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Friday is here again, poetry fans, and apparently this is Florida writers' week at SHINE, where today we're shining the spotlight on the delightful work of Peach Delphine (earlier this week was fellow-Floridian, Jack Carenza)! Please enjoy Peach's three poems: "Garden Weather," "Residual Shoreline," and "Cold Fried Chicken Wings." Thank you, Peach, for sharing your gift for words with the SHINE international poetry community! Garden Weatherfortitude is a foreign land question everything in deep silence house breathing i still get up at all hours just to walk all three rooms kitchen table sitting with forecast timing sunrise shock and awe sunflowers planted for you and some old man in my past told me living was all learn to garden grow things read everything you can pointed at my left arm still bandaged don't do that again and i promised i wouldn't both knew it was lies but this sunflower belongs to you still here still lighting my horizon I don't need to see you to know you are beautiful voice I could never forget laugh I still hear in dream after all these years living is the point this wedge of my heart freely given another sunflower leaning out from trellis one more reward for survival standing in awe house high sunflower bee loved face full of sun and wind Residual Shorelinewoke raw a little damp found my pelt at threshold again with liberation from lived experience any hide is common property yet again extractive professionals strip mining flesh eating word breath right off my tongue cut and come again greens bolting self sowing such that I am another's plentitude and sustenance state of tourism people coming from shithole states to get come to drink forbidden word fruit of unknowing taste ever on lips sour sweet salt salt salt so I was cooking tending things as tourists talk as tourists do between voyages of discovery regularly scheduled organizing dry storage reefer box reach in ordering inventory is how I ciphered my first therapist was a deprogrammer then affirming care came along they transitioned seamlessly who knows now their apprentices supervising mental health units somewhere practicing that craft on prisoners even what's in your head can be taken someone has to accept burlap coarse backdrop for others to shine thick as cownose rays migrating just offshore naturalized parakeet clouds sunset shards red eyed spoonbills wade ashen spindly egrets stalking grasses what catches eye or remains peripheral something is always watching mindful what can be eaten or fucked plight of high functioning dazzled by spectacle a tell of priorities eluding vision feral near feral bound by hunger feeding in darkness even here thicket mangrove tangle perfumed with mosquitoes all my days slow tempo crushed shell eating despair from my heart committing to memory what cannot be carried singing fragments everything learned must be taught the Gulf claims its own once instructed as amphibious fluent creatures but all our clicks and whistles remain unanswered we have yet to waken the sleepers Cold Fried Chicken Wingsmarginal outside all text linear garden fenced floating concertina clouds artificial horizons physical divisions accepted for so long in kitchens a degree meant management not dragging mats or scrubbing grill grates pumice stone on flattop working it glass smooth sugar in some circles a femme on the line was a knife wife people gave you space having shown what it takes daily relentlessly quality of knife work shapes turning veg smoking each station throwing shade maintaining through rush proletarian solidarity mopping doing lines in dry storage hot boxing a fat one in reefer box living off espresso hot bread charcuterie and beer before finally burning out crispy as could be ringing that bell expediting in my sleep it was a year of clinic bombings starting HRT legit getting face cleared marking time bleak days her collapsing immune system full draws viral counts watching her fight to keep from slipping through cracks a horrible sifting of people enduring separation early learning value of holding hands of living without expectation except for ourselves solidarity of outside yet inside medical exile minimal care sedimentary layers ancient sand dunes we learned to cultivate old foods of liberation sustenance what can be grown in the narrowest spaces turning sand near sugar sand into dirt into cowpeas limas chiles an extra margin of food security we helped make a sanctity created by hand holy okra divine tomatoes cowpeas climbing spiraling through all my dreams all that protects us from a community indifferent to our eradication sunflowers planted for no damn reason better than bee happiness her happiness worn faces sun faded wind shimmied rooted in sand near sugar sand all our skills centered on survival on softening the ride carrying each other as far as we can
Today at SHINE, we putting the spotlight on Florida-based writer, Jack Carenza. Jack brings us three poignant poems: She works nights--, Self-Checkout, and Forest Road 26. Thank you, Jack, for being a part of SHINE poetry series! She works nights--labeling blood tubes in a basement clinic where elevators nictate like jet-lagged planets. At home, she steeps hibiscus in worn porcelain, knowing reds should stem from petals, not apheresis. Now thirty-eight, she’s perfected the art of staying seated after disappointment. A neighbor practices trombone from the terrace, the same three notes-- loose cutlery tumbling down the bulkhead. Every Thursday at 3:30 she calls her mother and lies with LinkedIn- level puffery: yes, eating healthy yes, sleeping plenty yes, loves me tenderly The lead physician told her stress starts in the liver-- algae bloom in stagnant liquor. She pictures Midori over ice. The tea cools. A thin skin spans it, delicate as tempera. She remembers being eleven, pinning Chelan cherries to chapped lips to look glamorous for no one. Now, glamour means paying rent by the first, ignoring lewd 2 a.m. texts, peeling a Satsuma in late fall. The Shetland pony beside her cup is a Tuesday table scrap. She means to scrape it off, to sketch it over, but she needn’t beat a dead horse. She has loved men with dazzling opinions on thumbtacks. Men who owned one butter knife. Men who said you worry too perfectly. Self-Checkout Forest Road 26  Jack Carenza is a South Florida–based copywriter whose lyrical works explore memory, history, and their movement through time and space. His poems carry a keen attention to sound, shaped by years as a hip-hop artist. Jack’s poetry has appeared in Constellations Journal of Poetry and Fiction and Inscape Literary Journal, with upcoming pieces in the engine(idling) and Sunday Mornings at the River.
Thanks for stopping by SHINE this Friday, where today we are treated to three poems by the talented Uruguayan poet, Laura Cesarco Eglin. Laura's language skills have assisted her in translating multiple award-winning books. Be sure to check out her Bio below. Thank you, Laura, for sharing your gift for words with the SHINE international poetry community! Hemispheres of Distance Efishencies Kneading Language  Laura Cesarco Eglin is a poet and translator from Uruguay. She is the author of six collections of poetry, including the chapbook Break a Part (Finishing Line Press, 2026). Her poems and translations (from the Spanish, Portuguese, Portuñol, and Galician), have appeared in many journals such as Asymptote, Zócalo Public Square, Figure 1, Eleven Eleven, Puerto del Sol, Copper Nickel, SRPR, MAYDAY, International Poetry Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, Timber, and more. Cesarco Eglin is the translator of claus and the scorpion by the Galician author Lara Dopazo Ruibal (co•im•press, 2022), longlisted for both the 2023 PEN Award in Poetry in Translation and the 2023 National Translation Award in Poetry. She is also the translator of Of Death and Minimal Odes by the Brazilian author Hilda Hilst (co•im•press), which was the winner of the 2019 Best Translated Book Award. Her latest translation is Sardine by Miriam Reyes (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2026). Cesarco Eglin is the publisher of Veliz Books and teaches creative writing at the University of Houston-Downtown. More at: lauracesarcoeglin.com
Welcome back, poetry lovers! Today SHINE is putting the spotlight on haiku poetry by Iranian poet, Ali Shalkouhi. Thank you, Ali, for sharing your moving words with the SHINE international poetry community. a knock at the door-- moonlight on the slippers I go barefoot autumn night-- stirring the warm ashes with the last stick full moon-- worth a chandelier tonight’s blackout  Ali Shalkouhi is an Iranian poet from Rasht, Gilan. His haiku have appeared in international journals and organizations including Ginyu, Haiku International Association, and the World Haiku Association. His Persian-language haiku collection Wandering in the Fog was published in Iran in 2021. Since 2020, his work has appeared regularly in the World Haiku Association annual anthology.
Congratulations to Kyla Houbolt on the launch of Mapless, the winner of SHINE's "Come As You Are" Book Prize! See the description below, and pick up your copy on any Amazon marketplace.  Mapless, by American poet Kyla Houbolt, is a collection for both the wanderer and the guide -- with poetry that speaks to the core, and poses questions we need not feel obligated to answer. Houbolt's Mapless is the winner of the 2026 SHINE poetry series "Come As You Are" book prize.
-- Advance Praise for Mapless: "The first sleight-of-hand I ever learned was how to make a toothpick disappear, by way of a little piece of hidden scotch tape and some patter. Kyla Houbolt’s poems in Mapless work a similar magic: woven in & through the ordinary, they are possessed of a guileless voice whose levity and directness of address belie the book’s sly treatment of serious themes, too, from alcoholism and climate change to intractable political gridlock and the “horrible numbers” we live with daily. Houbolt’s poems harness the imagination hopefully, carving out a collectivity however flawed it, or we, might be: “We’re all magical trailer trash / setting the world to rights / or on fire, / whichever comes first.” I love being in the ambit of Houbolt’s “we” — even if the tape unsticks and the trick fails, there’ll always be sunlight." -Tom Snarsky, Author of MOUNTEBANK Welcome back, poetry lovers! Today we're shining the spotlight on Richard Braco, my fellow poet and "neighbor" here in Upstate New York. Richard has had a successful and varied writing career, and is active in the local poetry community. Richard brings us "Pole Star Child" and "Imminent Collapse." Thank you, Richard, for sharing your words with SHINE international poetry series! Pole Star Child |
SHINE - International Poetry Series
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From the international poetry community, we have a "luxury of stars," as Sylvia Plath might say, and it is SHINE's honor to provide a home for their words with the online Spotlight series as well as SHINE Quarterly. Click on the logo above to learn more. And...keep writing, keep shining!
In poetry, Samantha Terrell, EIC SYLVIA PLATH
Stars Over the Dordogne Stars are dropping thick as stones into the twiggy
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