Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to present five original poems by Kristiane Weeks-Rogers as our fifth of seven biweekly featured poets of the Summer 2025 issue.
Poems
Hominy Snow
—After Denise Duhamel’s “Swedish Death Cleaning”
It was June in the Coloradan front range and I heard it first; a dramatic
crescendo of metallic applause pelting my apartment’s tin roof. Midwest
children annually brace for the hard hail, summer’s rolling storms, but
that day what I saw recalled the ice cream dots in small plastic helmets
of the South Bend SIlver Hawks. These tiny ice pellets, as I learned,
were not hail but graupel. Small, soft, wet; nothing like the storm-driven
spheres delivering dents and destruction. That hail has no nickname,
but graupel is also called soft hail or hominy snow. Then, I kept my
mouth closed. When the father of a fifth grader at the Montessori school
I administered tells me shades of red pair well with my skin, claiming
“I’m not saying it in a creepy way,” I stand and I smile and I nod. I don’t
walk away. Now, I find myself guilty of opening my mouth. Times I should have
kept it closed, but said, “You should have a garage sale” or “You could be
getting rid of stuff; you’re not busy” to my aging in-laws. A vague memory of
telling them about not wanting to sort it myself. Despite guilt, I wish they would
start their “Swedish Death Cleaning.” Start melting away frozen layers of his
childhood home. Boxes of warped vinyl, a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe, endless
DVDs. Family guilt isn’t like hominy snow. Not wet, soft, or small. Slow to melt.
Addie Tsai Says Florence + The Machine’s ‘Shake It Out’ is Very Virgo & I Come Undone
Maybe it’s because
I’m a double Virgo,
(sun and ascending),
in this earth-dragged state,
but if you’re not a Virgo, you won’t understand.
What I mean to say is—
right now is everyone’s darkest
moments collected,
regret smashes like another hurricane,
another western wildfire,
like a rattlesnake sinking teeth
into our skin in slow motion,
but that rattle shakes in double time.
When Florence reflects
on being done with a graceless heart,
who else wants to stand beside her
and cut their own out to restart?
What is a graceless heart
but a heart no longer churned,
soft serve already puddling
to the ground before it reaches
any lips?
Aerating Techniques
Dzia Dzia sits at the kitchen table, spoons
apricot preserves onto Saltines. As a child,
my whole world was
inside my house. Sometimes, I wish
it were still this way. Mostly, I take each day
with a sip from different glasses of wine around
this sleepy canyon town on the river.
Every once in a while those sips bring me back
to that table, eating crisp or buttery crackers, thinking hard
about which jam I’m tasting. I chase tastes of wild
blackberry foraging with my stained small hands, small dark
berries as sweet as gray rain rolling across the Mesa,
clouds, low cotton
candy for pulling, swirling.
Like swirling a glass of wine— but once at a tasting
in the Grand Valley, the vintner told me it would take
years of playing gravity on a glass for it to
aerate–
now when I watch someone’s hand
grasping the cup and stirring up a tornado, I think of
futility. But tannins always welcome water, and I dip
my empty stem in the freezing river
for a rinse before heading home, inside so this
desert can drink. I sit on the covered patio drinking
a mineral forward red blend reminiscent of the rare petrichor
this monsoon season brings.
About “Aerating Techniques”
The poem ‘Aerating Techniques’ reflects on memory, place, and the slow unfolding of meaning—like the aeration of wine. Anchored by sensory detail, the poem journeys between childhood safety and adult experience in a canyon town shaped by rivers and monsoons. The image of my Dzia Dzia (Polish for grandfather) at the table becomes a portal into a past filled with preserved sweetness and tactile joys, while wine tastings describe the evolving complexity of adulthood. The metaphor of aerating, or swirling—a gesture both futile and habitual—displays a longing for transformation that can’t be forced. This poem is a meditation on time, tastes, and tenderness of memory.
Author Bio
Kristiane Weeks-Rogers (she/her) is a Poet-Writer living in western Colorado. Her debut poetry collection, Self-Anointment with Lemons, was released in September 2021 by Finishing Line Press. She is the 2nd place winner of Casa Cultural de las Americas and University of Houston’s inaugural Poetic Bridges contest and author of the chap collection Become Skeletons published by the University of Houston in 2018. She grew up around Lake Michigan and earned her MFA at Naropa University’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado. She is the Director of Small Harbor Publishing entities.
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.