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.
Chapbook Poem: August Peaches by Winshen Liu
“I wanted to sit with a particular end-of-summer indulgence, where a host has saved specialty foods to welcome visiting friends and family–fancy chocolate, favorite sodas, a certain snack.” Read a poem from Winshen Liu’s chapbook Paper Money along with words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: Cheesecake Factory by Max McDonough
“This poem lives in the weirdness of the suburban mall spaces a lot of us grew up visiting (or loitering in!), places that feel like they could be anywhere and nowhere at once.” Read a poem from Max McDonough’s chapbook along with words from the poet.
Three Poems by Alexandra Meyer
“Love had made me stronger in a lot of ways, but also showed me the weakest parts of myself that were left crystallized for him to see. This was much like wood morphing into rock during the petrification process.” Read three poems by Alexandra Meyer along with words from the poet.
Three Poems by Kristiane Weeks-Rogers
“Anchored by sensory detail, the poem journeys between childhood safety and adult experience in a canyon town shaped by rivers and monsoons. … This poem is a meditation on time, tastes, and tenderness of memory.” Read three poems by Kristiane Weeks-Rogers along with words from the poet.
Chapbook Poem: The Seventh Age of Shakespeare’s Father by Scott LaMascus
“This poem hit me hard last winter, sitting a moment near my late father, as our family was trying to absorb the meaning of his ALS diagnosis … I wondered, if ‘all the world’s a stage,’ what role had I just been assigned?” Read the featured Chapbook Poem of the Month for September 2025 along with words from the poet.
Book Excerpt: Landscape with footprints in ash by Selma Asotić
“When I want to sound smart, I say things like: a poet is one who leaves. When I accept that I’m not very smart, mostly just perplexed and a little scared, I write poems about ghosts and circle farms.” Read a poem from Asotić’s new book, Say Fire, along with words from the poet.
“All of my encounters with the U.S. healthcare system follow the protocols of the ridiculous. This poem, couched in the conventions of the contemporary sonnet, explores my latest, decisive encounter with a doctor’s office.” Read three poems by Robin Arble along with words from the poet.
September ’25: Best of the Net Nominations
Editor Aiden Hunt announces Philly Chapbook Review’s Best of the Net 2026 anthology nominations in this editor’s note and provides links to the nominated poems.
Verses of Mourning: in the aftermath by Jessica Nirvana Ram
“[Ram] presents a revealing and heartbreaking collection that asks the reader to think about what they remember the most about those they have lost.” Read Alex Carrigan’s full review.
“This poem reckons with our capitalist, product-driven society to ask people why disabled stories are only relevant if they portray the ‘other’ overcoming trauma to become abled people’s inspiration porn.” Read three poems by Makena Metz along with words from the poet.