Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to present three original poems by Bryana Fern as our first biweekly featured poet of the Fall 2025 issue.
Poems
Growing a Garden
There’s a garden in my backyard made
of rocks. Its rows without border stretch
like tomatoes or corn or strawberries.
The first stone just seemed to appear one
September day; a hand-sized slice of
sandstone smoothed by creeks run dry.
I began to add whatever rocks I could find;
chalk, shale, pumice, and granite. Online
groups had me trading stones by mail like
greeting cards, but the post office wouldn’t
deliver a seven-pound obsidian bought from
an Idaho man. My rocks and I never move.
When rains shift stones like scuttling crabs,
I replace them and pack the soil tight. I display
my garden for new neighbors who ask why
a teacher would do this. They can’t understand
the solitude of a firm substance. They try but fail,
as I did once, to sit and belong like the rocks.
Women on the Wall
My mind of late has been consumed by the old Café
Pripyat. Once affectionately called The Dish by
crowds of young adults, long since grown, it remains still
near an amusement park and its ferris wheel of
abandoned yellow cars that creak and groan like ancient
doors of steel. Stained glass panels still reflect
the café’s front exterior. While some color lies shattered
on dusty floorboards, the women in the window
remain, with wheat and sun and stars, a partial crescent
moon, and swells and hills of land. The women drift,
never looking at you, their extending garments and trellised
hair and open hands blessing those who remember.
Royal blues, hunter greens, yellow, orange, and Soviet reds.
If I wiped the dirt from an armchair, waited and listened
to the emptiness of the streets and the trees and the water,
would I see others from the past, and will these women
see me and see through me to my longing and hollowness,
finding me to be as bereft as the soul of the city itself?
Galway Girls Cards
I spotted her on a sun-filled evening
in May, her sandaled feet touching
cobblestone and grass, darting through
the Latin Quarter with Murphy’s cone in
hand. By the boats, past the Hunger Walk to
the inlet off Father Griffin Road, Spanish
Arch to her left, Claddagh to the right. She
stepped between groups of youth and six-
packs and balanced arms outstretched like
the swan off the canal in the rushing Corrib
bobbing, observant, in no need of humans.
Reaching her destination at the very end
spot, she dropped into a cross-legged like the
dancer I’d seen yesterday in the Square. She
licked her ice cream, alone by the sapling (is
it ash or hazel?) and the water’s far horizon
with hills beyond–part of the Burren, I believe–
her black curls blew under a blue paisley scarf.
I studied the path she’d taken between the chaos,
wondered if I too could pass the maze of summer
tourists in steps far less graceful, with far more
apologies—what would she say as I stumbled to
join her in silent stillness to study the rapids.
Would the blonde with the penny whistle in the
Harvard group grab for my ankle or bellow some
ballad again? Mother says I should stop watching
women if I can’t strike the nerve to speak to them,
cannot reach across the masses. Could either
see me now with my knees to my chest on the
Long Walk between the scarlet and sunflower
houses always on postcards, a woman as lost as
the swan I’d followed far down river from the
Cathedral? Might I be in pictures others take
of this scenic stretch of street each day? Would
you be in one, too, so that we’re stacked front to
back in a postcard rack at a Number Ten and there,
dancing round as a child spins us, can I say hello?
About “Women on the Wall”
I binged the whole HBO miniseries Chernobyl one night and became fascinated by the abandoned city of Pripyat. I looked it up and saw stories of the visiting tours and the displaced citizens who’ve returned to their homes as ‘settlers.’ As I looked at photos of the amusement park, I noticed a building in the trees that didn’t look spectacular at first. Photos from inside, however, showed gorgeous stained glass art that you can’t see from the outside. Floor to ceiling, wall to wall. 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. The colors are so rich against the gray of the buildings and sidewalks and sky—normal and yet sublime.
Author Bio
Bryana Fern received her PhD from the Center for Writers at The University of Southern Mississippi. Her stories, essays, and poems have been published in Sequestrum, Harpur Palate, Sou’wester, Rock & Sling, Rappahannock Review, The Argyle, Redactions, South 85, and Nomad. She has also published work in the Washington Review of Books and has a critical article chapter in McFarland’s Star Trek: the Feminist Frontier.
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.”