Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to present Yamini Pathak’s poem “Rondo” as our second monthly featured poem from a full-length book for Issue 10: Fall 2025. You can find more poetry in their book, Her Mouth a Palace of Lamps, available from Milk & Cake Press.
Rondo
after Rondo VI by Bruce Beasley
Tender ankles, brothered by steel
cuff me to a cloud so I become
a bird in circles, longing
Cup of autumn gold for the ancestors on my lips
their names, in my heart
an altar smoking
Arm in arm linked bone and breath, wood
metal, and mineral lean on me, I will tell you a story
of this place this brightness called living
Wind through a garland of voices passing here
Lenape nights, carnivals, castanets
of hooves and honey bees hymning
Listen — the jingle of my mother’s bracelets
pouring tea I am
a bird in circles longing
About the Poem
I wrote this poem in response to the sculpture Rondo VI by Bruce Beasley exhibited at the Grounds For Sculpture museum in Hamilton, NJ. The sculpture gardens are located on the site of the former NJ State fairgrounds, which included a racetrack, and further back in its history, was the native land of the Lenape people. The poem is a conversation between sculpture, land, and its human and more-than-human inhabitants.
Author Bio
Yamini Pathak is the author of poetry collection Her Mouth a Palace of Lamps (Milk & Cake Press, 2025). She has published poetry chapbooks Atlas of Lost Places (Milk & Cake Press, 2020) and Breath Fire Water Song (Ghost City Press, 2021). Yamini is a member of the 2025 Poets & Writers’ Get the Word Out Poetry Cohort and serves as the editor of Inch with Bull City Press. A recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, her work has been supported by Vermont Studio Center, Tin House, Kenyon Review Writers Workshops, and VONA. She has been nominated for Best New Poets and has been a finalist for Frontier Poetry’s Global Poetry Prize (South Asia). Yamini holds an MFA in poetry from Antioch University and her poems appear in West Branch, Poetry Northwest, Tupelo Quarterly, among other journals. She can be reached at www.yaminipathak.com.
From Her Mouth a Palace of Lamps
Her Mouth a Palace of Lamps is a meditation on what it means to be a woman in two cultures. Yamini Pathak’s debut poetry collection traverses countries and time as the narrator reaches for the songs of her ancestors and evolves through daughterhood, motherhood, and beyond. Deeply embodied, and rich with images from memory and myth, these are poems of quiet, compelling transformation.
Available now: Milk & Cake Press
Contents
Chapbook Poem: When I Was Straight by Dustin Brookshire
“‘When I Was Straight’ prompted me to think about a common queer experience—how most parents assume their children are ‘straight’ and expect their children to live a ‘straight’ life.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for October 2025 along with words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: American Girl: Fort Hood, 2023 by Thea Matthews
“[W]eaving in and juxtaposing the lyrics of Tom Petty’s ‘American Girl.’ The song’s themes of desperation, wanderlust, and longing are subverted by Ana’s life and tragedy at Fort Cavazos, previously known as Fort Hood, Texas.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem for October 2025 along with words from the poet.
“It seems such a shame that a beautiful location is just gathering dust and overgrowth, and I wanted to lean into the juxtaposition of that.” Read three poems by Bryana Fern along with a few words about “Women on the Wall.”
Bodies in Transition: Sacred & Perishable by Carissa Natalia Baconguis
“There is a muscular intimacy to the ecosystem of these poems, each one of them creating as vivid a world individually as exists in the collection as a whole.” Read Gray Davidson Carroll’s full review.
“In ‘No Breaks’ I was writing about something I hope I never have to experience. … I tried to keep despair at bay and show some defiance and resilience.” Read two poems by Gerald Yelle along with a few words about “No Breaks.”
November ’25: New Staff, Issue Archive & Donations
Read a note from Editor Aiden Hunt about our new Poetry Readers, the additions of an Issue Archive and a Contributor Fund, Fall poetry submissions, and Gaza.
Chapbook Poem: Two egrets at the edge of a tidal marsh by Rebekah Wolman
“Settling on the mirror form opened the way into the parallels between the original image of the egrets, their reflection, and their ambiguous relationship and the shifting, even reversing, roles of an adult daughter and her aging mother…” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for November 2025 along with words from the poet.
Three Poems by Alexandra Burack
“Subsequent drafts enabled me to … uncover the metaphor of exile, whose meanings are intended to move readers from an experience of alienation to one of discernment of the liberating qualities of outsiderhood.” Read three poems by Alexandra Burack, along with a few words about “To Know Blue From the Color of Snow at Dusk.”