Work of the Week: KJ Cerankowski

January 25, 2022

White Sands         Most people wouldn’t think of southern New Mexico as a place a person might go to lean into their queerness. San Francisco or New York, Paris or Berlin, certainly, but an alabaster expanse of Southwestern desert that abuts a U.S. military missile range? Seems unlikely. Yet, drifting among the white sands of the arid New Mexican desert was exactly where I found ...

Congratulations to Mee Ok Icaro, Winner of the Prufer Poetry Prize!

January 20, 2022

Pleiades congratulates Mee Ok Icaro, winner of the inaugural Prufer Poetry Prize, selected by judge Kevin Prufer. She will receive an award of $1,000 and her winning poem, “otherland,” will be published in the Spring 2022 issue of Pleiades. Mee Ok Icaro is an award-winning memoirist, poet, and essayist. She placed as runner-up in the Prairie Schooner Creative Nonfiction Contest, and was a finalist for the Scott ...

Work of the Week: Alina Stefanescu

January 18, 2022

Little TimeWe must go for a walkin the freshly-washedworld, he says.We must venture intothe thicket with cactiin our open corneas.There is so much to see,little time.Little time, trickling from an eave.Little time, dropping from leaves,falling,collecting, becomingserious puddles forpaper boats to cross.We must build a paper-boatin the freshly-puddledworld, he says.We must write our secretnames on the hull.Little boat, ...

Work of the Week: Laura Grothaus

December 16, 2021

Delightperfume, which by necessitymust diffuse violets dulling the noseto their own scent when I wasfour, the cow ate my dress mistakingpatterned violets for real ones then I wasthe girl now I am the cow you arethe dress you are the dress and so iseverything I touch Laura Grothaus lives in Baltimore, the unceded territory of the Piscataway-Conoy. Interested in the politics of magic and memory, she’s at work on ...