Philly Chapbook Review is pleased to feature an excerpt by Lance Le Grys as our first featured chapbook poem of Issue 12: Spring 2026. You can find more poetry in his chapbook, Stray Hunter’s Bullet, from Broadstone Books.
from Stray Hunter’s Bullet
12
that was the summer of Eden
spent it would seem
in their memory
as one endless day
by a pond in the woods
on a rock
naked in post-coital repose
and lucidity
skin cool from the water
droplets damp hair
he fingering idly the frets of a guitar
she sketching
intent oblivious to all but lines
tracing with a pencil
the edge of his back
the ribs through pale skin
the tight ridges of his scrotum
pulled cold from the water
the feet scratched and calloused
and long fingers
with hair on the knuckles
and countless nights all dark away
from fires and porch lights
in barns in tall grass
backs of cars
against the tin walls of sheds filled with heavy machinery
as common as dirt
About the Poem
Stray Hunter’s Bullet began as an experiment. I had been haunted for years by the idea of the central character, with a general idea of working it into a work of prose fiction. All attempts at working this out, however, proved abortive, perhaps because what interested me was the idea of a character who didn’t do what he was capable of, not because of external circumstances, but because of either a lack of will or a seemingly perverse one. Inactivity is generally not the stuff of narrative – hence the subtitle, ‘A Failure in Narrative,’ whether the failure is taken to be that of the protagonist or that of the poet. The only way I could find my way into the story (or lack thereof) was through the eyes of the narrator, so that the dramatic monologue forced itself on me.
Author Bio
Lance Le Grys was born in 1970 in Cambridge, New York. He received his B.A. in Classics from Middlebury College in 1992 and has made his living first as a Latin teacher and then as a librarian. He currently lives in Castleton, Vermont. He is the author of the poetry collections Mortal Variations (In Case of Emergency Press, forthcoming) and Views from an Outbuilding (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, 2019), and the chapbook Pilate Suite (Bottlecap Press, 2024).
From Stray Hunter’s Bullet
A “failure of narrative” distilled into twenty-six short meditations, in which the narrator attempts to come to terms with the seemingly senseless life and death of a friend, charismatic, yet indifferent to his own gifts and inadvertently destructive to those who love him.
Available from: Broadstone Books
Contents
Chapbook Poem: Slow Burn by Evan Wang
“The concept of personifying a slow burn deeply resonated with who I thought myself to be—a slow burn, love flickering around me.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for April 2026, “Slow Burn” by Evan Wang, along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: She wants shimmering scales by Nicole Alston Zdeb
“The nexus of the erotic, the social, and the body felt relevant to what I was experiencing at the end of the 20th Century. There are glimmers of personal lore as well…” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for April 2026, “She wants shimmering scales” from The End of Welcome by Nicole Alston Zdeb, along with a few words from the poet.
“I wanted to explore how time was registered not only by the calendar and clock, but also in the various utilitarian tasks of my mother’s life.” Read three poems by Ron Mohring, our first biweekly poet of the Spring 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Fuse.”
Three Poems by Andrew Pelham-Burn
“Children in these circumstances are deprived of love at a formative stage and learn to immediately behave like adults without the benefit of the learning path of childhood.” Read three poems by Andrew Pelham-Burn, our second biweekly poet of the Spring 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Conkers.”
A Conversation with John deSouza
“Language is a powerful tool and can do great harm both to ourselves and to those most close to us when used cruelly or selfishly.” Poet John deSouza discusses his chapbook, This Rough Magic, his creative process, and the influence of John Ashbery in this interview with editor Danielle McMahon.