2023 Roundup

Dear reader, below are 13 eligible poems for the Rhysling Award. They are also some of the most memorable, lovely, and strange poems I read all year! I’m talking time-traveling birds, girl scouts descending the underworld, fathers that might be the Creature from the Black Lagoon…things like that. Thank you to all the poets on this list and thank you for reading!

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This poem pulls me in every time. If the lovely language wasn’t enough, the narrative itself is just as rich and tender—a boy transforms into a bird to travel through time. His bird body chooses inevitably to return him to a significant moment in his young queer life. I will not spoil what happens but what he seeks is what many mature queers seek looking back; a second chance. Such a stunning, memorable poem.

Cover Art by Alice M.

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As an interesting contrast, our next poem is of a queer body breaking free. Once shackled by the stars, on earth they are thriving. This felt particularly innovative to me because the stars in poetry have usually felt expansive, liberating…but here, the earth and its soil, our own home is where they can finally feel alive and true to themselves. (A hopeful thought that has stayed with me since I read it.)

The work is also complimented by signature evocative artwork done by the poet. (I cannot recommend this unique poet/artist enough!)

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There’s an old saying that the love poem is one of the ultimate challenges. As real and urgent and wild as your love feels, to somehow capture it on a page and make it feel new, to make it yours…well, imagine my shock when a poem about making love to a yeti is one of my favorite poems of the year. Forget the scholarly way I began. This poem is fucking great. With this poem, I felt like I was young again. Wild concepts like these mixed with such lyricism is just outrageously inspiring to me. It makes me feel like anything is possible in a poem and that’s what I want to feel.

Cover Art by Daphne Fauber

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For our fourth poem, I’m already struggling to express how much these words affected me. I will admit that I myself cannot easily remember my father’s face, so, to read such a viscerally honest work dealing with the holes fathers can leave, the inner fight to not repeat your parent’s paths, and the strange need to find out your own kind of unhappiness so long as it’s yours—it hits home alarmingly close. And you know, those descriptions still don’t do it justice. There’s darkness in here, yes, but there’s enough music and vulnerability to reach almost anyone who’s ever felt ugly and lost.

Cover Art by Salomée Luce-Antoinette

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Following the theme of family, we have Legacy, one of the most brilliant poems I read all year. It tells a somber story about a child discovering that their parents used to be gods. I say somber because Patel assures us that the child’s parents have all but forgotten their past greatness. And in their oblivion, where does that leave their child? What kind of ambitions are still possible for a child of gods that seem to have fallen to the needs of surviving modern life? 

I truly adore this poem for its honesty, its sympathy, and its courage to not give us easy answers.

Cover Art: Warmtail / Adobe Stock

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Okay, now this next poem is an experience. I refuse to be interrogated about its contents. I will lie. Read it several times and feel its dreaminess and melancholy and chaos. I wish I had written this but I couldn’t have. Liu has made words feel like sleep paralysis and that is weird but also beautiful. Read this and then stare out the window.

        “He was crying 

in front of a pond of brown ducks 

his ribcage filled with tiny boats.”

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Imagine a girl guides a group of girl scouts to the afterlife. Then imagine each girl scout receiving a shadow sister to help them descend the underworld—legendary sisters like “hecate, artemis, baba yaga, llorona, lilith” and then imagine a poem that speaks frankly about the casual sexism and homophobia that young girls face all the time. Then add wild sapphic revelry and you will begin to get a feel for Pichette’s brooding dark magic of a poem. (I love this so much.)

Cover Art by: Vadim Sadovski

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Adding to the theme of femme comradery, we have a strange and wondrous poem by Mahaila Smith. I still remember the first time I read this. The way it patiently unfolds into a more and more subversive and powerful story of tired housewives escaping their bodies and finding comfort in the resilience of other body-morphing women. Its pure anarchy is inspiring but so is its sincerity. Femmes looking out for each other will always be moving to me.

Cover Art by Alastair Temple

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The two next poems are the only ones that are not free to read but I needed to include them. They both come from the same incredible “Belonging” themed issue of Fiyah and I would go so far as to say that all three poems from this issue are breathtaking and essential reads. The first poem uses Sullivan’s lyricism and hope for belonging to describe for example “a road naked of police, only traffic signs with android hands pointing towards the direction where a bloodless January fruits.” (The downloadable issue with both these poems is only $3.99 and extremely worth reading.)

Cover Art by Ava Glori-Jean Tuitt

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Another poem from this issue “Defiling Stone” is so original and enigmatic I can hardly describe it. Really. What I can say is that the way it handles gender, particularly nonbinary people with the grace of allowing them to be vessels of hope and resistance, as escape artists with the courage to climb their society’s formidable wall…feels revolutionary to me.

Cover Art by Ava Glori-Jean Tuitt

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The last poems on this list all deal with monsters, demons, and mythical animals—each exciting in their own right—but what feels really special to me are the unique and surprising ways each poet made these monsters feel wildly personal, intimate to themselves. First off, Bobi’s “Brief History of Monsterfication” startled me with its incredible beginning. From there, the poem only grows and grows into a scream of memories that begins intimately, but feels as if it becomes a collective nightmare.

Cover Art by Yukari Mishima / Adobe Stock Image

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Ah, so this one hits me really hard. With vivid, creeping language, Hester does describe a trans girl giving birth to a demon. But underneath is a hauntingly tender exploration of trans love and pain. The way she mothers it, “the little dead thing” both hurts and inspires me with its forgiveness. Those last lines are some of my favorites in any trans poem I’ve ever read.

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Let’s end this list strong. The final poem I’m recommending feels powerful to read out loud. It flows and flies out of the mouth like a defiant, triumphant song. And even though it was published early in the year, it feels like a fitting way to end it—on fire, in love, ready to dream again. Forever.

Cover Art by Galen Dara

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