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[Writers & Books, Rochester by Kyle Semmel]
My job is to trick adults
into knowing they have
hearts.
[…]
My job is to trick
myself into believing
there are new ways
to find impossible honey.
—from “Spell to Find Family”
For Example
Brooklyn Poets - poem + interview
From the Fishouse - poems + interview
Nat. Brut - lyric essay/prose poetry/??
Poetry Foundation / Poetry Magazine - poems
Poets.org / Poem-a-Day - poems
Poetry Society of America / In Their Own Words - poem + statement
Verse Daily - poems
West Branch - statement + poems
Winter Tangerine - poems + statement
2024
Literature: a Portable Anthology (forthcoming) - “I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party” (reprint)
Embodying Biodiversity: Sensuous Conservation as Refuge and Sovereignty (forthcoming) - “Set the Garden on Fire” (reprint)
HE / SHE / THEY / US: Queer Poems (forthcoming) - “i love you to the moon &” (reprint)
Indiana Review (forthcoming) - “All I love”
Zócalo Public Square (forthcoming) - “The Year”
The Poetry Review (UK) (forthcoming) - “2pm in provincetown—”, “Quintessential Lunar Actions”
Passengers (forthcoming) - “Quintessence: A Kid in Late 90s Western Mass”
Quarterly West - “12 Questions,” “Formula for a Day”
Cape Cod Poetry Review - “He Says I Make Him Wet,” “Upon Purchasing a Pair of Blue Adidas Shorts,” “Have you always been a hot person?”
Provincetown Arts - “The Latest Conversation About Our Dog Is Nearly Identical to the First,” “Real Life”
Paperbag - “Quintessence: Questions of a Just Opened Pomegranate,” “Quintessence: a Cosmology,” “Quintessence: Ache,” “Quintessence: Cloud Correspondence,” “I Would Also Like to Mention This Quintessential Earthly Activity”
Faultline - “Brooklyn Is for Breakups”
Hunger Mountain - “What do you remember about the earth?”
The Harvard Advocate - “Quintessence: to Quibble,” “Quintessence: Crab Fried Rice,” “Quintessence: in the Kitchen”
Washington Square Review - “Love Poem with Splash & Even Splish-Splash,” “Of Course It’s on FaceTime That Sam Calls Me a Monster to My Face Repeatedly, Then Asks ‘Has Anyone Ever Called You a Monster?’ ”
The Oxonian Review - “To Whom It May Delight”
The Journal - “Crybaby Cowboy,” “going down singing”
The Rejoinder - “Queer Nightlife,” “Quintessence: For Recreational Purposes”
Phi Kappa Phi Forum - “Henniker”
spoKe - “Asian American Weather Forecast,” “A Day in the Life,” “Thank You for Attending This Ongoing Cosmic Error”
2023
Narrative - “i’m sorry, i’m sorry”
The Southeast Review - “lust ode,” “snow day”
The Forward Book of Poetry 2024 - “The School of Australia” (selected as Highly Commended in the Best Single Poem category for the Forward Prizes in the UK)
Hooligan Mag - “Quintessence: to Queer,” “The Abyss Gives Us a Pep Talk as We Continue to Fall,” “Personal Pizza Personal Poem”
Gulf Coast Karaoke Issue - “Pop Song,” “recipe for lifelong homosexuality”
Honey Literary - “ode to the gayest part of me,” “End of September,” “nature facts”
Split This Rock Poem of the Week - “have you eaten yet”
Milk Press (Poetry Society of New York) - “Rough Chop,” “weekend”
Narrative - “God, Gods, Powers, Lord, Universe—,”
Poetry Daily - “Quintessence: the Quotidian” (reprint)
Mystic Owl - “could it snow,” “please”
Couplet - “i love you,” “i hate you”
Blue Mountain Review - “In Pandemic January I Am, Once Again, Sitting in My Swivel Chair,” “Midwinter, Midmissing Everybody”
2022
Why I Wrote This Poem: 62 Poets on Creating Their Works - “The School of Night & Hyphens” (reprint) + craft/process essay
Blue Mountain Review - “October 2020, 2021, 2022,” (p. 161)
Stone Pacific - “song”
Peripheries - “night sugar,” “Quintessence: the Caffeinated”
100 Poems That Matter (Academy of American Poets anthology) - “i love you to the moon &” (reprint)
& Change - “Romcum,” “All Your Dad’s Pants”
Allium Magazine - “Quintessence: My Queer Jesus Year,” “Hey you”
bath magg (feature poet for issue 10) - “One Year Later: Her Answer,” “In the World’s Italianest Restaurant,” “How will you live now?” + interview
wildness - “weep ode #99,” “Quintessence: the Quotidian”
Olney Magazine - “Solstice”
The Rumpus - “A Favorite Room” (reprint)
ALOCASIA: a journal of queer plant-based writing - “Set the Garden on Fire” (reprint)
100 Queer Poems - “I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party” (reprint)
Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology - “Elegy to Be Exhaled at Dusk” (reprint)
VIBE - “brief bio,” “english,” “我疼你”
United States Artists: Donor Newsletter - “Alternate Titles for a Poem with Which I’m Having Trouble”
The Rumpus - “Winter”
The Adroit Journal - “The School of Keyboards & Our Whole Entire History Up to the Present,” “The School of You,” “Lunar New Year”
2021
The Best American Poetry 2021 - “The School of Eternities” (first published in Ploughshares)
Hoxie Gorge Review - “Ode” and “Me, My Sadness, & My Mango Smoothie”
Lantern Review - “The School of a Few or a Lot of My Favorite Things”
Cape Cod Poetry Review - “The School of Your Book / Letter to Jennifer S. Cheng,” “Quintessential Earthly Activities,” “Winter”
The Massachusetts Review - “The Galloping Thing”
Queer Poem-a-Day - “Summer” (first published in Poetry)
Poem-a-Day - “i love you to the moon &”
Este País - “Todo lo que está cerca de ti: cinco poemas de Chen Chen” (five poems translated by Rodrigo Círigo)
Poetry - “Summer,” “The School of the Unschoolable”
DEAR Poetry Journal - “Peach Compote Avalanche,” “Now More Than Ever, We Are in a Moment of Time” (collaborations with Sam Herschel Wein)
2020
The Forward Book of Poetry 2021 - “Year’s End” (selected as Highly Commended in the Best Single Poem category for the Forward Prizes in the UK)
Poetry Unbound - “I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party” (reprint)
The Map of Every Lilac Leaf: Poets Respond to the Smith College Museum of Art - “Zombie Kindnesses”
Fragile Revue (France) - “Didier et Zizou” (translated by Shira Abramovich, Camille Blanc, and Lénaïg Cariou for Collectif Connexion Limitée / Limited Connection Collective)
Orion Magazine - section 6 of “holiday”
The Cortland Review - sections 1-5 of “holiday”
The Familiar Wild: On Dogs & Poetry - “ode to my beloveds & brevities,” “a small book of questions: chapter x”
Ploughshares - “The School of Eternities” (selected by Tracy K. Smith)
The Poetry Review (UK) - “Spring Summer Autumn Winter”
The Slowdown - “I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party” (reprint)
2019
bath magg - “Year’s End”
Pushcart Prize XLIV: Best of the Small Presses - “four short essays personifying a future in which white supremacy has ended” (reprint)
What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump - “The School of Morning & Letters,” “The School of Logic” (reprints)
Glass Poetry Press sample poem from GESUNDHEIT! - “Maybe love is a tandem bike marathon up in the Adirondacks” (reprint)
No Tender Fences: An Anthology of Immigrant & First-Generation American Poetry - “Study Abroad,” “Origin Story” (reprints)
The Best American Poetry 2019 - “I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party” (reprint, selected by Major Jackson)
Teach This Poem (poets.org) - “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities” (reprint)
Spellbound: The Art of Teaching Poetry - “Self-Portrait With & Without” (reprint in an essay by Emily Moore on teaching self-portrait poems)
Ink Knows No Borders: Poems of the Immigrant and Refugee Experience - “First Light” (reprint)
Verse of April - “Hibiscus Knowledge” (collaboration with Sam Herschel Wein)
Mass Live: El Pueblo Latino - “En el Hospital” (translation of my poem “In the Hospital” by Crystal Ding)
Smith College Poetry Center broadsides - “Summer Was Forever,” “In the Hospital,” excerpt from “Song of the Anti-Sisyphus” (reprints)
2018
The Massachusetts Review (Asian American Literature: Rethinking the Canon Issue): “Spring,” “Winter”
Sine Theta Magazine - “Items May Have Shifted,” “After My White Friend Says So Cool Upon Hearing Me Speak Chinese on the Phone with My Parents, I Take Another Sip of My Strawberry-Banana Smoothie & Contemplate Coolness & Chineseness, & I Wonder If My Love of Long Titles Stems from the Long Titles of Classical Chinese Poets & is Therefore, Part of an Inherently Cool Chineseness I Have Inherited, & Carry, Even to the Smoothie Shop, & Then I Recall a Longish Stream of Not-So-Cool Things My Parents Have Said About White People”
Foglifter - "four short essays personifying a future in which white supremacy has ended," "A Queer Translates the Night Sky," "Summer"
Glass Poetry - “& then a student stands up, says, Are you serious?”
West Branch / “Welcome to the River”: Queerness and Lineage Special Feature - “The School of Logic,” “The School of Joy / Letter to Michelle Lin” (+ statement)
The Massachusetts Review: “Autumn”
Pulse/Pulso: In Remembrance of Orlando anthology - “Things the Crows Bring”
Sixth Finch - "The School of Dreams"
The Texas Review - “[Be the look],” “[Be the the ridiculous]” (Two erasures)
A Restricted View From Under the Hedge - “INFP Ghost” (collaboration with Sam Herschel Wein)
Brooklyn Poets - "Sorrow Song with Optimus Prime" (reprint + interview)
Oxford Poetry - "Origin Story"
Poem-a-Day - "I Invite My Parents to a Dinner Party"
Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival broadside - “Self-Portrait as So Much Potential” (reprint)
Come As You Are: an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture - “Ode to the Parallelogram”
City Newspaper (Rochester) - "Study Abroad"
The McNeese Review - "Anti-Elegy: A How-To," “The School of Australia,” a selection from "A Small Book of Questions"
A Restricted View From Under the Hedge - “Les cloches de Genève,” “Interrupted by a Crow: a Syracuse Notebook”
Queer Poets in Greek - “Αυτοπροσωπογραφία ως Τόσες Πολλές Δυνατότητες” (translation by Sam Albatros of “Self-Portrait as So Much Potential”)
21h01 - "Poème en bouchées bruyantes" (translation of "Poem in Noisy Mouthfuls" by Nicolás Rodríguez Galvis)
Ace Hotel Poet of the Month - "I'm not a religious person but" (reprint)
Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology - "Set the Garden on Fire" (reprint)
Nepantla: Queer Poets of Color Anthology - "Quantitative Reasoning" (reprint)
Bettering American Poetry - "A Favorite Room" (reprint)
Winter Tangerine: Lineage of Mirrors - "The School of Song," "Elegy While Listening to a Song I Can't Help But Start to Move to," “One Year Later: a Letter,” "Summer" (+ statement)
2017
Tin House - "Winter," "The School of Night & Hyphens" (second poem reprinted by Poets.org for Poem-a-Day)
The Lifted Brow - “The School of Morning & Letters” and “Summer”
textonly.ru - “Профессор славистики,” “К гуанако в сиракьюзском зоопарке,” “Элегия к моей печали,” “На самом деле…” and “В городе” (translations by Kirill Cherbitski of “The Professor of Russian Studies,” “To the Guanacos at the Syracuse Zoo,” “Elegy for My Sadness,” “I am reminded via email to resubmit my preferences for the schedule,” and “In the City”)
Ping Pong - “Poema en ruidosos bocados,” “Cuando sea grande quiero ser una lista de otras posibilidades,” “Autorretrato con mucho potencial,” and “Calle Álamo” (translations by Giselle Rodríguez Cid of “Poem in Noisy Mouthfuls,” “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities,” Self-Portrait as So Much Potential,“ and “Poplar Street”)
The Best American Nonrequired Reading - “I am reminded via email to resubmit my preferences for the schedule” (reprint)
BOA’s Poem of the Week - “If I should die tomorrow, please note that I will miss the particular” (reprint)
INTO - “Camaraderie,” “Irreducible Sociality,” and “I’m not a religious person but" (reprints)
The Journal - “Doctor’s Note” and “The School of Red”
City of Notions: An Anthology of Contemporary Boston Poems -“Blockbuster” and “The School of Fury” (reprints)
Poetry (Asian American Poets Issue) - “Winter”
Poets.org: Poems on Identity for Teachers - “When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities” (reprint)
Anomaly Literary Journal - “elvis parsley” and “Rerun” (pp. 16-17)
APA issue of Poemeleon - “The Chateau” and “Far Corner”
Queer/Trans/Asian folio of Nat. Brut - selections from “A Small Book of Questions”
Featured Poet at Mud Season Review - “Circle ‘C’ If You Just Don’t Know,” “First Love,” “The School of Sharpening,” “How will you live now?” and “Friendship”
Speakeasy Project Session One Anthology - “Asian American Poem Tired of White People’s Excuses” + 3 erasures
Poem-a-Day - “First Light"
The New York Times Magazine - “Self-Portrait as So Much Potential”
No Assholes - “You come back,” “No Manifesto But the Pencil’s,“ and “Self-Portrait as an Overactive Lemon”
The Mondegreen - “[song]” and “I’m in New York & I guess the Pope is, too”
2016
IDK Magazine - “For Better or Worcester,” “Poème à la gloire des étincelles,” and “November Horoscope”
The Account - “how many coats does it take” and “The School of More School”
Asian Anglophone/APIA Issue of Dusie - “Maybe love is a tandem bike marathon up in the Adirondacks,” “Volleyball,” and “will they / won’t they / will i” (pp. 38-40)
The Shade Journal - “Quantitative Reasoning”
Window Cat Press - “The Professor of Russian Studies,” “memoir,” and “A Gift”
Phantom - “invite the blue” and “memoir of the present moment”
Mass Poetry’s Poem of the Moment - “The Psychic Speaks to the Nonbeliever”
Buzzfeed - “Ode to Rereading Rimbaud in Lubbock, Texas”
Poem-a-Day - “I am reminded via email to resubmit my preferences for the schedule”
Southern Indiana Review - “The Cuckoo Cry”
The Infoxicated Corner Spotlight Series at TheThe Poetry - “The Sinister Barista Meets the Loch Ness Professor,” “For I Will Consider My Boyfriend Jeffrey,” “Interrogation at the Hands of Rita Repulsa,” and “Playing in the Square”
Indiana Review - “In the City” and “Poem”
The Adroit Journal - “Song of the Night’s Gift” and “Nature Poem”
Gulf Coast - “Self-Portrait as So Much Potential” and “Summer”
The Normal School - “Sitcom” and “We’ll Be Gone After These Brief Messages”
The Poetry Review (UK) - “I’m not a religious person but” (reprint)
Bear Review - “In the Hospital” (p. 35)
Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Race - “Chen [No Middle Name] Chen,” “First Light,” “Kafka’s Axe & Michael’s Vest,” and “Poplar Street” (other than the first poem, reprints)
Raleigh Review - “Higher Education”
PBS NewsHour - “How I Became Sagacious” (reprint)
burntdistrict - “Blockbuster”
Wildness - “A Favorite Room” at Wildness
2015
Best of the Net Anthology - “Write a Letter to Your Mother About Your Longest Winter” (reprint)
Leopardskin & Limes - “The Sea is a Secret Net for the Bogeyman’s Feelings”
The Massachusetts Review - “Second Thoughts on a Winter Afternoon”
Fjords Review - “When I Grow Up I Want To Be a List of Further Possibilities”
The Best American Poetry - “for i will do/undo what was done/undone to me”
ATTN: July 31 2015 - Erasures [1] & [2]
Construction Magazine - “Sorrow Song with Optimus Prime”
Open Sesame Whatever - “Tuesday Ghazal,” “& then,” and “A Joke”
Narrative Northeast - “Kafka’s Axe & Michael’s Vest” and “Things Stuck in Other Things Where They Don’t Belong”
Drunken Boat - “How I Became Sagacious” and “In This Economy”
HEArt - “The School of Fury”
Ostrich Review - “Sleeping in the Last of Summer” and “Race to the Tree”
The Margins - “Chapter VIII” and “The Cat Who Wore Corn Pants”
Crab Orchard Review - “In Search of the Least Abandoned Constellation”
Poetry - “I’m not a religious person but” and “Poplar Street”
The Pinch - “Elegy to Be Exhaled at Dusk”
Print-Oriented Bastards - “Poem in Noisy Mouthfuls” and “Sonnet for Two Birthdays”
Red Paint Hill - “Paradise”
Chelsea Station - “Little Rooms”
Maps for Teeth - “Citizenship”, “Nǐ kǒu kě ma?”, “To the Common Tongue”, “Write a Letter to Your Mother About Your Longest Winter”, “Family”, and “Lullaby”
Stone Canoe - “The Classmate”
Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts - “First Light”
Bat City Review - “Frog-Hopping Gravestones” and “Gesundheit!” (print only)
Encore Magazine (CA) - “Tale of the Knife & the Heart”
HEArt - “Write a Letter to the Class About Your Summer Vacation” and “Eat”
Breakwater Review - “Song of the Anti-Sisyphus” and “Elegy for My Sadness”
Narrative - “Self-Portrait With & Without”
The Screaming Sheep - “Ode to My Envy”
Fogged Clarity - “They were selling phoenixes”, “Elegy”, and “West of Schenectady”
Cha: An Asian Literary Journal - “Self Portrait as Man Stuck Inside Karaoke Video”
2014
Codex Journal - “Church on a Wednesday” and “Irreducible Sociality”
Gabby - “Camaraderie”
Dusie - “Little Song” and “vulpes vulpes”
Perception Magazine - “Ode to the Hexagon”, “Confession”, and “my soul, you’re shit at everything”
New Delta Review - “Antarctica”
DIAGRAM - “Please take off your shoes before entering do not disturb” and “Both Nuclear & Extended"
Foothill: A Journal of Poetry - “Tightrope Walker” (p. 17)
Tupelo Quarterly - “Song with a Lyric from Allen Ginsberg”
PANK: Queer Issue - “Jerking Off to Koh Masaki”, “Necking”, “You should let yourself be more Asian, it’s cute”, “Summer Was Forever”, and “You barking starship”
The Journal of Applied Poetics - “Second Steeping” (also here)
Split This Rock Poem of the Week - “Set the Garden on Fire”
Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color - “Spell to Find Family”
Mobius: The Journal of Social Change - “Halloween”
Chelsea Station - “Tell Me a Story of Deep Delight”
Word Riot - “Three Dreams for the Price of One”
PANK - “for i will do/undo what was done/undone to me” and “poem,/love,”
Birdfeast - “Long Johns”
Anti - “The Purpose of the Post-It” (journal no longer exists; can also read this poem here)
NightBlock - “Postcard” and “Blue Sweaters”
Potluck Magazine - “Jesus Year” and “Dancing Badly”
Ghost Proposal - “My Secret” and “You show up”
CURA: A Literary Magazine of Art & Action - “As the Snow Falls”
Driftwood Press - “Ghazal to be Tattooed on Our Galaxy’s Arm” and “The Tease” (p. 36)
Pif Magazine - “Aubade, on the Way to the Airport” and “History”
Connotation Press - “Kissing the Sphinx” and “Traveler”
2013
Verbal Seduction - “Medicine Ball”, “Lights”, “Pie People”, and “ ‘And then you take the potato out of the bag. Where is the potato now?’ ” (pp. 83-89, print only)