Philly Chapbook Review is pleased to feature an excerpt by Joyce Schmid as our third featured chapbook poem of Issue 12: Spring 2026. You can find more poetry in her chapbook, Superbloom: Requiem for My Sister, from Kelsay Books.
Superbloom
This year brought rain.
Out of cracks between cement slabs—
out of freeway strips and even potholes—
tidal waves of flowers.
My house was made of flowers when you died—
ethereal, like you—and, like you, dead.
As children we picked flowers near a summer road.
We didn’t know their names—chicory? verbena?
Queen Anne’s lace?—bouquets bedraggled,
limp with yearning for the field,
and rank like fireflies we trapped in jars
for love of orange light.
Childhood was our identity,
our right, and old folks were a different breed,
although we learned that flowers die
and children, too.
I saved this season’s flowers into cyberspace
and labeled them—hedgenettle, larkspur, wild geranium—
as if taxonomy and pictures could immortalize.
But words and photographs are only memory like any art,
and flowers flow from nothingness to nothingness.
They dry, feed summer fires, and flame like Northern Lights
across bad orange sky.
June 21. The date you died. Days will get shorter now.
We say the hills are “golden” though they’re really brown,
the grasses on them dead—not dead like fallen leaves,
but waiting to regrow when time is right.
And Time is always right,
it’s one tough customer—
the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.
Too cool for June, unseasonably gray.
The dead peek out from underneath low clouds,
their breath is fog. They wisp along the seam
that joins the sky to earth.
You are among them now.
(This poem was first published by Passenger. It is reprinted here with the author’s permission.)
About the Poem
My late younger sister, Dolly Gordon, died on June 21, 2021—the longest day of the year. That June, flowers bloomed everywhere in Northern California—as if to honor her, to celebrate her life. This poem is an attempt to accept the fact that she is really gone.
Author Bio
Joyce Schmid is a grandmother and psychotherapist living in Palo Alto, California, with her husband of over half a century. After graduation from Harvard College in History and Literature, she studied Russian Literature at Columbia Graduate School where she was twice awarded their Pushkin Prize for poetry translation. She then earned a Ph.D., in Clinical Psychology from the Pacific Graduate School of Psychology (now Palo Alto University). Her poems have most recently appeared in Bridport Prize Anthology 2025, The Hudson Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, New Ohio Review, Passager, Salt, and other journals and anthologies. Her chapbook is Natural Science (Glass Lyre Press, 2025).
From Superbloom: Requiem for My Sister
When Joyce’s younger sister Dolly was an undergraduate at Harvard, she was admitted to a coveted poetry workshop taught by Robert Lowell, who admired her poetry. After it ended, Dolly never wrote poetry again. In Dolly’s last years, Joyce asked her if she could quote those poems in her own work. “Please do,” she answered. “Maybe that way someone will see them.” Accordingly, some of the poems in this chapbook contain Dolly’s beautiful words.
Available from: Kelsay 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.
Chapbook Poem: from Stray Hunter’s Bullet by Lance Le Grys
“…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.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for May 2026, from Stray Hunter’s Bullet by Lance Le Grys, along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: Love does not exist by Maria Giesbrecht
“This poem was inspired by a dream… I had this strange feeling when I woke up that it meant something more and started writing a poem to see if anything would reveal itself to me.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for May 2026, “Love does not exist” from A Little Feral by Maria Giesbrecht, along with a few words from the poet.
“After a loss in my family, I discovered one grieves for both the living who hide their pain and for the dead who sleep in silence.” Read two poems by Patricia Wallace, our third biweekly poet of the Spring 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Fox.”
May ’26: New Staff, New Calls, New(ish) Name
Editor Aiden Hunt provides information about changes to PCR’s name, format, and staff in this editor’s note, which also contains links to our Spring calls for submissions.
“I kept thinking about how easily adults learn to stop seeing what’s right in front of them, especially when they’re somewhere between one country and another, neither arriving nor leaving.” Read four poems by Nivara Lune, our fourth biweekly poet of the Spring 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Notes Toward an Elsewhere.”
The Lines of Landscape: on The Catastrophes by Marie Scarles
“Scarles’ choice of title points away from place, and toward the book’s deeper and more powerful offering: a changed way of seeing, one of the hallmarks of any successful poetics.” Read the full chapbook review by contributing editor, D.W. Baker.
“Every time I plucked a few of the little orange sun sugars to take inside, their garden smell lingered on my fingers. It was almost enough to just sit with that scent…” Read three poems by Kait Quinn, our fifth biweekly poet of the Spring 2026 issue, along with a few words about “The Tomato.”
Chapbook Poem: Superbloom by Joyce Schmid
“That June, flowers bloomed everywhere in Northern California—as if to honor her, to celebrate her life. This poem is an attempt to accept the fact that she is really gone.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for June 2026, from Superbloom by Joyce Schmid, along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: The Well by Robin Becker
“Allowing flickering sentiments and images to play against one another, I replicated one form of consciousness. A surprising aspect of the poem: the sudden appearance of figures of government.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for June 2026, “The Well” from Midsummer Count by Robin Becker, along with a few words from the poet.
“Like a lot of my poems, this one reaches toward something impossibly out of grasp. But … maybe that’s the power of a poem, to momentarily touch something out of our reach.” Read three poems by Scott Weaver, our sixth and final biweekly poet of the Spring 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Annotating The Inferno.”
A Conversation with Abby Minor
“[A] long time ago I realized, and more or less accepted, that I would commune with most of my poet teachers and comrades via their work, not in person. And my work is how I talk to them.” Poet Abby Minor discusses her chapbook, Infinity Ballot, her Jewish-Appalachian heritage, and her convictions in this interview with new contributor, Julie Swarstad Johnson.