Nimrod Journal

These two poems are extraordinary. Go you-know-where to read Khadijah Queen’s “Amphitheater of the Three Gauls”; here is its partner, Edward Carter’s “Blvd de Sébastopol.”

This morning our free newsletter readers received a pair of poems from the Summer 2025 issue that capture the experience of sensing history rumble beneath one’s feet. Read them here: nimrodjournal.substack.com/p/history-li...

Packed Carefully Away A poem by Jane Greer (1953–2025)

Today our free newsletter readers received a poem by Jane Greer, who passed away on July 22 of this year. We are honored to have published one of her final poems, and to know that the issue reached her and brought her joy.

nimrodjournal.substack.com/p/packed-car...

I love it when famous fathers get together.

Today our free newsletter readers received the daddy of all papa poems by M. I. Devine, from our Summer 2025 issue.

Casual Performances Brock Henry Allen on “Rio Bravo” and Friendship

Today our free newsletter subscribers received the first in an occasional series of essays, available exclusively online, that explore important cultural issues from unusual angles. Go over to read Brock Allen on friendship, on and off the screen. nimrodjournal.substack.com/p/casual-per...

Thank you, Maryann! And thank you @nimrodjournal.bsky.social‬ & ‪@bdralyuk.bsky.social‬ & Randall Mann. <3 <3 <3

What a lineup! We are very proud.

Our great thanks to our brilliant and generous judges, and to all those who sent us their poems and stories for consideration. Subscribe to NIMROD and keep your eyes peeled for announcements about the next submission windows and our awards reading! nimrod.utulsa.edu 5/5

The issue will also feature poems by Ernest Hilbert, Amit Majmudar, and Shane McCrae, a story by Jaia Hamid Bashir, an essay by Esther Allen, and much more. 4/5

The second-place winner in the fiction competition is Mays Kuhail. The finalists were Madison Jozefiak and Ian VanDuzer. Read work by all these terrific authors in the Winter 2026 issue of NIMROD. 3/5

The second-place winner in the poetry competition is Anna Lena Phillips Bell. The finalists were A.M. Juster and Alejandro Aguirre, and the semifinalists were Maya Venters and Eliza Gilbert. 2/5

We are delighted to announce the winners of our 2025 literary competitions! Randall Mann has awarded the top Neruda Poetry Prize to Michael Lavers, and Nancy Jooyoun Kim has awarded the top Porter Fiction Prize to Talia Neffson. 1/5

Elizabethan Sonnet on He Recalls His Time as a Student Musician as He Talks About Bombing Iran A poem by Shane McCrae

A few months ago, I thought I was done writing these. But maybe not quite yet? I’m so grateful to @bdralyuk.bsky.social and everybody at @nimrodjournal.bsky.social for publishing this sonnet. I hope you like it. nimrodjournal.substack.com/p/elizabetha...

Elizabethan Sonnet on He Recalls His Time as a Student Musician as He Talks About Bombing Iran A poem by Shane McCrae

Today our free newsletter readers received a special preview—a poem by Shane McCrae, which will appear in our Winter 2026 issue.

nimrodjournal.substack.com/p/elizabetha...

A fine pantoum for #WorldRefugeeDay

Today our free newsletter subscribers received a powerful pantoum by Jonny Teklit from our Summer 2025 issue.

"much like any other land, except bullets for ten dollars a box."

How many times do we have to scream it? Graveyards full of children and it never ends. Nobody deserves their life cut short by gun violence, dreams unrealized.

A beautiful, haunting work on an unfortunately always relevant topic.

“… I know bodies—restless, reasonless, / knots and rocks of aches and wants I’d kneaded down, each within the reach of a bullet …”

A poem for today, about a woman who had sought a better life.

Today our free newsletter subscribers received a poem from our latest issue—Ye Chun’s ghazal in the voice of Tan Xiaojie, one of eight people murdered in an attack on spa workers in and around Atlanta in 2021.

nimrodjournal.substack.com/p/bullets

Congratulations to Erin O’Luanaigh, whose “Comedy of Remarriage”—one of three poems in the Summer 2025 issue—was shared on the Best American Poetry blog!

(Stanley Cavell couldn’t have said it better himself…)

“He would come, sooner or later, ruffled and drenched dark with rain, one wing broken by the storm, his feathers tattered and filthy, his tail black with tar, a castaway crippled by the sea’s fury, a deposed, greedy sovereign: he would return to rule over that shattered realm.”

The Seagulls A story by Monica Pareschi, translated from Italian by Anne Milano Appel

Today our free newsletter subscribers received a brilliant short story from our Summer 2025 issue, Monica Pareschi’s “The Seagulls,” translated from Italian by @annemilanoappel.bsky.social. nimrodjournal.substack.com/p/the-seagulls

A crackerjack piece of detective work and cultural history.

In the Margins of Time: James Agee and Weldon Kees An essay by Morten Høi Jensen

In an essay from our latest issue, Morten Høi Jensen finds out who at TIME Magazine was reading T.S. Eliot in 1944. nimrodjournal.substack.com/p/in-the-mar...

“… and once, for me, John, dream your groundbird soul / into the frame of this brown pelican …”

Richard O’Brien communes and commutes with John Clare.

A poem by Richard O'Brien published in Nimrod Journal: John Clare Reaches the Pacific Half-stunned on Boston Stump, gulping your first and only glimpse of sea, my countryman, you never got to learn if you’d have vibed with Santa Monica. Come now, then: hitch-hike if you have to, get to Haight too late, freak out in citrus groves. When did you ever see a lime like this? Kick off your shoes. This is the living sea, untroubled. Someone’s even windsurfing. It’s warmer than Northborough - give it that, and once, for me, John, dream your groundbird soul into the frame of this brown pelican whose bill, grazing the waters of the bay, will scoop and dip and scoop and dip all day so fervently you’ll soon have had your fill and yearn for yellowhammers. All the same, you might find shelter in these free permissions, if you can still locate a rough wall’s shade. Too late, they realised you needed feeding. I’m here. I’m fed. I wish you could have seen.  

This poem, 'John Clare Reaches the Pacific,' is very dear to my heart and I'm thrilled to see it in print in the summer issue of @nimrodjournal.bsky.social thanks to @bdralyuk.bsky.social. I wrote it on an Amtrak from Portland to LA in September 2022, from which I really did see a lot of pelicans.

Damn, this one is good. The phonetics are so pleasing and the imagery is just electric. Something to chew on for me today.