Dominique Ahkong

Johnny Cordova: Two Poems - Cultural Daily Two poems by Johnny Cordova: "This mountain has gotten inside me. / I hear it rumbling through my hollow bones. / It rises in me like a dark sun..."

Honored to have two poems chosen by @bunkong.bsky.social for Cultural Daily.

“The Young Man on the Train” was written during a 26-day pilgrimage through India in 2014.

“The Mountain and the Monk” is a persona poem.

www.culturaldaily.com/johnny-cordo...

from "Nocturne" I believed I could be more than man &, for two hours, became / the darkest bird in Hamilton County—barely eighteen, // midnight blue, resting my warm, bare feet on sheets ofgale of gale / as fog-sopped night made kindred of me. CHRISTIAN J. COLLIER Winner of the Shō Poetry Prize

Take a peek at our summer issue! Read "Nocturne" by Christian J. Collier, a poem selected by the editors as the Winner of the Shō Poetry Prize.

shopoetryjournal.com/christian-j-...

I forgot to post the poems because I've been streaming for 17 days straight lol.

Light beige background. Sliver of a dark night image at the top, a ghostly night forest scene: a girl in a long white dress and a bird head mask sits on a bough. Beige text reads: Read a Poem Summer 2025. Main text reads: "from 'Symptoms of Ghosts' I used to write / my colors in past // tense: I was redded. / I was blued. I was / violented. Often // misspelled / certain truths. – Aldo Amparán, Shō Poetry Prize Runner-Up." Small circle-cut photo of a person with short, reddish-brown hair & a neatly trimmed goatee wears a black beret & a black sweater, standing among leafless branches.

A few years ago, I stumbled upon an article in LGBTQ Nation titled “85% of gay people are possessed by ghosts according to ‘spiritual research.’” As a queer person & avid consumer of all things strange & spooky, I was amused by the claim, but it lingered with me in a more introspective way. It reminded me of all the damaging refrains used to explain someone’s queerness, & how some of them were true for me: experiencing childhood trauma, growing up without a father. READ MORE: tinyurl.com/symptomsofghosts

New poem online! “Symptoms of Ghosts” by Aldo Amparán (@skygoneout.bsky.social) is forthcoming in our summer issue, Shō No. 7, and was selected by the editors as the runner-up for the Shō Poetry Prize.

Read the poem (with audio by the poet) here: shopoetryjournal.com/aldo-amparan/

Light beige background. Sliver of a dark night image at the top, a ghostly night forest scene: a girl in a long white dress and a bird head mask sits on a bough. Beige text reads: Read a Poem Summer 2025. Main text reads: "from ‘Doubt' At the cattle farm, I fell in love with a boy / who thought he was a god. I too, believed / this sometimes. – Nina C. Peláez, Sita Martin Prize Runner-Up." Small circle-cut black and white photograph of a woman with short hair wearing a dress.

I started working on this piece over 15 years ago, while staying at a friend's family farm one summer, and it has moved through many, many iterations. It was first fragments, then a series of short poems, and at one point, a short story that I abandoned when a teacher's response was "the writing is beautiful, but stories are about people in trouble." Yet, something kept pulling me back to these memories time and again. It took me this long to come to see what I was really writing about, to see the shadows that had been sitting in the periphery of that landscape all along.

New poem online! “Doubt” by Nina C. Peláez (@ninacpelaez.bsky.social) is forthcoming in our summer issue, Shō No. 7, and was selected by the editors as the runner-up for the Sita Martin Prize.

Read the poem (with audio by the poet) here:
shopoetryjournal.com/doubt-nina-c...

Orange-brown background. Cover image: in a ghostly night forest scene, a full moon and a girl in a long white dress and a bird head mask sitting on a bough. Yellow text reads: Sunmer 2025 Cover art: “Interim” by Tanya Rastogi

Contributors

Lavender background. Text reads: Preorder here: tinyurl.com/shono7

Coming soon: Shō No. 7 | Summer 2025 ✨
Cover art: “Interim” by Tanya Rastogi (@tanyarastogiart).

Our summer issue features 67 poems by 48 poets, whose names are listed below.

Preorder Shō No. 7 at: tinyurl.com/shono7

Issues will ship in July.

The front page of a newspaper with a picture of Frances. The text says “another life, Ketchikan’s Frances Klein releases book of poetry

An interior page of a newspaper with a picture of Frances titled Frances Klein releases poetry book another life

Another interior page of a newspaper with a continuation of the story

Front page, baby!

new poem in @shopoetryjournal.bsky.social 💕

also new in Shō Poetry Journal —

k. iver
SLEEPING BEAUTY

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/162612...

@alicejamesbooks.bsky.social, @bellepointpress.bsky.social, @haymarketbooks.org

Thank you :)

Thank you, lom!

Happy and honored to receive my first Pushcart Prize nomination! Thank you, @cincinnatireview.bsky.social

deck.blue Get the most out of Bluesky with a multi-column layout

One of the many nasty things Evil Melon did to the old place was make Tweetdeck a premium feature. Fortunately, Bluesky has a third-party app, @deck.blue, that duplicates Tweetdeck perfectly. It really helps me keep on top of my SCR and personal account at the same time. deck.blue

On Rejection and Dwelling in Possibility Iris Murdoch—you know I love her—said that a bad review was about as interesting as whether it is raining in Patagonia. I tend to think about rejections this way.

I’ve actually written what I hope is a useful post—take what is helpful to you in your creative submission practice, leave what is not 💜

I Know You Know: Diane Seuss On “Ballad,” Negative Capability, and the Duende Christ was laid out in a glass coffin, like Snow White. I visited and re-visited him. He looked so much like my father on his deathbed.

This is an essay on my poem "Ballad," Keats's notion of Negative Capability, and Lorca's Duende, with a prompt and a link to the original poem. I'm happy to share it with you.

Cardinal, a poem by Christina Daub. Rain, birds, sacred, Love.

Detail of cover of Shō Poetry Journal issue 4. A woman in a deer mask with antlers.

Loving this issue (no. 4) of @shopoetryjournal.bsky.social and happy to have a poem alongside so many fine ones! With thanks to @johnnycordova.bsky.social & @domkeykong.bsky.social #poetry

😂

CARLOS A. PITTELLA In case they run your license plate Once I broke my front tooth out of a poem & still have the chip to show—not a great poem but it tasted like bone it was real I remember the pain & the scar-tissue of writing it that became my face. There goes the poet with the broken tooth they say while I laugh poking my smile through the jagged window whistling a beat. I tell this as a descendant of biting accumulators who turned on his kin & is now ostracized for lightness sudden ballerino reminding all must pass. I dance the crosswalk most days feeling the traffic police looking for my plate before they realize these are thighs occupying jeans the same I grew & grew against the fabric of walking till the border between Macedonia & Greece —a semi another semi myself. The immigration officer smiled when smoke exhausted a backpacker taking the last steps to the service window: he stamped my passport but neglected to mention the dogs the army dogs [...]

Hand holding issue no. 4 of Shō Poetry Journal against gardenia leaves. The cover artwork, titled "Girl with Deer Mask," is by Harim Choi and features a standing child with a deer mask beside a sculpted gray head of a girl, both projecting their shadows against a high desert landscape.

Reading issue 4 of @shopoetryjournal.bsky.social, loving poem after poem—& thrilled to sing among them!

Here's "In case they run your license plate," featuring teeth, dogs, & bordercrossings.

Much luv to @johnnycordova.bsky.social & @domkeykong.bsky.social for welcoming my voice into the fold 💙

A blackout poem created from a rejection slip reads: Dear Dominique My Ex- Lover on the Métro read your work, but this was not right think of us

How to say “the truth has finally been revealed” in various languages:
 
5. The cat is out of the bag (English)
4. The bunny is out of the hat (Czech)
3. The pigeon falls out of your mouth (Romanian)
2. The turtle’s feet have appeared (Taiwanese)
1. Now the monkey comes out of the sleeve (Dutch)

If you’re at the Brooklyn Book Festival tomorrow, look for Shō in the Literary Marketplace! The good folks at CLMP (Tables 316/317) will be giving away free copies of our revival issue, along with other goodies from other publishers founded/led by or championing writing by PoC ♥️ Go early!

Always happy to receive poems that mention durian

(Though not so keen on durian downers)

🫣

Holy carp holy carp—two of my poems were just accepted at a dream journal and it makes me want to accept poems for
@shopoetryjournal.bsky.social!

Hello, I grew up in the penpal era.