contemporary poetry as read & curated by silas denver melvin (jan 28 2023 version)

1. Bury It - sam sax

2. Elegy for a Broken Machine - Patrick Phillips
3. God Had a Body - Jenie Malboeuf
4. Unmanly Grief - Jess Williard
5. Honest Engine - Kyle Dargan
6. Mean - Ken Babstock
7. Rail - Kai Carlson-Wee
8. The Low Passions - Anders Carlson-Wee
9. Kingdom Animalia - Aracelis Girmay
10. Tap Out - Edgar Kunz
11. Brother Bullet - Casandra López
12. Battle Dress - Karen Skolfield
13. Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency - Chen Chen
14. Cannibal - Safiya Sinclair
15. Customs - Solmaz Sharif
16. Taste of Cherry - Kara Candito
17. Notes for My Body Double - Paul Guest
18. Lug Your Careless Body out of the Careful Dusk: A Poem in Fragments - Joshua Marie
Wilkinson
19. C+nto and Othered Poems - Joelle Taylor
20. A Little Middle of the Night - Molly Brodak
21. Human Dark with Sugar - Brenda Shaughnessy
22. Orphan, Indiana - David Dodd Lee
23. Money Shot - Rae Armantrout
24. World of Made and Unmade - Jane Mead
25. We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics - Multiple (Andrea Abi Karam,
Kay Gabriel)
26. The Future - Neil Hilborn
27. Clatter - Neil Hilborn
28. Our Numbered Days - Neil Hilborn
29. Rome - Dorothea Lasky
30. Late Empire - Lisa Olstein
31. Bloodsport - Yves Olade
32. Tell Me - Kim Addonizio
33. The Invention of the Kaleidoscope - Paisley Rekdal
34. A Guide to Undressing Your Monsters - sam sax
35. Madness - sam sax
36. Autopsy - Donte Collins
37. Deaf Republic - Ilya Kaminsky
38. New American Best Friend - Olivia Gatwood
39. Life of the Party - Olivia Gatwood
40. Prelude to Bruise - Saeed Jones
41. Today Means Amen - Sierra DeMulder
42. Come on All You Ghosts - Matthew Zapruder
43. Peluda - Melissa Lozada-Oliva
44. Syllabus of Errors - Troy Jollimore
45. Strike Anywhere - Dean Young
46. Heliopause - Heather Christle
47. Junk - Tommy Pico
48. Nature Poem - Tommy Pico
49. Space Struck - Paige Lewis
50. A Fortune for Your Disaster - Hanif Abdurraqib
51. The Crown Ain’t Worth Much - Hanif Abdurraqib
52. American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin - Terrance Hayes
53. Lighthead - Terrance Hayes
54. Thief in the Interior - Phillip Williams
55. Hum - Jamaal May
56. The Big Book of Exit Strategies - Jamaal May
57. Contradictions in the Design - Matthew Olzmann
58. Be Recorder - Carmen Giménez Smith
59. House of Fact, House of Ruin - Tom Sleigh
60. Feeld - Jos Charles
61. When I Grow Up I Want to be A list of Further Possibilities - Chen Chen
62. The New Testament - Jericho Brown
63. The Tradition - Jericho Brown
64. Virgin - Analicia Sotelo
65. If They Come for Us - Fatimah Asghar
66. The Mobius Strip Club of Grief - Bianca Stone
67. Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers - Jake Skeets
68. Bone Map - Sara Eliza Johnson
69. A Place Called No Homeland - Kai Cheng Thom
70. Ordinary Beast - Nicole Sealey
71. Magical Negro - Morgan Parker
72. Life on Mars - Tracy Smith
73. Even This Page is White - Vivek Shraya
74. When My Brother Was an Aztec - Natalie Diaz
75. Half-Hazard - Kristen Tracy
76. Application for Release From the Dream - Tony Hoagland
77. When the Ghosts Come Ashore - Jacqui Germain
78. Perennial - Kelly Forsythe
79. Lessons on Expulsion - Erika L. Sánchez
80. In a Dream You Saw a Way to Survive - Clementine von Radics
81. Unaccompanied - Javier Zamora
82. Mosquito - Alex Lemon
83. The End of The West - Michael Dickman
84. King Me - Roger Reeves
85. Mixology - Adrian Matejka
86. Registers of Illuminated Villages - Tarfia Faizullah
87. The Big Smoke - Adrian Matejka
88. Double Jinx - Nacy Reddy
89. Brute - Emily Skaja
90. Soft Science - Franny Choi
91. Death by Sex Machine - Franny Choi
92. Deluge - Leila Chatti
93. Love and Other Poems - Alex Dimitrov
94. Together and By Ourselves - Alex Dimitrov
95. Pilgrim Bell - Kaveh Akbar
96. Calling a Wolf a Wolf - Kaveh Akbar
97. Mayakovksy’s Revolver - Matthew Dickman
98. Wonderland - Matthew Dickman
99. Finna - Nate Marshall
100. This Wound is a World - Billy-Ray Belcourt
101. Felon - Reginald Dwayne Betts
102. Blood Dazzler - Patricia Smith
103. Owed - Joshua Bennett
104. Safe Houses I Have Known - Steve Healey
105. Goldenrod - Maggie Smith
106. This Way to The Sugar - Hieu Minh Nguyen
107. All The Flowers Kneeling - Paul Tran
108. Said the Manic to the Muse - Jeanann Verlee
109. Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks - Diane Seuss
110. Engine Empire - Cathy Park Hong
111. Pigeon - Karen Solie
112. Sand Opera - Philip Metres
113. Smoke - Dorianne Laux
114. The Book of Men - Dorianne Laux
115. The Book of Women - Dorianne Laux
116. Hera Lindsay Bird - Hera Lindsay Bird
117. The Twenty-Ninth Year - Alyan Hala
118. What is This Thing Called Love - Kim Addonizio
119. My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge - Paul Guest
120. Blud - Rachel McKibbens
121. Sweetdark - Savannah Brown
122. Time is a Mother - Ocean Vuong
123. Night Sky with Exit Wounds - Ocean Vuong
124. Black Movie - Danez Smith
125. Don’t Call Us Dead - Danez Smith
126. War of the Foxes - Richard Siken
127. Crush - Richard Siken
128. A Hundred Lovers - Richie Hofmann
129. Husbandry - Matthew Dickman
130. Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow. - Noor Hindi
131. Amigo Warfare - Eric Gamalinda
132. Salt Moon - Noel Crook
133. Reveille - George David Clark
134. What We Carry - Dorianne Laux
135. Jimmy & Rita - Kim Addonizio
136. [insert] boy - Danez Smith
137. The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World - Paul Guest
138. Little Things Happening - N.W. Downs
139. Where the Men Come From - N.W. Downs
140. Homie - Danez Smith
141. On the Shores of Welcome Home - Bruce Weigl
142. Spar - Karen Volkman
143. Furious Cooking - Maureen Seaton
144. Poems for the Sound of the Sky Before Thunder - Topaz Winters
145. I’m Speaking - Rafael Guillén
146. Versed - Rae Armantrout
147. Itself - Rae Armantrout
148. The Last Shift - Philip Levine
149. Picnic, Lightning - Billy Collins
150. Now We’re Getting Somewhere - Kim Addonizio
151. Mortal Trash - Kim Addonizio
152. Lucifer at the Starlite - Kim Addonizio
153. If my Body Could Speak - Blythe Bard
154. The Road in is Not the Same Road Out - Karen Solie
155. Holding Company - Major Jackson
156. Love and I - Fanny Howe
157. Beautiful Shirt - Donald Revell
158. Foreign Bodies - Kimiko Hahn
159. Not Here - Hieu Minh Nguyen
160. God of Nothingness - Mark Wunderlich
161. Everything is Changing, Everything is Getting Worse - Jonny Bolduc
162. Dawndark - Jonny Bolduc
163. I Will Destroy You - Nick Flynn
164. Days & Days - Michael Dickman
165. Something Bright, Then Holes - Maggie Nelson
166. Postcolonial Love Poem - Natalie Díaz
167. Afterland - Mai Der Vang
168. Second Empire - Richie Hofmann
169. Strike Anywhere - Dean Young
170. Look - Solmaz Sharif
171. Metaphysical Dog - Frank Bidart
172. Averno - Louise Glück
173. 4.48 Psychosis - Sarah Kane