LESLEY WHEELER

Tag: Best American Poetry

  • Voices in my head

    Voices in my head

    I don’t know how to harmonize the jostling inner voices of the last few weeks into coherent prose, so here’s some cacophony.

  • Hawthorns, bogs, & undersongs

    Hawthorns, bogs, & undersongs

    The BurrenSometimes you bring pain along like a walletof funny-colored bills or a mobile phone.Here’s a knotted neck for the Burren. A spirit-fissure to echo the limestone grykes. Karstpavement matches you: riven grays, white lichen,sky pale with tiredness. Stand on a clint and becomeinvisible, perfectly camouflaged by pain.Yet in the watery gaps tiny pink flowers…

  • Best American, lit mags, and the merry-go-round

    Best American, lit mags, and the merry-go-round

    I’m now allowed to announce that my poem “Sex Talk” will appear in Best American Poetry 2025, chosen by Terence Winch. I had absolutely no idea it was under consideration and have never been in one of these anthologies before–didn’t think I ever would be. The December email from Mark Bibbins was a bolt out…

  • On submitting a poem 50 times

    I’ve had my head under a giant seeing-my-daughter-off-to-college-shaped rock, so when I read Jeannine Hall Gailey’s blog yesterday, its references to scandal in the poetry world inspired me to lift my busy skull and ask, “Wha-at?” I’m not going to name the white guy who published in Best American Poetry under a Chinese-American pseudonym, because he’s…