Philly Poetry Chapbook Review is pleased to present two original poems by Gerald Yelle as our second biweekly featured poet of the Fall 2025 issue.
Poems
All Alone with CNN
And when the neighbors aren’t
there
I get antsy.
And when I say so they say
we love you, we just
need our space.
They’re worried
about their cousins in Gaza.
They say you must
have other
friends? I say what friends.
What space.
I had some once.
I had aunts. And uncles too.
Now I have nieces
and nephews
with kids in trees with so
many branches
they blot out the sun.
They say
it’s wrong to feel that way
about family
and there’s no
good
cure for getting old.
I say I know
but I’m falling and it’s
simple:
It’s you I want to catch me.
No Breaks
When the sun is up we work straight through
putting bodies in trenches
and sprinkling ash to keep the flies off.
We do it in the valley
like the preppers taught us:
in the forest in a clearing in the trees
where we carve Coptic crosses
on zinc-lined coffins in a swamp a rocket
can’t reach –it’s just the city
coming to check on us. Acting like it cares.
We act like we believe it.
Like we think it matters if we do.
About “No Breaks”
In ‘No Breaks’ I was writing about something I hope I never have to experience. Setting it in a swamp raises the possibility that this could be happening close to home. I tried to keep despair at bay and show some defiance and resilience.
Author Bio
Gerald Yelle has worked in restaurants, factories, schools and offices. His books include The Holyoke Diaries (Future Cycle, 2014), Dreaming Alone and with Others (Future Cycle, 2023), the bored and Evolution for the Hell of It (Alien Buddha, 2025). His chapbooks include No Place I Would Rather Be (Finishing Line, 2021) and A Box of Rooms (Bottlecap, 2022). He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.
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.”