Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to present five original poems by Laynie Browne as our first of seven biweekly featured poets of the Summer 2025 issue, along with five images created by the poet.
Poems
24 November 2024
Everything is up to me
I mean my life
What buoyancy carries
At least take pictures
Or guesses before sending them back
Really you want to keep all of them
As if they were companions
The company of yes, the tressed friends
No one inside them—always kind and listening
Before the gloss has gone
perfume of paper shops and boxes
Unworn, alert, ready to place a day
Into an image-like edge, feathered and combed
Torts plied I parted from that undressed
Spectacle and put on a vestige
Arranging, and then addressing a picture
Compressed authoring deep rest
A meditation and bibliotherapy circle session
I wish my visits were more frequent
But in the interim we can meet inside this cabinet
Either lonely or desperate to get away
How I unmet myself
The sort of wardrobe requiring snow
And no end to the ribbed, pleated, strapping
Unstudied concertina bats
I saw them walking down the street
Covered in all seeing rhinestone eyes
The cost was more than to walk
In any continent even upper skid
Thin glades all over sequin reticence
29 November 2024
First, place some words close to your elbow
Books are full of them
Many more than required
In a jumbled order
A cover is also useful
To purloin—describe what you see
Angel in a mirror speaking back
Letters angled in snow overlaid
Across winter branches &
Other stories, diminutive, glittering
Footsteps, a provisional invitation sways
Bits and pieces, an aberration in gloves
And handbags-goes out—so utterly
Without punctuation, a black
Bow stands alone on a platform
Attracting invention—where is the missing
Body of rush, willow and ivy, sinew and
Carriage, tumultuously waits in a cafe of
Gravity, unassimilated, raw crossroads
Explained a private superstition
Dexterity’s reclassification daughter
Errors of accomplishment, cold born
Wrap of exorbitant mop courting
Darkness, affable coven, trains
Deportment—for change
2 December 2024
I learned to have a face
To pull back my care
To transpose wings
Dispose of unwanted recollections and false pillars
Restitched myself sequined spine by sign
Puncture, embroider, cudgel, daguerreotype
Pocket imbroglio
Slattern magenta vexatious looks
Instead of ripping heads off
Start pasting them on
Whatever eye rivets
3 December 2024
Where can I find some ruched
Ovens to walk out in
Gestures or sounds scorched
Diaphanous perplexing cries of discourse
The first utterance, syntax in turns
The oldest woven lament, length unknown
An afterward, sent to university for analysis
A flawless morphology, sheer
Adorned with gold grammars, the mortal kind
Corset studded in semi-precious declensions
No sewing required—astonished minimalist letters
Intricate square syllables, cleverest shoulders
Ornately beaded parts of speech—sleek
Sat silent on bough, constructed in pieces
A layered phonology, like a story of children
Skirt and bodice thrown together in a prefatory pattern
Why I don’t attend song circles
The language in question a further epoch
A thicket in slips, pageantry of elaborate
Linguistics, empires with capped lexicons
Must be from another era of muslin or chiffon
I cinched my waist with a series of dashes
Breezy, lame, the naked dress semantics
4 December 2024
When I place myself in front of a fox fire
Carefully assembled and lit in the birthing
Stove—I trace myself before you
Like a meditation the process is
Easier than stillness and silence
Though why should this be inordinately true
First touch the surface to be sure it is adequately
Clued—then open and clean the crevasse
Next remove quivering—then—or before
Bring in three sizes of hoods and spindling
Build a nest of triggers and chances
Crank the scars and turn on the slant
Light and feed carefully
With the lore open until you are tarpan
Close the ‘moor’ then turn off the ‘and’
Latch and watch, then deliver yourself into the phrase
An assemblage of purred flaws
Sit quietly until your bones begin to melt
Now I can see your face spread not only behind
The glass in a cacophony of embers but also
All across the room, the bloomed night outside and
The implacable darkness in my gloved mirror
Revolves into something calmer, more like lace or music
Relaxation of the daughterly beguiled
How finally to bring my braids with me
Into the thickened aging future of trees
Though you aren’t here—you must be
And all those unfinished keeping losses
How to release—cask pulled back from undertow
Sudden fits casting untold accumulations
Where are the instructions for rarities moving on
To replace my fast and not to allow the maimed
To make one staved or felled
Without a permanent story, disintegration of nascency
Of frames and brooms—this having underwings
Slipped or absent foundation maybe to pour
A new one will kneel
Remove the ledgers of sables and thorns
unlock the aviary—you would say
What can I do to invoke the phoenix
Scented woods, a second life, invented
Burnt sienna up to her elbows—enter
Arms first into the confident plumage of a book
Self-portrait lighting a woodstove
About “2 December 2024”
On Valentine’s day, 2024, I began a year-long durational project, in which I made a self-portrait every day for one year. I created both textual and visual work every day. My intent for Daily Self-Portrait Valentine was to coincide with the essential self, like a love letter to inner being. There are many names for this, none of them adequate. This work is an archive of my attempts to become more familiar with who I am, and why I am here, to immerse myself in these ancient spiritual questions—which exist in many sacred traditions.
Author Bio
Laynie Browne is a poet, prose writer, artist, editor and teacher. Her recent books of poetry include: Everyone & Her Resemblances (Pamenar, 2024), Intaglio Daughters (Ornithopter 2023), Practice Has No Sequel (Pamenar 2023), Letters Inscribed in Snow (Tinderbox 2023), and Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists (Wave Books, 2022). In 2024 a solo show of her collage titled “On the Way to the Filmic Woods” was exhibited at the Brodsky Gallery at Kelly Writer’s House. She co-edited the anthology I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues Press) and edited the anthology A Forest on Many Stems: Essays on The Poet’s Novel (Nightboat). Honors include a Pew Fellowship, the National Poetry Series Award for her collection The Scented Fox, and the Contemporary Poetry Series Award for her collection Drawing of a Swan Before Memory. She teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
Contents
Chapbook Poem: The Blessed Knot by Li-Young Lee
“A well-made poem is a knot, but not a tangle. The well-made knot of a poem can disentangle readers from illusion, to free them from confusion. Poetry is a form of disillusionment.” Read the July Chapbook Poem by Li-Young Lee along with words from the poet.
“This work is an archive of my attempts to become more familiar with who I am, and why I am here, to immerse myself in these ancient spiritual questions…” Check out five poems and five images by Laynie Browne along with a few words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: Creating Space by Lisa Sewell
“Yoga, the walks, and the writing became a daily exercise in paying attention—to the world, to the bodies in the world around me and to my own body…” Read the Excerpt Poem of the Month for July 2025 by Lisa Sewell along with words from the poet.
“My poetry tries to examine … the difference between the lives we live inside ourselves and the lives we expose to other people.” Read five poems by William Doreski along with a few words from the poet.
July ’25: Poetry Readers Wanted
Read a note from editor Aiden Hunt about PCR’s Summer poetry and new poetry reader opportunities brought by our growing original poetry submissions.
Four Poems by allison whittenberg
“I grew up as a film buff and I loved reading Hollywood Babylon. Over the years, I have learned to separate the truth from the myths.” Read four poems by allison whittenberg along with a few words from the poet.