Philly Chapbook Review is pleased to feature a poem excerpt by Douglas Piccinnini as part of Issue 13: Summer 2026. You can find more poetry in his chapbook, House of Bad Melodies, available now from Greying Ghost.
I’ll Never Look This Good Again
It’s a calm, crippling blue fall day
punctured by the tearing caw of a crow
and there’s a waiting list to not
disappear into a future
of swirling vermillion foam
in a creek of hair
ripped out in clumps.
I’m laying on a pile of dry cardboard
having forgotten about
a day like today in a past which
I’d’ve thought would contain clouds.
It’s a night now of moldering roses
a clear, blue-black night
painted over with could-be thoughts.
(This poem was first published by American Poetry Review. It is reprinted here with the author’s permission.)
About the Poem
I wrote ‘I’ll Never Look This Good Again’ at one of the great thresholds of my life — on the cusp of the birth of my first child, my son Oblio. The poem first appeared in the American Poetry Review, thanks to Elizabeth Scanlon, and I’m grateful it found a home there.
It came out of real pressure: despair, worry, and grief I wanted to hold unflinchingly, alongside the anxiety of becoming a parent — what that means, and the fear that I’d unload all of my trauma into my child.
What I was reaching for most was time itself — the strain of past, present, and future all pressing against one another. The speaker sits in unrest: unresolved, with a waiting list, a perhaps. That pressure is maybe what people call midlife on the edge of parenthood. For me the poem became a meditation on all the feeling that surfaces precisely when we’re told to feel only joy.
Author Bio
Douglas Piccinnini is an American poet and interdisciplinary artist whose collections include Beautiful, Safe & Free (New Books, 2023), Blood Oboe (Omnidawn, 2015), Story Book: a novella (The Cultural Society, 2015), and chapbooks including A Western Sky (Greying Ghost, 2022) and Does This World Want Me To Have Problems (Subpress, 2024). His work has appeared or will soon appear in Antiphony, American Poetry Review, Amsterdam Review, Brooklyn Rail, Denver Quarterly, Lana Turner, and Tupelo Quarterly, among others, and he received a 2025 Finalist Award from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. His writing has been supported by residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Art Farm Nebraska, and the Sundress Academy for the Arts, as well as a United States Artists Grant. He lives in Lambertville, New Jersey with his family.
From House of Bad Melodies
House of Bad Melodies explores grief and inheritance through fragmented, formally inventive poems that enact how trauma and meaning loop and collapse across generations. Piccinnini pushes against the limits of lyric poetry, using repetition, abstraction, and recursive structures to destabilize language while staying rooted in the visceral textures of everyday life.
Available from: Greying Ghost
Contents
“This language offers one possible framing through which to appreciate the law’s capacity to hope for, request, and even command commitment to a more just future.” Read two poems by Maggie Wang, our first biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Possibilities for Action.”
Chapbook Poem: I’ll Never Look This Good Again by Douglas Piccinnini
“[The poem] came out of real pressure: despair, worry, and grief I wanted to hold unflinchingly, alongside the anxiety of becoming a parent… For me the poem became a meditation on all the feeling that surfaces precisely when we’re told to feel only joy.” Read an excerpt from Douglas Piccinnini’s chapbook, House of Bad Memories, along with a few words from the poet.
“She sees herself in carbon, the element that bonds with almost anything- not because it wants to, but because it has empty spaces and things keep showing up to fill them. Notifications. Noise. Needs that never stop arriving.” Read four poems by Joely Williams, our second biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Single Mother Considers the Periodic Table.”
ADHD in a Non-ADHD World: on Undersight by Alison Hurwitz
“[Hurwitz] shares moments of angst and moments of awe. More than that, there are moments of deep recognition. She sees herself in [her sons] and, in fact, receives a later-life ADHD diagnosis of her own.” Read the full chapbook review by new contributor, Nancy Murphy.
“The woman’s head & hair are lavishly dressed. I probably leapt off the logic of the hairdresser being blind and therefore had to work on the head/body/mind rather than just hair as a surface issue of presentation.” Read two poems by Irene Cunningham, our third biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “The Blind Hairdresser.”
Flash Fiction: Nova by Kimmy Chang
“‘Nova’ is a lyrical second-person story about the narrator’s first true encounter with death…the story presents loss not as beautiful in itself, but as the place where beauty begins.” Read the first original fiction piece of the Summer 2026 issue, “Nova” by Kimmy Chang.
“To fit the nuanced, dimensional experience of dysphoria and transition into narrative…often feels flattening, falsely assured. I wanted to look at this discomfort I felt, to see what was necessary in it.” Read three poems by Joshua Zeitler, our fourth biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Cobbling.”
Excerpt: “On the puzzle still inside my head” by Truong Tran
“I am trying to excavate memories. I am trying to negotiate the difficult realities of existing as a brown man in this country and within the consciousness of white America.” Read an excerpt from Truong Tran’s forthcoming book from City Lights, How to Exi(s)t: A Poet’s Memoir.
“These poems try to make sense of how I arrived at a life that probably seems well thought-out, but has been one reactionary choice after another.” Read three poems by A.R. Dugan, our fifth biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Sleeptalking.”
Original Fiction: Muse by Somtoo Celestine Ezioha
“What I tried to trace was the underside. How watching someone closely for long enough becomes a substitute for approaching them.” Read the second original fiction piece of the Summer 2026 issue, “Muse” by Somtoo Celestine Ezioha.
“After childbirth, my body became a site of criticism rather than something to be celebrated for what it had endured and created. Writing this became a way to confront that experience…” Read three poems by Tanya Tuzeo, our sixth biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “i get Botox.”