“Spider, firefly, snail, cricket, starfish, maggot: a spineless creature does indeed make an appearance in every one of this chapbook’s poems, but that commonality is not the only notable feature here. Each of Melody Wilson’s poems relays a part of her personal history. Each shines with lyric grace. Butterflies “corrugate / trunks like furred lungs molting silver / and sage.” Octopus tentacles “twine / dozily among themselves, / in and out, / sentient fiddleheads.” Wilson is a poet who can call a galaxy into her lines, offering us “all the elusive matter // that flutters and glows.”
–Paulann Petersen, Oregon Poet Laureate Emerita
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Journals
Portraits of Jupiter at Stonecoast Review, 2024
Hurricane at Rock Paper Poem, Winter 2024
La Linea at West Trade Review, Winter 2024
Orejana at Rust & Moth, Winter 2024
Verge at Quartet, Autumn 2024
Madre Dura, Still Life With Wrestlers, and Geological Time at Watershed, Autumn 2024
Peonies in Payne’s Gray at Dialogist, May 2024
Shadow Birds at Iron Horse NaPoMo Finalist, April 2024
Cinnabar at One Art, April 2024
Catechism Agnostica and Blame at The Loch Raven Review, Autumn 2023
Resting Bitch Face and Viceroy at The Shore, Autumn 2023
Teen Mother Navigates the Cosmos at Pangyrus, July 2023
Ladybird at Archetype, July 2023
White Mare and Bijinga at One Art, June 2023
Learning to Speak, Mabel and Me and Brother Elegy at Sheila-Na-Gig, Spring 2023
400 Cranes, God’s Tea Leaves and Salvage at Sky Island Journal, Summer 2022
Self-Portrait with Sediment at Front Porch Review, July 2022
Every Morning Leda at Quartet, July 2022
Ponticello, Satellite, and Pearl at Rat’s Ass Review, Summer 2022
My Father’s Voice, One Art, January 2022
Tongue Prophecy at The Shore, July 2021
Rooster Cogburn and Language Acquisition at failbetter, April 2021
Sailor by the Wind at Quartet, April 2021
Metronome at Front Porch, April 2021
Doctrine of the Kite, at One Art, March 2021
Octopus Dreaming at Triggerfish Critical Review, January 2021
Hilt at West Trade Review, October 2020
Melody Wilson 