Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to present three original poems by Veronica Tucker as our fifth biweekly featured poet of the Fall 2025 issue.
Poems
The Streetlight Outside My Window Flickers at 3:17 a.m.
The streetlight’s pulse
breaks the dark in intervals
like breath.
Every few seconds,
the room is reborn,
washed in gold
that remembers
what it meant to be day.
This is when the baby cries,
not from hunger,
but from the strange loneliness
of dreams.
This is when the dog paces,
testing the edge of silence
as if something unseen
has slipped into the yard.
This is when I lie still
as a locked cabinet,
wondering if the future
has already chosen me,
or if I might still choose it back.
You Left the Fridge Open Again
The light hums like a hymn
to leftover longing,
half a cake,
an unlabeled jar
that used to mean something.
I don’t mind the cold
on my skin
as I reach in for nothing
but quiet.
Maybe this is love,
or maybe this is what remains
after the groceries go bad
and no one says a word.
The seal breaks,
closes again.
A kind of forgiveness
that neither of us
will name.
Museum of Everyday Ghosts
There is a fork
on the counter
you didn’t rinse.
An apology
still damp
on the edge of the sink.
The house
wears your absence
like a coat
left too long
on the back of a chair.
I dust around your coffee mug
as if to preserve
some fragile exhibit.
Not the thing itself,
but the way you
used it.
About “You Left the Fridge Open Again”
‘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. Within the pale light, half a cake and an unlabeled jar evoke the slow erosion of intimacy, the quiet acceptance that follows. The language is spare, the imagery restrained, allowing silence to carry as much weight as words. In the final lines, the simple act of closing the door feels like grace, suggesting that forgiveness, like light, sometimes stays on even after we walk away.
Author Bio
Veronica Tucker (she/her) is an emergency medicine and addiction medicine physician, married mother of three, and lifelong New Englander. Her poetry explores the intersections of medicine, motherhood, memory, and being human. Her work appears in One Art, Eunoia Review, Berlin Literary Review, and The Book of Jobs anthology. When she isn’t writing or working in the hospital, she enjoys running, travel, time with family, and finely crafted matcha lattes. Find her at veronicatuckerwrites.com and on Instagram @veronicatuckerwrites.
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.
“From the height of the camel, I could see the ruins of Palmyra and a medieval castle on a hill. Present day Wadi Rum in Jordan has no evidence of an ancient civilization in the desert until one arrives, by car not camel, in Petra.” Read two poems by Sandy Feinstein, our sixth and final biweekly poet of the Fall 2025 issue, along with a few words about “Souvenir.”