Reviewed by Paul Leonard Jean-Christophe Réhel, All Kidding Aside, trans. Neil Smith (Baraka Books, 2025), 306 pp., $24.95. Jean-Christophe Réhel is a young Québecois writer, known for his collections of poetry, his novels, his television scripts, and his columns (both poems and prose) in the...
[FIRST SCENE – SUMMONING] The livestream focuses on four hot gays, the Hex Boys, standing on a cliff overlooking the roiling sea: 1. Ciaran St. Clair The charismatic one; cropped hair, dark skin, tapered jaw; leather jacket with pockets hiding his hands, each finger sporting one or two silver rings...
the sky was a surprise today each time I considered it (1) an army of puffballs marching across a river, (2) cotton ringlets sprung open in the currents of a lagoon, (3) the bruised eye socket of a storm swirling its empty threats the sun winking still behind the hill each of my best dogs let...
Keep above the waterline of breath. The level rises, recedes, the gravitational pull of it, a border contouring the bones of the face, soft chambers of the throat. Fluids have their own willfulness too holy to constrain. We say that there’s a gurgle in the chambers of the heart, or a murmur. The...
Reviewed by Andrew Woodrow-Butcher Matthew J. Trafford, Runs in the Blood (Arsenal Pulp, 2025), 184 pp., $21.95. An older brother goes viral after murdering a dog. A stepfather’s homophobia rubs off on his gay stepson. A butch lesbian feels out of place at the princess party she brought her...
Interview by Loch Baillie In this contributor spotlight, poetry editor Loch Baillie talks with Plenitude author Adam Arca about duality, mythology, and liberation movements, and how they converge with Adam’s poetry. Adam is a Filipino migrant rights organizer and writer living on unceded Musqueam...
