Wesley Rothman

We need to highlight Wesley Rothman for his poems "Like A Prayer" in TheAwl, Dec. 2013 and "Bathing With Frida" in FourWayReview, issue 5, Spring 2014. He's got a good touch, a deft clarity that doesn't fall into the trap of too much extraneous explanation. There's a strong sense of Petrarch, really, a type of modern mood to it but stark and still all the same.

Here's an excerpt of the first:

Everyone must stand alone
with other loners. The black lace

veils from every other chapel-
goer, all the doves mourning

a boy-star petered out too soon.
Heaven help me slip through

the bars of this brick house
shattered by blue light, glum moon

[...]

The second has a great tone, an intense look at otherworldliness that does not devolve into pat ideas and lines for simpletons. Here's the opening excerpt:

With a cigarette between my fingers
and flowers bound up in her hair

dry morning bathes us
in the claw-foot tub. Asphyxiation

by drowning. This dawn welcomes us
to another side. 

[...]