Poet & Resource for the Poetry Community
I have TWO poems published in Blue Daisies Journal this month! As soon as I saw that Issue V: Abyssaire would be gothic-themed, I knew exactly which poems I wanted to submit, and I’m so happy that these two were accepted. And that they’re the issue openers!
This is my third time to be published with Blue Daisies, and it’s always a pleasant experience working with them.
Enjoy the excerpts below, and read both poems and the whole issue at Blue Daisies Journal.
As She Appears (YesYes Books, 2022)
In As She Appears, Shelley Wong explores identity—as a queer woman of color and post break-up—through imagery and language plucked from the world around her: the ocean, seasons, landscapes, specific colors, contemporary culture, artwork, fashion . . .
"On land I can still lose
my boundary, identifying
with the ocean & not the lake."
(from "The Ocean Will Take Us One Day")
"I wear pale pink to bloom—a pastel queen, soft sight."
(from "Pandemic Spring")
I don’t know if I have the eloquence or skill to give As She Appears the proper review it deserves, but it’s a stunning collection, and I read each poem two to three times, in awe of them all.
I know it’s only February, but the past month has felt like a whole damn year. Especially here in Minneapolis, where ICE is currently wreaking havoc on our state by instigating violence, kidnapping immigrants (regardless of their status), and kidnapping/murdering legal observers.
While I’ve been helping where I can, I tend to freeze during traumatic events. The one thing I CAN do when I’m feeling stuck is write. And while it doesn’t seem like a lot, creating art right now matters. It’s how we connect with others, show solidarity, and bring a glimpse of joy to others during a time where a lot of people are overwhelmed, scared, anxious, or burnt out. Art can also be a tool for processing what’s happening and emotions that come up.
Cataloguing Pain (YesYes Books, 2023)
Allison Blevins’ Cataloguing Pain reads like a worship of pain, which is a nod to the poet’s ability to morph agony into pleasure by shaping and re-shaping language—how, in a poem in which the speaker recalls that first “small burning” of desire between her thighs when she was a child thinking “just right about that girl on TV,” the only solution “was to rub the pain away.” (from “Pain as Caged Birds”)
I have TWO poems published in Nettle Literary this month! The January 26 edition is Nettle Literary’s first issue, and I’m so excited to be a part of it.
Enjoy the excerpts below, and read both poems and the whole issue at Nettle Literary.
Ode to the Poet at Seventeen
I see my youth mostly in the slurred lips of a costume party backseat of a Honda black pick-up truck where you smelled like a lie I wanted to believe in
I want to swallow you whole—the seeds, the rotten pieces, the pith. The days keep ticking down and time is never going to stop. Might as well use fingers over forks, teeth over knives. Plans to devour you are always in my pipeline. I want you flossed in the split of my tongue, tethered to me indefinitely. I want everything, or nothing at all. You are at my mercy, signing the deeds to your heart over to mine. I am not thawing into a new year—I am reviving old ghosts in unfixable fixation. I am roles in reverse in reverse in reverse, drowning you in tides of uncertainty. December is for forgiveness, and I have absolved myself of self-induced starvation. I will do anything to make me happy. I will bleed my hippocampus of memory just to gorge myself on you.
after Taylor Swift
I see you in my rearview mirror outside of nowhere and everywhere.
My heart has become a broken home for no one. I burn for you. Trail embers
and ashes like a wedding train over burgundy, dress the seeping wounds
with tinsel. Am I supposed to go on without you? Cut caffeine for hot chocolate?
Benadryl for snickerdoodle? Yesterdays for tomorrows?
Snow falls like memories—seven inches of heartbreak and regret and boy grins
Night unwraps herself of paperwhite and cellophane. The smell of winter’s arrival lands like a starling on my shoulder, lingers like chimney smoke in my hair. Permanently branded in a script rehearsed too many times to be true, I bury the echoes of my sorrows in the quiet. Snowfall and nostalgic lamps cradle me to sleep. Winter blanket as a sacred rite. Instead of killing myself, I wrote this poem. I silence the porch light. I hope you get what you deserve.
A white expanse can either reel in a lion fish or a sturgeon from a deep well, or baffle the poet to her knees.
If the latter, the poet freezes solid, waiting for spring to thaw like a miracle, a hole in the ice, an aha! of house sparrows returning home
to rebuild their nests. The tomb-bound poet confides in the moon that listens but offers no answers. Silence beckons like a small mercy.
Rest.
To give to dark tides, take advantage of more time spent with the stars, tune in to one’s circadian rhythm, and turn in early, lulled to sleep by lunar lullabies and celestial noise.
(My secret is a weighted blanket, a low-spun ceiling fan to ebb the heat, a pair of crew socks, a Benadryl.)
Retreat.
To build a nest of fleece and pillow in front of the hearth fire, circle three times, and settle down with a fantasy fiction, knitting needles and yarn, a bowl of yam and lentil soup, one’s own thoughts and a pen.