Cover Photo: This image shows phases of the moon, a full moon on the left moving through six distinct phases, with a fingernail of a moon on the far right. The moons all share the same yellowish orange glow against a black starless background, as if in the dead of night.
Photograph by Mark Tegethoff/Unsplash

I’m Living in the Poems I Can’t Yet Write

How does one translate life into poetry, especially in seasons of total depletion?

Breaking the Alabaster Jarprecedes

I’m so sick of myself! Why do we bother trying to do any of this? I’ll never be sick of you–I love you whatever way you’re feeling.

could

Debase yourself in order to be absolved.

good

Natasha Oladokun (she/her) is a poet and essayist. She holds fellowships from Cave Canem, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Jackson Center for Creative Writing, Twelve Literary Arts, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was the inaugural First Wave Poetry fellow. Her work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, The Academy of American Poets, Harvard Review Online, and Kenyon Review Online. You can read her column The PettyCoat Chronicles—on pop culture and period dramas—at Catapult. She is Associate Poetry Editor at storySouth, and currently lives in Madison, WI.