Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to feature Mary Gilliland’s poem “Red Tide” as our final featured chapbook poem of Issue 10: Fall 2025. You can find more poetry in her chapbook, Red Tide at Sandy Bend, from The Bodily Press.
Red Tide
Karenia brevis rambles a slow surf, a Gulf that’s remembered perfect blue.
My bronchiae fill with pins, nasals run. Acrid air slices my open eyes.
In the darkened wave no swimming this Thanksgiving.
Some humans call this era the Anthropocene. As though
we were more than fleshy needles on Nature’s world-tree.
A single cell organism is resilient: can live without water an eon or more.
Sewage and field run-off find upwellings in the water column.
Nutrients we flush spread a pantry in the sea.
Who is the host? Who is the guest?
No one should get sick from a day at the beach
as half-time ends for Bears at Lions.
Our defenses complicated, the real is simple.
About the Poem
Awarded a November residency several years ago on the southwest coast of Florida, I imagined temporarily trading the bare trees and lowering clouds of my home in the Northeast for a serene sunny paradise. Upon arrival, I was told to avoid the beach, and especially the water, because of red tide, a naturally occurring phenomena that, nourished by human waste, multiplies to become a harmful algal bloom that releases neurotoxins. Instead of paradise, I experienced confinement to the house, endangered breathing if I ventured to the island’s irresistible library. I wore a mask outdoors, pre-covid19. The interdependence and impermanence of life, always at the core of my work, was on my mind in a new way every day that month. Reflection, research, a public service announcement, an old Zen koan, and 3 weeks of bicycling for groceries with a bandana tied around my nose and mouth inform ‘Red Tide’. I am grateful to the Sanibel chapter of the League of Women Voters for a public program on water quality that set me off on further studies of this element so essential to current existence. HABs occur worldwide, in fresh water as well as salt, from the coast of Australia to Cape Cod, the location of my chapbook’s cover photo.
Author Bio
Born in Philadelphia, Mary Gilliland is the prizewinning author of seven collections of poetry including The Devil’s Fools and, most recently, Within the Shop of the Divine. She has held the Stanley Kunitz Fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the International Literary Seminars Kenya/Fence 1st Prize in Poetry, and a Cornell University Council on the Arts Faculty Grant to develop a section focused on the Labyrinth for the Society for Humanities course “Mind & Memory: Creativity in the Arts & Sciences.” Mary lives in New York’s Finger Lakes Region where she has transformed a rocky acre of Six Mile Creek into a fawn-filled woodland garden. Find her at https://marygilliland.com/ | X: @newsthatstays | Bluesky: newsthatstays.bsky.social
From Red Tide at Sandy Bend
Barnacles sparkle, puffins glint, human practices result in fish-strewn beaches. Like blue-green algae on lakes and ponds, red tide is a naturally occurring phenomenon. Nourished by human waste and warming waters, cyanobacteria multiply in harmful algal blooms (HABs) that release neurotoxins. In a whirl of games, addictions, concussions, swimming bans, Red Tide at Sandy Bend posits a world of creaturely interdependence visceral and intimate.
Available from: The Bodily 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.”
Book Excerpt: Rondo by Yamini Pathak
“The sculpture gardens are located on … the native land of the Lenape people. The poem is a conversation between sculpture, land, and its human and more-than-human inhabitants.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for November 2025, “Rondo” from Her Mouth a Palace of Lamps by Yamini Pathak, along with a few words from the poet.
Two Poems by Yasmin Mariam Kloth
“As I shaped the poem, the olive trees became a witness to a deeper experience—to a region’s ongoing, collective pain. It was the land I wanted to make speak in a place where I did not have words.” Read two poems by Yasmin Mariam Kloth, along with a few words about “Before.”
A Conversation with Chris Abani and Kwame Dawes
“We wanted something that was alive, highlighted an ever-expanding list of books by these poets, and that will hopefully survive the both of us and flourish under the curation of a fresh set of poets.” Read the full interview about the New-Generation African Poets Chapbook series.
Chapbook Poem: Red Tide by Mary Gilliland
“Reflection, research, a public service announcement, an old Zen koan, and 3 weeks of bicycling for groceries with a bandana tied around my nose and mouth inform ‘Red Tide’.” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for December 2025, “Red Tide” from Red Tide at Sandy Bend, along with a few words from the poet.
Three Poems by Veronica Tucker
“’You Left the Fridge Open Again’ transforms an ordinary domestic moment into a meditation on tenderness and decay. The open refrigerator becomes a quiet altar, its hum a hymn to what lingers after love’s warmth has cooled.” Read three poems by Veronica Tucker, along with a few words about “You Left the Fridge Open Again.”
Book Excerpt: The Samadhi of Words by Richard Collins
“Zen poets, past and present, who experience deep absorption in the grandeur of this world may even gain wisdom through the way of poetry, Shidō (詩道). This is the samadhi of words.” Read the featured Excerpt Poem of the Month for December 2025, “The Samadhi of Words” from Stone Nest by Richard Collins, along with a few words from the poet.
December ’25: Pushcart Prize Nominations
Editor Aiden Hunt announces Philly Chapbook Review’s 2026 Pushcart Prize anthology nominations in this editor’s note and provides links to, and a carousel of, the nominated poems.