Yavanika Press
Japanese short-forms
The anthology all that still is features 200 Japanese short-form inspired poems by 76 poets who participated in the first edition of the Poem in a Bottle: a random act of Kindness Project, curated and edited by Shloka Shankar.
Read more about the project here.
all that still is
“Questions about time have persisted since, well, the beginning of time. Roundhouse Clock, the intriguing new book by Ron Scully, explores different aspects of time. You’ll learn that not only does the future create the past and the past contains the future, each moment holds a multiplicity of other moments. The author seamlessly weaves his storyline in a deceptively easy-going manner, using a variety of short-form poems. Once you may have thought time could stand still, but in fact, it’s eppur Si muovo.”
— Peter Jastermsky, Author of As Clear As It’s Ever Been
roundhouse clock
“Grounded in existential thought and exploration, Surashree Joshi’s work surprises by incorporating references to the mundane within many of her life-altering insights. Though one’s first instinct might be to chuckle, it is but a beat before the reader stills into silence to consider the ways in which human nature undermines a philosophical and/or spiritual understanding of the cosmos, perhaps even God. In baring her illusions before the world, Joshi inspires the reader to reflect on her own, resulting in a shifting of course or a simple shake of the head in the face of humankind’s temporality. If there were only one collection I could choose to read this year, baggage claim would be it.”
— Kelly Moyer, Editor of Failed Haiku
baggage claim
“Shloka Shankar’s new collection of micropoetry offers a kind of hope—not the pompommed optimism of a cheerleader, but the quiet gleam of small epiphanies. What might conventionally be seen as an ending or demise becomes, in Shankar’s hands, momentous: falling light turns into ‘chloral dark white lilies’ or ‘goldfinch brightness.’ She sees a sunset as a ‘volta,’ and death as ‘anaphora.’ However dark the brooding horizon may loom, she assures us that ‘this storm petrel too shall pass.’ This comes from a poet who has discovered that any transformation worth its salt happens only by weathering the squall.”
— Joseph Salvatore Aversano, Editor of Half Day Moon Journal
within our somehows
Mini Chapbooks
“Spring Days is a collection that draws the reader into a series of moments in time, using vignettes of precise language that blur like pleasant memories. The poems within hint at the little unspoken and often unobserved corners of our surroundings, all beneath a pleasant springtime sky. Something soft and golden peeks through the lines in this collection, leading the reader through fields and along coastlines. This mini chapbook does the glorious work of reminding us that it is sometimes only upon reflection that we find ourselves able to sit with what we have really witnessed of the world around us.”
— Ariel K. Moniz, Co-founder & Editor of The Hyacinth Review
Spring Days
“Ranging from the cosmic to the domestic, from metaphysical fragment to haiku and senryu, this ‘best-of’ selection of the shortest of John Levy’s poems delights and refreshes. Each small but distinctive poem reminds us of the essence of the art: the transformative difference that a few finely chosen, carefully placed words can make. These moments of awareness are brought into razor-sharp focus with an unexpectedness that unpins the horizon of language, opening to resonant silence. An exquisite sequence, designed to be dwelt on.”
— Philip Rowland, Editor of NOON: journal of the short poem
to unpin the horizon
“In as the sky fragments, Jonathan Yungkans composes brief, luminous meditations on grief, illness, memory, and the quiet hauntings of domestic life. Each poem, anchored by a monoku quoted as an evocative epigraph, becomes a window into something fragile and flickering—a graham cracker spread with frosting in the wake of death, a daughter returning to desert heat, a bookshelf groaning under the weight of too many names. Yungkans pares language to the bone, offering not closure, but clarity—the kind that slips in sideways, like a skunk beneath the house or a gust that knocks a word loose mid-sentence. These poems don’t shout. They settle. They hum. They stay with you like the scent of rain on scorched earth or something almost remembered.”
— José Enrique Medina, Author of Haunt Me, Winner of the 2025 Rattle Chapbook Prize
as the sky fragments
“Our cultural and physical environments are both shifting at breakneck speed, and it is the duty of the poet to follow and give voice to these shifts. Curiouser, Susan Beth Furst’s mini chapbook of single- and two-line poems, represents well the styles that modern innovative short form poets are using today to capture the unique experiences of living in this rapidly changing and increasingly dystopian era.”
— Lisa Anne Johnson, Editor of Trash Panda
Curiouser
Mixed-genre
“Like the night sky itself, Love Hilliard’s collection glimmers with rich hues and quiet magic. She infuses found text with striking new meaning, weaving love, music, and light through moments of stillness and shadow. Bold strokes of black ink and vibrant bursts of color make the visuals part of the storytelling. Each poem becomes a small anchor in the dark. Together, they form a constellation of feeling.”
— Zuri McWhorter, Editor-in-Chief of Juste Milieu Zine
Celestial Timpani
Prose
“Main Street lives through the eyes of this gifted, sharp-eyed, and sensitive observer who wraps inhabitants in atmospheric mystery, exposes their eccentricities, and captures their joy in finding small treasures at the Five and Dime store. Darlene O’Dell’s words glide in smooth, rhythmic cadences that can break with shocking unexpected slap-in-the-face revelations. Three flashy flapper dresses in an unlikely place. Old stores and mills with their ghosts from a lost past. Lamplit rooms. Broken glass, rusted locks. Main Street is everywhere, each a small universe unto itself.”
— Pamela Blevins, Author of Song of Pain and Beauty & Beyond the Hand of God
Main Street
“Taking Flight is yet another breakthrough in Norma Bradley’s memorable work: unflinching attention to the natural world, reverence for family and the working class, the uplifting acknowledgment of the least of these, her insistence that the core of humanity is rooted in compassion and the luminous language that conjures love. Nothing escapes her gaze and wonder. The sacred seasons of the heart, and her holy belief that poetry embodies ‘the rhythms of promise,’ are embedded in every shimmering line of this collection.”
— Joseph Bathanti, North Carolina Poet Laureate (2012-2014) & Author of Restoring Sacred Art
Taking Flight
