Issue 167
Winter & Spring 2025
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EDITOR’S NOTE
Welcome to Issue 167 of TriQuarterly! When I first began reading poetry and nonfiction submissions for the journal in 2021, I had no idea that I’d someday be the one steering this inimitable ship forward. I thank my predecessors, Managing Editors Kayla Kumari Upadhyaya and Joshua Bohnsack, through whose generous wisdom I’ve come to know the editorial ropes through many sways of institutional change. My compass? A fierce commitment to platform and promote transformative work, ranging from that of emergent authors to eminent figures in contemporary literature.
With my final sojourn aboard this craft, I’ve been once again struck by the breadth of the publications we’ve featured—from masterfully exacting translations to daringly experimental cinepoems and hybrid work. This issue drifts between realms real and imagined: an archipelago’s volcanic heart, a penitentiary-turned-conspiratorial-base-camp, existential dread’s electrified lakes, and the fever of grief’s unseen suns. As you read through Issue 167, I invite you to tear up and take off, to theorize and reminisce, to grieve and dream, from piece to piece.
As I disembark this remarkable vessel, I salute our masthead—sparred by such lovely editors as Patrick Bernhard, Jennifer Companik, Starr Davis, Daniel Fliegel, Laura Joyce-Hubbard, Sarah Minor, and Emily Mirengoff—the writers whose words fill our sails with wind, and the team of readers who anchor us always. I pass my hat to Jess Masi, our next Managing Editor at the helm, who will guide TQ through new artistic tides, gliding forth into promising waters.
Signing off,
Kira Alexis Tucker
MASTHEAD
Managing Editor: Kira Alexis Tucker
Faculty Advisor: Natasha Trethewey
Staff Advisor: Colin Pope
Social Media Editor: Starr Davis
Film Editor: Hannah Bonner
Fiction Editors: Patrick Bernhard, Jennifer Companik, Emily Mirengoff, Laura Joyce-Hubbard
Nonfiction Editor: Starr Davis
Poetry Editor: Daniel Fliegel
Staff: Abigail Chang, Amanda Dee, Amanda Maret Scharf, Amanda Vitale, Atarah Israel,
Christine Barkley, Cindy King, Daylyn Carrigan, D.S. Winters, Erika Carey, James Chung McKenna, Jenna Mather, Jeremy Wilson, Jessica Manack, Jodi Cressman, Kathryn O'Day, Kelsey Werkheiser, Kristi Ferguson, Lauren Short, Liz Howey, Marcella Mencotti, Sarah Minor, Susan Lerner, Tanya Young, William Ward Butler
Image from I Think About My Body Too Much
THE RED MOUNTAINS
Near the pinnacle of your loved one’s ascent, a star in a lake appeared.
Sparse and Scattered Unrhymes on a Cloudy April Fool’s
—You know that feeling sometimes that the sky’s
turned all negative space,
little cobalt huddle
like an island in a sea of cirrhus.
Hi, Royal You: The next stop is a designated smoke stop.
I reminisce on
the cascade of memories
as they pass by
but I don’t stay
with the feeling
they present.
THE UNEASY SLEEP OF THE EXILE
They haunt
in the morning despite the relentless light
of the sun.
The Cook Islands
Sea-shanty
Eden, tin-roof
of clouds. God dotes
on this
island with his
watering can.
Upper Shoals, Glendale, SC
Each rivulet sounds out its own moody articulation
against the coursing melody