Poetry – Issue 16 | The Spectacle

Excerpts from “Kelly in Violet” by Cass Donish

These excerpts are reprinted from Cass Donish’s collection, Your Dazzling Death, published by Knopf in 2024. Read our interview with Cass Donish here. Cass…

Featured - Issue 16, Poetry – Issue 16

5 Poems by Dorothea Lasky

A green apple that ignites the night/ A green ghost with its mouth open/ On the fourth thumb a green ghost/ With a wild tongue

Featured - Issue 16, Poetry – Issue 16

“The Middle Ages” by Luci Arbus-Scandiffio

So you wake up / Smelling like woodchips / Picking the straw from your sleeve

Poetry – Issue 16

“The Pros and Cons of Hugging” by Violet Piper

timestamps / suspension / cherishing shields

Poetry – Issue 16

“The Kiss” by Kate Welsh

When he leaves, I go to a new / gynecologist’ or ‘In my linoleum kitchen, the knife flashes / in the sallow light

Poetry – Issue 16

“Swiping Right in Myrtle Beach” by Erin Slaughter

Are you / my husband? Are you my brightest / wound?

Poetry – Issue 16

“Sundown, no homo.” by Chidera Offor

Desire is an endless bend but also / pearlescent sweat and heat

Poetry – Issue 16

“Version in Which Rumpelstiltskin’s Queen Fails to Close the Deal” by Stefanie Kirby

You carry a spool / against your empty / body

Poetry, Poetry – Issue 16

“Autumn” by Matthew Buxton

all that flare in a death-rattle sunset soaking the backroads

Poetry – Issue 16

Two Poems by Christine Kwon

Once, mother chased a little ecstasy / like a squirrel up a tree