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.”
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.”