Photo by Rejwoan Ahmed on Unsplash
Three Poems by Jessica Popeski
From Scratch
Note from the author: Three years ago, I met a man named Michael Bane, who has maintained his innocence for thirty-eight years on Death Row in Tennessee. I started visiting him in prison, talking to him on the phone, and writing him letters—often epistolary poems about what he’d told me of his life, his prison experience, and our friendship. After reading a few, he asked…
Who Gets to Define What Hurts?
Bulseco, Donna, ed. Where It Hurts: Dispatches from the Emotional Frontlines of Medicine. New York: The Experiment, March 24, 2026. * * * She had just lost her husband. Across the room, the practitioner wrote a few words on paper—a brief, ragged bridge between a woman’s fresh widowhood and the electronic intake form’s dropdown menu for mood. The system offered three rigid choices for her…
Once Upon a Dream
Obi’m, Last night I dreamt of you. You were driving some kind of truck, I forget the model, but it looked like a cross between an SUV and a convertible. By the time I got to you, you already had four passengers; my younger sister – the one I didn’t get the chance to introduce to you before she left us – rode shotgun, and…
The Violinmaker
The shop’s sign was violin-shaped, a flat emblem hanging from a thin iron rod. Nicolo watched its shadow stretching and shrinking across the stucco façade. He stood across the square, under a tree that was flashing its underleaves in the wind. A few tall clouds were stacked above the terra cotta roofs: soon a quick storm would wash him clean of the two-days’ walk from…