Sealey Challenge Week 3

Read contemporary poetry and hidden gems

Paid subscribers, don’t forget that there are prompts for you at the end of the post. This week they are combined with the August 15th and August 19th poems.

August 15th: First published in ucity review, this poem is by Prof. Alexandra Burack. You can read more of her work in the link.

Elegy with Fish and Tofu

Swollen kaleidoscope fish blow
kisses near the glass facing

my table. This is not love,
but exile. Striding upright

on land, as your ancestor dared,
I would barely reach your blinkless

tourmaline eyes. Rectangle-bound
in water of kitchen window-

girth, you can neither roam
nor flee nor lust in private.

I surmise you are designed
to calm Arizona

diners, locked as we are
by pocked mountains and devils

of dust that slough
off skin in desert-

skimming winds, alien
to notions of liquid other

than oases that comfort
across vast saguaro

distances like television
propaganda. While filigreed

fins barely swirl, the tofued
bolus rakes my throat

as I track your slow sink,
then defeated float to a surface

you can break, only to suck
a gill-imploding rush

of air before you’re sifted
through piped bubbles,

drift the circuit you’ve inscribed,
ceaseless, through my meal,

pleading with engorged
pouts not to be freed,

but for me to drown
with you on this tiled

seabed the beige of plastic
pebbles mounded in the tank.

If I could only flood
this room to the level of the artificial

suns cupped into the ceiling,
swoosh the monsoon

torrents inside, drench the silk
potted ferns into breathing

kelp. And I would drown,
serenely, unable to atone

for the freedoms
of the grandmother—

(who jubileed the roaring
brook in which she traced

the roe of a thousand citrine
panes of beating life)

—I circumscribed
to the depth of one square

room, facing east
to a fathomless forest.

August 16th:

This poem by Christy Prahl was first published by Tar River Poetry here.

Jars of It

I’ve known a thousand loves
from the vault of my throat.
Loved men met on city busses
and later undressed
to the sweet circumcision.
Men enticed from their girlfriends
for the night,
who lied and said Yes
as they came.
Men far older
and much too young /
I’ve known boys, is what I’m saying /
not boys in the legal definition
of bodies but still boys sharp in the teeth
and what they carry in their pockets.

          I’ve known girls who taught
          me to play outfield
          when no one, least myself,
          believed I had it in me.
          We’ve cracked
          a bat to ball together.
          I’ve known girls
          who taught me to kiss
          with the tongue.
          I’ve felt my mother’s hands
          bathe my grown body
          when infection hollowed me out
          to soil.

I’ve unlocked the door
to the repairman
on a sub-zero day.

I’ve let a woman with a strange
ponytail in a strange
town shoot saline
& hydrogen peroxide
through my ear,
then stab a pick at the buildup
till I could hear robins again.

          I knew her to say /
          I’m going to use my mama voice
          and show that ear canal who’s boss /
This was the most unconditional
of all human loves
and therefore the most romantic.
When it came to the deep inside of me,
there was no one
more faithful.

August 17th: First published in Sierra Club Magazine.

Earth, Sometimes I Try to Play It Casual

By Catherine Pierce

like Hey mercury, hey malachite, I’m busy today,
can’t stop to marvel, but always my blood is saying
O god you starsprung miracle. It’s self-preservation,

letting myself believe laundry matters,
letting myself believe there’s anything other than
egrets and oceans and vast moss carpets and

the finite heart of every single person I love.
Earth, you terrify me—you are fierce green
and honeysuckle, you are herds of wild ponies,

and you are leaving, always. Is it any wonder
some days I look at my laptop instead of out
the window? Every time I glance up

there you are, quaking me with your fern fronds
and silver frost. O you of the rhyolite mountains.
You of the dew-hung web. You are lemon quartz

and quicksand. Muskrats and starfish. How
could I be any way but staggered? O blue spruce,
O white fir, O green forever, you know

my nonchalance is a sham. It’s so hard to admit
our real desires. Earth, what I want is to sit gentle
under your twilight purple, watch your bats

hunt and dive. What I want is to know about
endings and still love each bat, each shade
of the boundless, darkening sky.

August 18th: First published by ONLY POEMS here.

Katie Manning’s poem

At the Bird Rehab Facility in Vermont

The songbirds are declining

like credit cards. The woman

stating facts in the aviary

reminds me that mourning

doves make milk, secreting

the liquid from their throats

for their young. The cardinal

mom divebombs us twice,

then returns to nest building

like nothing happened, but

my heart is still flinching fast.

The barn owl’s face looks

wood-carved, like we could

chop down an oak and find

this face among the rings.

Her name is St. Louis. All

of the birds here are named

for their places of origin.

The red-tailed hawk is 26-

years-old. I don’t remember

his name, where he’s from—

but I smile when I realize

that in this place, I am

Phoenix, also bird, and as

all the birds here know,

we’re never just the same

when we put our hollow

bones together again, but

who ever said we wanted

to rise back up unchanged.

August 19th: First published in Painted Bride Quarterly here.

The Needle Meets the Vinyl

by Jessica Walsh

Someone’s getting hurt tonight,

you know from the music who

and whether to dodge or watch.

How rough the relief of your reprieve,

how sick the ease of another’s bruise.

Poets declare you is how the I hides

and you can’t say different,

you learned early to hide,

that I am here means here I am.

Switch the record, come get me.

You split into a stable of yous

good girl quiet girl skinny girl

busy girl working girl gone girl,

you are all of them just in case

one of you is not in trouble.

August 20th: Because August is also Women in Translation Month!
First published by RHINO here. This poem won RHINO’s 2026 Translation Prize.

before I was born, grandma spent the whole summer in the broken beetle in the yard by Ioana Vintilă, translated from Romanian by Clara Burghelea

holding Tonia’s teddy bear,
humming lullabies

I hold on to this image
I plate it with thick layers of nickel
I cover it with thick woolen blankets
I set its corners on fire with kerosene

I would like to ask
my mother how the hell she put up with her for some many months,
how she managed to lift her and wipe her and understand her
when even I, one year old, spoke more words

I throw her off high cliffs
& and ask myself how many conversations about the elderly home ended up with
we cannot afford it

I wrap her in ivy
& and ask my mother again
how many times she reminded her she was her daughter and she loved her
and that the one in the photo frame above the bed was her on her wedding day,
that the strong and dark man in there was still by her side,
helping her moisten her dry lips with a handkerchief
until the end

before I was born, grandma spent the whole summer in the broken beetle in the yard

August 21st: First published in Jackdaw Review here. Yellow Garden Spider by H.M. Cotton.