February’s issue is all about drawing inward and inspecting our memories during the year’s last cold, dark days. In Mark Defoe’s “Handle with Care, the Egg of Memory,” memory is a liferaft: “What quivers on the brink of being / may yet save you—someone’s laughter. Someone / calling out your name. Someone’s touch. Recall / what remains. Remember what has lasted.” In Jennifer Louvet’s “Resurrection,” memories of lovers are reincarnated: “A black bear loping through / a damp forest / stopping to mark trees / with its teeth.” In Nicolette Ratz’s “My Dog Knocking Books off the Shelf,” memory is accessed through books passed down by friends: “A catalogue of oils and hands and people who read what I read and shared the same constructed reality, there, in the perfumed pages.”
Additional to the poets highlighted above, Vol. 25, Issue 6 includes poems by Douglas Cole, Sally Zaino, Dawn Dupler, Gail Tirone, Michael Barrett, Thomas Deane Tucker, Jonathan Cohen, Edward Wilson, Robert Perchan, Sarah Green, Sarah Luczaj, Dale Cottingham, Myra Shapiro, Sarah Brockhaus, Christine Jones, Luci Huhn, Doris Ferleger, and Tija Tippett. You’ll also find Danielle Hanson’s review of Sweetbitter by Stacey Balkun, Merryn Rutledge’s review of Paradise Is Jagged by Ann Fisher-Wirth, and Shannon Christine Vare’s review of Come Thunder by Barbara Helfgott-Hyett.