Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to present Nicole Alston Zdeb’s poem “She wants shimmering scales” as our first monthly featured poem from a full-length book for Issue 12: Summer 2026. You can find more poetry in her book, The End of Welcome, available from Airlie Press.
She wants shimmering scales
Grand passions
once gaudy flowers
rooted in decadence
like leash walking a handsome pig
along the promenade
declaring nakedness
a disguise
and progress
banal as a meadowlark
but naked indifference
remains deliciously elite
though the woman bores easily
with moral decline
and transforms
for pleasure
into a glimmering trout
About the Poem
‘She wants shimmering scales’ is a love song to Symbolism, Yeats, and the Decadence movement—all heady influences when I was emerging as a poet in the 90’s, finding my genetics, and tuning in to the fin de siècle aesthetic. 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 – ‘Grand Passion’ was the name of a local band in the New London scene. I had a thing with the drummer. And the end movement of the poem, transforming into a fish, Aphrodite did that to escape the father of all monsters, Typhon. I love ingenious escapes and sly goddesses.
Author Bio
Nicole Alston Zdeb is a writer based in Portland, Oregon. She holds a MFA from Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Bedouin Press published her chapbook, The Friction of Distance. Recently, she’s had poems, photographs, and short stories accepted by Driftwood Press, Lana Turner, SWWIM, and other journals. Learn more at www.nicolezdeb.com.
From The End of Welcome
The End of Welcome sinks a blade into the loam and crust of human experience to unearth fresh layers of feeling and meaning. With wit and wordplay that suture and transcend time, these singularly voiced poems travel underground and underwater through intimate landscapes to mysteriously surface in the universal. By turns comic, absurdist, and poignant, this collection holds grief, resilience, and joy as a shell held to the ear holds the sonic image of the sea, the heart holds the fallout of a suicide, and the body holds defiant against and bends to the machinations of progress.
Available now: Airlie Press
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.”