Ruth Awad Poetry Picks
It is not my aim to name the spark that makes a poem a poem, but I can show you what is wild and wandering and wondering. I hope when you read these poems, your curiosity ignites. I hope they make you look up at the world around you and seek out its tenderness. I hope they fill you with a righteous rage or become the salve you needed on a hard day. I chose these poems for their breadth and spellwork. Let them transform you, even briefly.
“[And, having been considered only locally a sinner]” by Katie Berta
“Root Canal” by Katherine Yeejin Hur
“Dear O—” by Vandana Khanna
“The Cat's Odyssey” and “Editorial Efforts” by Oksana Maksymchuk
“Last Night I Had Such Good Dreams” by Jennifer Perrine
“All Day We’ve Been Speaking in the Dark” by Karisma Price
“Something about the name” by Justin Rogers
“Honeymooning” by Aumaine Rose Smith
“The Beautiful and Glorious” by Emma Bolden
“Numb Aubade with Bloodhound” by Traci Brimhall
“Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird” by Ayokunle Falomo
“Who Plays...” by Chanda Feldman
“More Husbands” by Rebecca Hazelton
“Revelation” by Sara Eliza Johnson
“We Are Soft Between Hours” by I.S. Jones
“ode to the luna moth & my psychiatrist, who warns me lithium will shorten my lifespan” by Anthony Thomas Lombardi
“El Chacal” by Jose Hernandez Diaz
“Ode to Damage” by Idris Goodwin
“A Ghazal for Black Boys” by Rosalind Guy
“Reading 'What a Waste' to College Boys” by Jill McDonough
“Touch Cave” by Erika Meitner
“Family with Dreams Cut Out” by Jenny Molberg
“Everything Is on Fire” by Sebastián Hasani Páramo
“The Groomsman” by Alexa Patrick
“Portrait of My Sister About to Shoplift” by Chelsea Wagenaar
“Night thinks it’s crying again” & “When Everything Is Too Much, I Praise What Didn’t Break” by Kelli Russell Agodon
“How to Conquer” by Alyse Bensel
“Autobiography via Screaming” by Marianne Chan
“Light Home” by Kwame Dawes
“Next to the Gas Station That Sells Chicken Wings” by Kendra DeColo & Tyler Mills
“Mercury in Cancer” by Rage Hezekiah
“How to Let Go, or, I Smudged Lost Loves Away into the Ocean” by Ashley M. Jones
“Wife for Scale” by Maggie Smith
“Final Poem for the Bullet” by Phillip B. Williams
“Boundless, or On Human Complexity” & “Major Depressive Disorder (Recurrent)” by Marissa Ahmadkhani
“Birth Ritual” by Dana Alsamsam
“At Crescent Park” by Despy Boutris
“The Sun and Moon Began with a Mother Working” by Su Cho
“Poem for Tucker Carlson's Face” by Paul Guest
“A Villanelle for Jodie Foster” by Julia Koets
“Because There Will Always Be People You Don’t Get Along With” by Amelia Martens
“Small Fry” by Ayesha Raees
“primer” by Michael Waters
“Book of Mild Regrets” by Mary Biddinger
“& the white girl tells me i need to marry a Latino man so that my kids can be the world” by Em Dial
“Immigrant Elegy for Ávila” by Mónica Gomery
“all the girls standing in the line for the bathroom” by Marlin M. Jenkins
“Masculine Sonnet” by Sreshtha Sen
“salat during deportation proceedings” by Dulie Tahat
“hearsay” by Renia White
“Honey” by Allison Adair
“An Accommodation” by Sandra Beasley
“God Letter” by CM Burroughs
“Marigolds of Fire” by Ama Codjoe
“Buying Back-to-School Supplies” by Matthew Guenette
“Professor Marva Stewart’s Funeral Service at Gilbert-Lambuth Chapel, Paine College” by Kamilah Aisha Moon
“Gather” by Jess Smith
“The Most Important Word in This Language” by Analicia Sotelo
“Upon Meeting My Father for the First Time, My Mother Thinks—” by Bailey Cohen
“Motel, Oregon” by Sophie Klahr
“Something Quiet” by Rosalie Moffett
“Casida of the Branches” by C. C. Reid
“For the Doctor's Records” by Clint Smith
“Aubade in the Old Apartment” by Leila Chatti
“Get Out of the Goddamn Car,” by Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley
“On the Haunted Hayride with Audrey” by Keetje Kuipers
“white girl interrogates her recurring dreams” by Marty McConnell
“The Earth Is Rude, Silent, Incomprehensible” by Jacques J. Rancourt
“December at Faribault Prison” by Michael Torres
“Crack” by Geoff Anderson
“Sunken Place Sestina” by Ashley M. Jones
“White Earth” by Erika Meitner
“Fawn” by Susannah Nevison
“In Praise of the Names of Things” by Chelsea Wagenaar
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Contributing editor Ruth Awad is an award-winning Lebanese-American poet whose debut poetry collection Set to Music a Wildfire (SIR Press 2017) won the 2016 Michael Waters Poetry Prize and the 2018 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. She is the recipient of a 2016 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in POETRY, Poem-a-Day, The New Republic, Pleiades, The Rumpus, The Missouri Review Poem of the Week, Sixth Finch, Crab Orchard Review, CALYX, Diode, The Adroit Journal, Vinyl Poetry, Epiphany, BOAAT Journal, and elsewhere. |