Philly Chapbook Review is pleased to present three original poems by Joshua Zeitler as our fourth biweekly featured poet of the Summer 2026 issue.
Poems
Cobbling
I am not a man, and I am not a woman. This much I have decided. It feels unlike a decision, but rather the repaving of a worn road or sidewalk: municipal, underfunded, long- anticipated. As for the decisive aspect, it’s mostly what shoes to wear, when, with which outfit. The tongues of them are out of the ordinary in that they speak, like nothing else, exclusively in terms of affirmation. I am not fluent in non-negation, and have a non-negligible amount of trouble navigating non-extraordinary situations. Greeting cashiers, expressing my preferences, ordering at restaurants: It is nice not to see you; I would not like the fish, if it doesn’t please you. They give me looks of not-understanding. For a time I was unsure whether or not I should go about my business without these complicated shoes—could I trust their surefooted permission. In the end, which was not an end but a kind of beginning, I decided it did matter that I knew what my shoes were saying, that I could learn by walking and walking and walking. That not walking because I did not comprehend would get me nowhere.
Elusion
Last weekend I fished for the unknowable other from the riverbank. I baited my hook with another hook. I kissed the clasp of them before I cast into the still water. Ripples in a small, contained circle collapsed into stillness. I sat a long time. I tried to determine whether the air was still, or if the breeze was so light and steady that it cast the illusion of stillness on my body. Rod propped up by rocks, I sat so long with what I hoped was stillness that it became a parked vehicle I was sitting inside. I rested my hand on the key in the ignition, knowing that to turn it meant to lose the vehicle, and thus the ability to travel anywhere. The knowledge became an insect which paced my poised knuckles. I wondered what the insect thought of my indecision, having only its movement, the fact of its six-legged body indicting the stillness of my knuckles, as evidence. Guilty. Objection. Not guilty. Objection. If it please the court. Mistrial. Then, a tug. Sure enough, when I reeled in my line, both hooks, once kissed and kissing, were gone.
Courtship Behavior of American Alligators
I’m sorry, I tell my sexual partner. It feels aptly clinical, I determine, to refer to him as a sexual partner. He has a boyfriend, who is not me; I have only him, who is not my boyfriend. It’s as though we’re opening a business together but haven’t done our market research or cost-benefit analysis. Why are you apologizing? he asks; he means it seriously, but I laugh. I am incapable of sex, I think. Not in a mechanical sense: the base operations of the act unfold in often satisfying ways, calling to mind the connotations, the clouds of conditions that surround sex, yet the denotative meaning of the word itself is displaced by something like a solution of intercourse and humor and fear and—yes, regrettably—shame. It occurs to me that I should explain this to my partner, should attempt to obtain informed consent, but his eyes (the curl of his open lips, his breath snagged like a knit cardigan on the loose nail of my exposed body) are ravenous. I don’t want to ruin the mood. I owned a car once, a white convertible that would stall out while I was driving it. I never took it far because the mechanics couldn’t figure out what was causing the problem. Sometimes it would happen mere blocks from my apartment. I had to walk the rest of the way home in my grease-soaked McDonald’s uniform, leaving the car on the shoulder of the road. When I returned a few hours later, it would reluctantly start again, and I could inch it the last leg of the journey to the parking lot. It’s ok, my partner says, and I recall that the problem, when they discovered it, was the fuel pump. Roughly two thirds, I tell him, of sexual activity in alligators is homosexual in nature. His silence reveals my error.. I’m sorry if that was confusing. The nature of the activity is homosexual, I clarify, only for males in captivity. The same is not true of alligators in the wild, or female alligators in captivity. We part amicably, with a handshake.
About “Cobbling”
I have recently begun work on a new manuscript of essays masquerading as prose poems, or else prose poems masquerading as essays. My approach to drafting is surreal in the automatic sense, in that I don’t sit down to write toward a specific subject, but rather stumble upon a subject and then commit to looking deeply at it, circling until I discover a new posture of looking. ‘Cobbling’ returns to the subject of my gender identity, which I find fraught with misunderstanding and mistranslation. To fit the nuanced, dimensional experience of dysphoria and transition into narrative that someone who hasn’t experienced it can understand often feels flattening, falsely assured. I wanted to look at this discomfort I felt, to see what was necessary in it.
Author Bio
Joshua Zeitler is a queer, nonbinary writer based in rural Michigan. They are the author of the chapbook Bliss Road (Seven Kitchens Press, 2025), and their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Foglifter, Nimrod, Shō, and elsewhere.
Contents
“This language offers one possible framing through which to appreciate the law’s capacity to hope for, request, and even command commitment to a more just future.” Read two poems by Maggie Wang, our first biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Possibilities for Action.”
Chapbook Poem: I’ll Never Look This Good Again by Douglas Piccinnini
“[The poem] came out of real pressure: despair, worry, and grief I wanted to hold unflinchingly, alongside the anxiety of becoming a parent… For me the poem became a meditation on all the feeling that surfaces precisely when we’re told to feel only joy.” Read an excerpt from Douglas Piccinnini’s chapbook, House of Bad Memories, along with a few words from the poet.
“She sees herself in carbon, the element that bonds with almost anything- not because it wants to, but because it has empty spaces and things keep showing up to fill them. Notifications. Noise. Needs that never stop arriving.” Read four poems by Joely Williams, our second biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Single Mother Considers the Periodic Table.”
ADHD in a Non-ADHD World: on Undersight by Alison Hurwitz
“[Hurwitz] shares moments of angst and moments of awe. More than that, there are moments of deep recognition. She sees herself in [her sons] and, in fact, receives a later-life ADHD diagnosis of her own.” Read the full chapbook review by new contributor, Nancy Murphy.
“The woman’s head & hair are lavishly dressed. I probably leapt off the logic of the hairdresser being blind and therefore had to work on the head/body/mind rather than just hair as a surface issue of presentation.” Read two poems by Irene Cunningham, our third biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “The Blind Hairdresser.”
Flash Fiction: Nova by Kimmy Chang
“‘Nova’ is a lyrical second-person story about the narrator’s first true encounter with death…the story presents loss not as beautiful in itself, but as the place where beauty begins.” Read the first original fiction piece of the Summer 2026 issue, “Nova” by Kimmy Chang.
“To fit the nuanced, dimensional experience of dysphoria and transition into narrative…often feels flattening, falsely assured. I wanted to look at this discomfort I felt, to see what was necessary in it.” Read three poems by Joshua Zeitler, our fourth biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Cobbling.”
Excerpt: “On the puzzle still inside my head” by Truong Tran
“I am trying to excavate memories. I am trying to negotiate the difficult realities of existing as a brown man in this country and within the consciousness of white America.” Read an excerpt from Truong Tran’s forthcoming book from City Lights, How to Exi(s)t: A Poet’s Memoir.
“These poems try to make sense of how I arrived at a life that probably seems well thought-out, but has been one reactionary choice after another.” Read three poems by A.R. Dugan, our fifth biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “Sleeptalking.”
Original Fiction: Muse by Somtoo Celestine Ezioha
“What I tried to trace was the underside. How watching someone closely for long enough becomes a substitute for approaching them.” Read the second original fiction piece of the Summer 2026 issue, “Muse” by Somtoo Celestine Ezioha.
“After childbirth, my body became a site of criticism rather than something to be celebrated for what it had endured and created. Writing this became a way to confront that experience…” Read three poems by Tanya Tuzeo, our sixth biweekly poet of the Summer 2026 issue, along with a few words about “i get Botox.”