CURRENT | Public School Poetry

Issue #7, September 2026

Christina Mesiti, "Crawling, Grasping Mobius"

Issue #7 of Public School Poetry seems populated by absences and empty spaces: lost home, lost health, lost memory; the open space between a circle of fire and a sapling, the empty tink of a lightbulb filament breaking.

Actually, our whole lives are populated by absences. The cultural, environmental, political fabric feels a bit hole-punched and moth-eaten these days. Not a revelation to anyone, for sure. But Issue #7 does seem an especially good reminder of how fine-tuned poetry is for exploring and transforming absence. “I’m so entranced by the absences,” writes Lauren Camp in her essay about Karen Finneyfrock’s poetry. We too are entranced, even when the absence is devastating. The unknowable or unsayable isn’t the endpoint for poetry--it’s the starting point, as Anne Carson would say, the “stupendous, unlistening void” into which we hurl our voices.

This issue’s cover art, Christina Mesiti’s “Crawling, Grasping Mobius,” creates a new shape of open space in a landscape. The crawling, grasping hands of the sculptor are an infinity frame. There’s an endless looping to the work of the artist or writer. You do it and you do it and you do it, and in that process make sense of absence.

“this space is your space for a time and i trust you with its upkeep,” writes Justin Hamm. These ten poets, exchanging their poems anonymously with each other, have invited others into their space. Mike Santora’s essay explores the mythic frameworks of Katie Hartsock’s poetry. Then Katie Hartsock’s essay knits together the complexities of Sean Thomas Dougherty’s sestinas. Then Sean Thomas Dougherty finds the ocean at the center of Sehee Oh’s triptych of poems. Then…

These essays link hands with poems; see the crawling, grasping fingerholds of the desert mobius.

David Ward, Vice-Principal

Contributors

Joseph Chapman

Txt me pls.

Democrats and the liberal media are LYING to you

Hey JOSEPH, it's Leona Just seeing if 7424 WEIL AVE is available

Missouri Department Transportation Final Notice

Five-Paragraph Essay by Zach Savich

Justin Hamm

to the saint about to rearrange the humble apartment of my chest

this poem is called just kidding though it isnt really funny