t figure how to turn my head just enough to breathe, yet not sink. I mean I can do some half-assed version of the front crawl in which my face stays submerged for as long as I can hold my breath, while my arms slice through water in unintended tandem, and my feet paddle relentlessly like a runner duck’s, propelling my body forward in small bursts, until it feels like my lungs will explode if I don’t allow my head to break through the surface that very instant to take in as much air as I possibly can, even if the lost momentum causes me to sink like a stone. When I say I don’t know how to swim, I mean I never learned to do it painlessly.
Allison Thung is a Singaporean poet. She is the author of Reacquaint (kith books, 2024) and Molar (kith books, 2024). Her poetry has been published in ANMLY, Sixth Finch, Cease, Cows, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Best Small Fictions. Allison is an Assistant Poetry Editor at ANMLY.
Alexis Ivy is a 2018 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry. She is the author of Romance with Small-Time Crooks(BlazeVOX [books], 2013), and Taking the Homeless Census (Saturnalia Books, 2020) which won the 2018 Saturnalia Editors Prize. She is co-editor of Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology (West Virginia University Press, 2023). A recent resident of the Sundress Academy for the Arts, she lives in her hometown Boston, working as an advocate for the homeless, and teaching in the PoemWorks community.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Alexis Ivy, is from Reacquaint by Allison Thung (kith books 2024).
Pebble
Further to the last time we break each other’s hearts, I go alone to the sea, picking my way through sunbathers at Killiney Beach until I find solitude beside a chain link fence. By the water, summer does little to shatter the bone chill of the sea breeze that seeks refuge in every gap between my skin and already unseasonable trench. In lieu of the unsaid words I should have shaken out of my coat pockets last night, I shake sand out of my sneakers, pressing a bare foot against a glittering pebble I want but will not take. Overhead, a lone gull concurs.
Allison Thung is a Singaporean poet. She is the author of Reacquaint (kith books, 2024) and Molar (kith books, 2024). Her poetry has been published in ANMLY, Sixth Finch, Cease, Cows, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Best Small Fictions. Allison is an Assistant Poetry Editor at ANMLY.
Alexis Ivy is a 2018 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry. She is the author of Romance with Small-Time Crooks(BlazeVOX [books], 2013), and Taking the Homeless Census (Saturnalia Books, 2020) which won the 2018 Saturnalia Editors Prize. She is co-editor of Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology (West Virginia University Press, 2023). A recent resident of the Sundress Academy for the Arts, she lives in her hometown Boston, working as an advocate for the homeless, and teaching in the PoemWorks community.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Alexis Ivy, is from Reacquaint by Allison Thung (kith books 2024).
Autumn
Look at me, recalling the romance out of everything. Your eyes, your hair; your last name and career inclinations. I will always be less I don’t remember his name, but I remember that day; and more Yesterday, I found him on LinkedIn—he’s married now, and works in IT. Don’t get me wrong — most of me is grateful my need to know is almost always satiated. But a tiny part that yearns for mystery will always remain. For surely nothing quite so human as unanswered questions and lack of closure, come to life in unreliable narration and confusing dreams. Though perhaps, this is a natural defence mechanism—my body and mind come to consensus that the only way I will move forward is if I can get a clear look backward, and so doing their best to keep me advancing always. After all, if I remembered only the colliding cold of autumn on my arms and warmth of your palm against my back, I would be lost forever to the past.
Allison Thung is a Singaporean poet. She is the author of Reacquaint (kith books, 2024) and Molar (kith books, 2024). Her poetry has been published in ANMLY, Sixth Finch, Cease, Cows, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Best Small Fictions. Allison is an Assistant Poetry Editor at ANMLY.
Alexis Ivy is a 2018 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry. She is the author of Romance with Small-Time Crooks(BlazeVOX [books], 2013), and Taking the Homeless Census (Saturnalia Books, 2020) which won the 2018 Saturnalia Editors Prize. She is co-editor of Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology (West Virginia University Press, 2023). A recent resident of the Sundress Academy for the Arts, she lives in her hometown Boston, working as an advocate for the homeless, and teaching in the PoemWorks community.
In The Years of Blood (Fordham University Press, 2025), Adédayọ̀ Agarau boldly walks us through a landscape of grief, pointing us to anguish, yes, but also to beauty. This multilingual and reflective poetry collection is full of hauntings—images of death and dreams of family members finding safety. The speaker here is never alone, which can sometimes feel nightmarish and other times act as a reminder to hold onto hope. Agarau honors Nigeria with every poem, both bearing witness to reality and conjuring a future desired by every person who calls this place home.
While scenes of brutality saturate many pages within The Years of Blood, Agarau writes with humanity. The collection starts with “Wind,” a prose-block poem from the perspective of a speaker with anxiety. Agarau writes,
“…It could be my ghost finding
the touch of its mother in a house where the doors
are shutting against the portals of grief. I could be coming
through the window as wind. I could be filling the
room with cold. I could be whispering I am here and my
mother is not hearing.” (1)
This imagining comes after the speaker lists other possibilities of what could be—all depictions of violence enacted on close family members. The speaker here so strongly wants, needs, to feel connected to his loved ones, even as a ghost. He dreams himself as the wind—perpetual and permeating all spaces, especially home.
Agarau’s unbreakable bond to where he is from elevates The Years of Blood apart from other collections, all the while remaining intimate and sacred. “Boys who never die” is a list-like ode poem to the three-dimensionality of men and boys in Ìbàdàn that I found especially moving. Not only is there an entire stanza naming over twenty boys, but Agarau shows us their hearts, their minds, and their souls. He describes “Boys who dance / around plastic chairs,” “Boys who gaze at the moon,” and “Boys who call me friend” (25). Even as we readers are introduced to “Boys who carry scars their fathers give them” we also meet “Boys the hope of a chameleon— / always changing, always changing” (Agarau 26-27). There is multiplicity in this community, full of good, trouble, beauty, and pain. I can feel Agarau’s love so strongly, even when the poetry is written “in a language wet with loss” (15). There are few better ways to honor your home more than to write about it, with full honesty.
Religion is also a prevalent theme throughout these pages, with many poems to or about God/gods. In “It begins with gratitude & ends in rage,” Agarau expresses thankfulness, “I am grateful that I have been given this day, dear Lord” (49). While addressing God here, for most of the poem, the speaker contemplates his lineage, particularly his relationship to his father. Slowly moving towards the rage indicated in the title, the speaker can’t help but compare his (birth) father to his (religious) Father. He asks,
“what do I know of the blood
that flows through me? What do I know of this name,
Adédayọ̀…? My
Lord, my shepherd is sleeping
without his flock of children as
the bird drops into sea.” (Agarau 50)
Lord, shepherd, father, king…God is depicted and realized in many forms. As this poem sits around the middle of the collection, I take particular note of Agarau’s questioning of his own name, which is listed in the book’s Index as “A Yorùbá name given to sons of royal descent…[meaning] ‘The crown has morphed into joy’” (89). This existential self-reflection is not only striking but is also deeply connected to Agarau’s spirituality. Just over ten pages prior, “Fine boy writes a poem about anxiety” ends with another arresting mention of God that also reflects the connection between family, faith, self, and safety. Agarau writes, “your god is everything / that lets you come inside. / mother, lover” (38). While this time referencing mother instead of father, the speaker is noting how our lineage, parents, and ancestors are our safety and home.
Tenderness book-ends the collection. In the last poem, “Litany in which my father returns safely at night,” there is no direct mention of the wind from the opening poem, but many instances of sound that draw our attention to the air: “a small decibel of music escaping someone’s window” and “a dog barks” (Agarau 86). What the speaker hears directly from people, however, is what Agarau uses to guide us towards his gentle wish:
“we hear mourners as they spread their mouths like wings, something broken like a twig
in their throats. My mother, gathering my brother’s hair in her hand, says, oluwa lo
mo omo to n tun ti jigbe bayi o—abi ta lo ku? ta lo run? a tie mo mog an bayi.
My father saunters in, high as sky. He is home. Alive.” (Agarau 86)
Like a skilled cinematographer, Agarau holds his hands up, making a camera with his thumbs and index fingers. Slowly, he narrows us readers into the heart of the poem, his father, the addressee of this litany, this prayer. At the last line, of both “Litany” and the entire collection—“We all go to sleep”—I found myself dropping my shoulders in relief. Agarau writes so beautifully, offering this gift to himself and his community.
Simultaneously recounting terrible horrors and blessing loved ones, Agarau trusts his memory to guide readers through a variety of poetic forms and storytelling techniques. He is an honest but kind navigator, one that is unafraid to bear witness and invested in a better future for himself, for Black boys, and for all. The Years of Blood is a must read amidst today’s world’s violence at home and abroad, both as a wake up call and a source of hope.
Livia Meneghin (she/her) is the author of feathering and Honey in My Hair. She is currently the Assistant Chapbook Editor and Reads Editor at Sundress Publications, and has been awarded recognition from The Academy of American Poets, Breakwater Review, The Room Magazine, the Writers’ Room of Boston, the City of Boston, and elsewhere. Her writing has found homes in Colorado Review, CV2, Gasher, The Journal, Osmosis, and Thrush, among others. Since earning her MFA in Poetry, she teaches writing and literature at the collegiate level. She is a cancer survivor.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Alexis Ivy, is from Reacquaint by Allison Thung (kith books 2024).
Singular
Say We, while offering no further context.
Tell me— We went on a vacation We adopted a cat We bought a house— and make no clarification on who We comprises.
For I live vicarious— revelling in your contentment of being part of an unquestionable unit; and feeling such safety in another you would refer to the self in the plural without fear of losing the singular.
Allison Thung is a Singaporean poet. She is the author of Reacquaint (kith books, 2024) and Molar (kith books, 2024). Her poetry has been published in ANMLY, Sixth Finch, Cease, Cows, Gone Lawn, and elsewhere, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Best Small Fictions. Allison is an Assistant Poetry Editor at ANMLY.
Alexis Ivy is a 2018 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry. She is the author of Romance with Small-Time Crooks(BlazeVOX [books], 2013), and Taking the Homeless Census (Saturnalia Books, 2020) which won the 2018 Saturnalia Editors Prize. She is co-editor of Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology (West Virginia University Press, 2023). A recent resident of the Sundress Academy for the Arts, she lives in her hometown Boston, working as an advocate for the homeless, and teaching in the PoemWorks community.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Alexis Ivy, is from Certain Shelter by Abbie Kiefer (June Road Press 2024).
On the Wonder Years, Wayne Punches Kevin Again
and calls him a butthead. My mom sighs at the lack of kindness: brothers angry, father stubbornly
morose. Lonely neighbor Winnie and her war- dead brother, her parents dividing their grief
in divorce. My mom only wanted zany family trouble—sulky teen turns sheepdog,
parentless boy befriends chimp. Though even those old Disney plots could unsettle
my sister. My mom reassured her with statements of fact: You’ll never be an orphan. We’ll never own a dog.
Abbie Kiefer is the author of Certain Shelter(June Road Press, 2024), named a 2025 Julia Ward Howe Award Notable Book, and the chapbook Brief Histories (Whittle Micro-Press, 2024). Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in The Atlantic, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Image, The Missouri Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and other places. She is a poetry editor for The Adroit Journal and lives in New Hampshire.
Alexis Ivy is a 2018 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry. She is the author of Romance with Small-Time Crooks(BlazeVOX [books], 2013), and Taking the Homeless Census (Saturnalia Books, 2020) which won the 2018 Saturnalia Editors Prize. She is co-editor of Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology (West Virginia University Press, 2023). A recent resident of the Sundress Academy for the Arts, she lives in her hometown Boston, working as an advocate for the homeless, and teaching in the PoemWorks community.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Alexis Ivy, is from Certain Shelter by Abbie Kiefer (June Road Press 2024).
Given
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. — 2 Timothy 1:7
We will die, each one. I preach this so the truth can’t catch us by surprise. I make it a liturgy: One day we will die. And all my people: We hear you, always hear you. I insist it to my dad who knows truth the same way I do. Still, he bristles. Testifies to good health, prophesies long years. Everyone will die. Each
time I say it, prepaying on sorrow. I make it a hymn. Sing it while swimming. Over lunch. When a retriever pads past, golden bleached from his muzzle. I lead a chorus as my dad turns over the new old Camaro he keeps on my mom’s side of the garage.
He drives to a lawyer. Signs papers that say I will manage the accounts if his sound mind slips. His lawyer calls it a kindness, letting everything be settled. Now we know what
will happen. Though I keep preaching, in love. Sure as St. Paul and surely as zealous. Professing: Death, I never thought
you weren’t coming.
Abbie Kiefer is the author of Certain Shelter(June Road Press, 2024), named a 2025 Julia Ward Howe Award Notable Book, and the chapbook Brief Histories (Whittle Micro-Press, 2024). Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in The Atlantic, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Image, The Missouri Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and other places. She is a poetry editor for The Adroit Journal and lives in New Hampshire.
Alexis Ivy is a 2018 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry. She is the author of Romance with Small-Time Crooks(BlazeVOX [books], 2013), and Taking the Homeless Census (Saturnalia Books, 2020) which won the 2018 Saturnalia Editors Prize. She is co-editor of Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology (West Virginia University Press, 2023). A recent resident of the Sundress Academy for the Arts, she lives in her hometown Boston, working as an advocate for the homeless, and teaching in the PoemWorks community.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Alexis Ivy, is from Certain Shelter by Abbie Kiefer (June Road Press 2024).
Resolutions
I’ve been thinking I should lighten up a little. Let our boys go barefoot in the soupy pool shower room. At three in the morning, resist waking them to search their armpits for ticks. Watch them leap from the top of the tire swing and not wince or warn. Forget my childhood home, its tidy basement bleeding radon, my mom’s lungs turned wet and treacherous. Forget those lungs and your lungs. All the cigarettes you smoked in college. Ignore the narrowness of your bike lane, the greedy bite of your chainsaw, the small and shrinking difference between your age now and the age of your dad when he died. Stop calculating: If I were the one to die, could you afford a good sitter? Someone who would find adventures— streams and boulders, trees for climbing. Who would urge our boys with all the ease I lacked: Go. Yes, go. What’s the worst that can happen?
Abbie Kiefer is the author of Certain Shelter(June Road Press, 2024), named a 2025 Julia Ward Howe Award Notable Book, and the chapbook Brief Histories (Whittle Micro-Press, 2024). Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in The Atlantic, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Image, The Missouri Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and other places. She is a poetry editor for The Adroit Journal and lives in New Hampshire.
Alexis Ivy is a 2018 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry. She is the author of Romance with Small-Time Crooks(BlazeVOX [books], 2013), and Taking the Homeless Census (Saturnalia Books, 2020) which won the 2018 Saturnalia Editors Prize. She is co-editor of Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology (West Virginia University Press, 2023). A recent resident of the Sundress Academy for the Arts, she lives in her hometown Boston, working as an advocate for the homeless, and teaching in the PoemWorks community.
This selection, chosen by guest editor Alexis Ivy, is from Certain Shelter by Abbie Kiefer (June Road Press 2024).
After She Dies, My Mom Keeps Getting Mail
Her last issue of Eating Well unless she acts immediately
Inside, a three-pea sauté with mint and Aleppo pepper
I read the instructions five times
Commit them to memory
—
The Red Cross needs my mom to save babies with malaria
and girls taken into slavery
and people starving in a city gnarled by earthquake
Is it any surprise the ground heaves at its seams
I sign a check with loops so loose my name could be anyone’s
—
This won’t last forever the sale flyer insists
Lavoie Family Furniture is going out of business
These kind-faced Lavoies, I want to believe them but tell me how they can be so sure—
four generations gathered around a must-move table
Abbie Kiefer is the author of Certain Shelter(June Road Press, 2024), named a 2025 Julia Ward Howe Award Notable Book, and the chapbook Brief Histories (Whittle Micro-Press, 2024). Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in The Atlantic, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Image, The Missouri Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and other places. She is a poetry editor for The Adroit Journal and lives in New Hampshire.
Alexis Ivy is a 2018 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry. She is the author of Romance with Small-Time Crooks(BlazeVOX [books], 2013), and Taking the Homeless Census (Saturnalia Books, 2020) which won the 2018 Saturnalia Editors Prize. She is co-editor of Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology (West Virginia University Press, 2023). A recent resident of the Sundress Academy for the Arts, she lives in her hometown Boston, working as an advocate for the homeless, and teaching in the PoemWorks community.
Jane Muschenetz’s Power Point (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2024) is for those who want to know more and better process facts around gender oppression. In her chapbook, Muschenetz uses statistics to break down the systemic barriers to living as a woman navigating health, violence, and motherhood.
Power Point is appropriately themed with a wealth of shapes, colors, and symbolism. Muschenetz presents statistics through visually pleasing bar graphs and familiar silhouettes intentionally structured after words and images representing topics like childbirth, gun violence, and rape.
As I read Muschenetz’s research turned to poetry on very sobering issues, I remembered that these statistics are usually ignored and devalued, sometimes even justified. For some people, their first instinct is to deny or justify statistics instead of questioning why a figure might be accurate after all. The statistical information presented was not new to me, but I felt a deep sense of urgency as I always do when reading these things. How can we get everyone to take these disparities seriously? What I gather most from this chapbook is that it all depends on what you believe, what you care about, and evaluating your capacity to care for the safety of at-risk persons. Muschenetz has combined the charm and comfort of browsing a really good piece of informative digital media with the tone of a seasoned diarist. These poems are gripping and educational.
Two versions of care show up in this book, whether by direct mention or figuratively: first, a sense of empathy and urgency for life-threatening socio-political issues, and second, caregiving. Specifically, the act of caregiving convinces the brain to keep moving or to keep quiet, and then eventually, toward the end, learning to care for oneself in spite of pressure. In Muschenetz’s “Family talking points,” we see that caregiving, to an extent, can be a form of silence and/or distraction from a bigger disturbance at the dinner table. The disturbance in this instance is the quintessential ‘confidently uninformed uncle type’ many readers are familiar with. Muschenetz writes:
“Eventually, a cousin (the “Sweet One”) remembers Grandma, brings her a plate of something soft and easily digestible.” (Muschenetz 19)
Muschenetz touches on safety in“Safety Points” and “When? Always.” These poems are guides on vigilance, both starting with ‘Transcribed from the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office.’ “Safety Points” is composed of suggestions for women to keep safe. These poems show us the retroactive effects of living in a patriarchal system. The most visually striking poems in this book, “Warning/Surprise” and “Point Blank,”also remind me of desensitization. Muschenetz uses the silhouette of an exclamation point to convey an urgent social message and commentary about how we performatively express ourselves, cause, and prevent alarm. In an era of rapid desensitization to violence, youths have gotten the worst end of this desensitization. These pure poems in Powerpoint are full of direct mentions of youths’ capacity to make a difference.
Muschenetz brings us to a point of relief when she expresses hope for change and prosperity in “The Surfing Madonna,” a mosaic and beloved symbol of ocean preservation. Muschenetz writes,
“You see, everyday miracles (outside of Churches and Temples) —we too can walk on water, with the right wave beneath us.” (Muschenetz 12)
In this case, we can interpret “The Surfing Madonna” not just through the lens of an environmentalist but through the lens of an optimistic and a believer in miracles when it’s most important to be. This poem, among a few others, is a reminder that perseverance is possible.
The final poem in Power Point, “Stop This Poem,” is a call for hopefulness in the vicinity of the point of no return, since the poem before is titled “POINT OF NO RETURN.” Muschenetz urges the reader to stop reading and essentially be present. I take it to mean we should be present as a preventative measure against outrage, justified or otherwise.
There is a balanced mix of dreadful realization and practiced hope in this chapbook. Muschenetz’s poetry in this project forces us to reflect on gender oppression and obligation. Power Point feels like an intense study of the state of moving through the world with a big clinical W on our chest. Something you could only let go of by being present and having a seed of faith for the future, no matter how bad the statistics are.
Jahmayla Pointer is a three-time National Goofing Around Award winner and specializes in consuming gothic literature and horror films. Jahmayla’s playful and observant nature and deep love of horror, magic, and literary thrills led her to pursue an English and Creative Writing degree four years ago. She began taking creative writing workshops in her senior year of high school and fell in love with working with others on various projects. During her downtime, she likes to spend time with friends and family, dance, write short stories, and read in copious amounts. Something that means a lot to Jahmayla is grassroots work and helping people directly through mutual aid and acts of service, She puts this passion into action by working with a group of good friends to develop education tools and encourage high literacy in her local neighborhoods.
