Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to present three original poems by Alexandra Burack as our third biweekly featured poet of the Fall 2025 issue.
Poems
To Know Blue from the Color of Snow at Dusk
Moonless, I walk through a scorching
city where all that matters is the day’s
singularity. Where all is possible except
how to seep back inside the world after
being only an interloper for so long. Rows
of ground floor motel doors gape to spew
bathroom arguments over tabloid sidewalks:
she will always matter to her, he will always
matter to him, you really love someone else: fights
over how snow will fall against rocks in the high
country, which side will whiten first. At the southern
border, desert stones straddle gaps in the fence,
and lizards tease men with shotguns by darting first north,
then south, indifferent to their flexible exile.
Twilight
Hungry crows in dusk-cadenced
tincture on the lawn. Chalked-
glyph moon spells the birds’
chant slow and blueblack. I knew,
then, we are hunted, cracked
and gnawed until soft enough
for grief to fill. Gaunt birds’
hunger unsung in me. Dawn
ice curls pine branches over chairs
left outside to remind
you of gardened hours
when you could not eat, stilled
under trees that curved
to each other the way birds
shape wind. One crow strides
the stone wall, black wings
silver in the going light, light
going over the implacable snow.
The Work of the Imagination
No, it’s not Tuscany, yet sun decants
over garages toward the fig tree. We’ve got
to pluck when plucking’s best, this word-
swelled life we crave, as it ripens impossible
fruit that plump up against the chain-link fence
high enough so Beware-of-Dog next door can’t
reach, but not so high the sagging power lines
crisp them with that hum, and not so big they drop
before their time, add plant-seed putrescence
to the cesspit smell of piss and sick the local bars’
patrons pool in one-way streets. The spindly-
trunked tree sanctions car-alarmed air to seethe
by, insists uprightness. Tonight, truck-mounted misters
will spray mosquito-killing chemicals as we sleep.
The tree’s heart is immune to the tachycardia
we won’t remember interrupted our dreams.
In the morning, it will still not
be Tuscany. And the figs will be ready.
About “To Know Blue from the Color of Snow at Dusk”
‘To Know Blue from the Color of Snow at Dusk’ began many years ago as an examination of the futility of betrayal. I realized quickly its organic form was the unrhymed (American) sonnet, and worked through numerous drafts to experiment with stanza organization and lineation. In another dozen drafts, I discovered concrete images that better provided narrative context and emotional engagement with speaker and scene. Subsequent drafts enabled me to find the current stanzaic shape of the poem and 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. I submitted this poem to at least 20 literary magazines and poem competitions over the past six years, and it was rejected by all of them until I was honored by the acceptance from Philly Poetry Chapbook Review.
Author Bio
Alexandra Burack, author of On the Verge, is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and freelance editor/writing coach. Her recent work appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, Pangyrus, Metphrastics, ucity review, and The Sewanee Review, among other venues, and is forthcoming in Packingtown Review, Trampoline, and Thimble Lit Mag. She serves as a Poetry Editor for Iron Oak Editions and Poetry is Currency, and a Poetry Reader for The Los Angeles Review, The Adroit Journal, and West Trade Review/Trill. Her website is alexandraburack.com.
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.