Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to present three original poems by Robin Arble as our sixth of seven biweekly featured poets of the Summer 2025 issue.
Poems
February Prayer
Attention is the rarest
and purest form of generosity.
—Simone Weil
part of You recovers
from the moment the rest of You
can’t i’m still standing
in that closet my belt
notched around my neck
trying to kneel trying
to kneel thinking only
how strange this lightness
laying in bed seconds later
i heard the birds for the first time
all morning i swear
i saw the faintest rainbow
on our wall You
were the song that lifted me
then and haven’t since
The Last Time I Saw My PCP
I circled Y’s on every question except the last:
Are you a danger to yourself or others?
The student nurse shuffled my papers as she asked me
if there’s anything else I needed to tell her.
I tightened the string on my basketball shorts as she left me
to change into my gown for the doctor.
When he came in, an hour later, he touched and examined
everything on me except my survey. Now
I meet with Planned Parenthood specialists over Zoom
twice a year. They suggest injections, progesterone
for breast growth, at-home electrolysis, and wait-
list availabilities for trans-friendly PCPs
who accept my ConnectorCare with low-to-no copays.
I haven’t seen a doctor in almost five years.
If I can’t go, nothing’s wrong with me.
Names
There’s a reason
my name won’t appear
in any obituary.
No-one in my family
is brave enough
to claim me first.
Deaths passed us
as our decade vanished—
grandma, cousin,
mother, old friend.
I never told them.
I showed them my new face
at each funeral.
My godmother said,
You want to look like that?
I realized the wake
—an early, burning
autumn Saturday—
was split in half:
men on one side,
women on the other.
I was standing with three
generations of mothers
around a narrow grave.
She was studying my face
to prove I was living. To prove
I was growing young.
About “The Last Time I Saw My PCP”
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. It was a joke turning my discomfort into couplets, my coming-out into a volta, my transition into a catalog. It’s no coincidence I revised this poem in the weeks leading up to Donald Trump’s second term, when screenshots from Project 2025 were swarming the Internet. This poem is equally indebted to Jose Hernandez Diaz’s plainspoken, lineated poems as it is to Erin Reed’s independent journalism on Trans U.S. Healthcare. Of course those couplets, indents, enjambments, half rhymes, hinges, helixes, voltas, catalogs, check marks, and empty boxes can’t make me a woman. Nothing can. I always have been and I always will be. This poem’s last line, ambiguous in content and construction, knows that too.
Author Bio
Robin Arble’s poems have appeared in 2River, Passages North, Poetry Online, and Up The Staircase Quarterly, among others. She studied writing and literature at Hampshire College and lives in New York.
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.