Asemic Writing, Erasure Poetry | Up the Staircase Quarterly

Grateful to be in Up the Staircase Quarterly #57. This issue is full of great poetry and art. Poetry by these people included:

• Quinn Forlini | “Attenuation”
• Sanvitti Sahdev | “I fill up”
• Fiona Lu | “hunting”
• Oluwafisayo Akinfolami | “Semantics”
• Satya Dash | 2 poems: “Elasticity” and “Two Deaths”
• Jill Khoury | “Subjective Units of Distress Scale 1-10”
• Ran Zhao | “floodpath”
• Olivia J. Kiers | “Shower: Arc de Triomphe”
• Anaïs Deal-Márquez | “Gringa.”
• Jace Raymond Smellie | “for my grandma doris almost four years after”
• Chase Dimock | “Contaminants”
• Kolbe Riney | 2 poems: “sexy villain” and “voyager”

and artwork by:

• Sara Louise Wilson | Haunt Me + more
• Elizabeth Wing | Blüd Rites
• jw summerisle | Strangers
• Shelbey Leco | Blue.
• Koss | Wuthering Heights 1, Magpie +more
• Tomislav Silipetar | WHAT IS LEFT

Emanuela Iorga is the issue illustrator with multiple bullet-riddled images in a starkly graphic (not literal) style.

Also, reviews by:

• Tyler Friend | Him or Her or Whatever
• Jasmine Elizabeth Smith | South Flight
• ​L.E. Bowman | What I Learned from the Trees

I have four pieces from a magpie/hare series slated for my book, plus one visual poem that utilizes text from a poem, “Shoulder Story,” originally published in Rogue Agent. The other pieces reference or erase passages of Wuthering Heights. Find my page here, and read the whole issue here.

I’ve been taking a break from writing poetry and doing visual word art, including asemic writing/recycling from journals, crossword poems, and uncategorizable stuff, but I have lots of work coming out in the next few months, including some difficult abuse writing and some more visual poetry in Diode. It feels good to get back to painting and drawing.