The notion of seeing—that is, foretelling, seeing beyond—resounds in the collection, beginning with the title, “Oracle Smoke Machine.” Poet and artist assume prophetic personae of…
The self-evident sensuous beauty of Waldman’s poetic word can’t be given by criticism, for, in taking it as my object, I have separated the meaning…
Humming beneath the brutal, often grotesque landscape of the book is a quiet, profound philosophical inquiry. Through sections separated by definitions of spare, Lewis asks:…
“William Morris, Wrapped in Brown Paper” and “For in Marriage” are from a lectio divina of Mrs. Dalloway, my second favorite book ever. I hadn’t read Mrs. Dalloway in years, as…
I OEDIPUS on Fridays strip my anger off like mummy-wrap / and pitch it at the night, our dusty orchid wallpaper where / shadows are…
There’s something so compelling and curious and impossible—trying to get inside one’s own mind, to think around and about one’s own thinking. We donated my father’s…
I’m far from home, / and you’ve long since receded / into shadow
Congratulations to the Ocean State Review’s 2025 Pushcart Prize Nominees!
She got out of bed and went over to the window. The old wooden frame was drafty, the panes opaque with frost. A polar vortex,…
It was a tricycle, abandoned in some weeds along the river, that prompted this story. In my first draft, I began with section 2, the…