Shows
The Daily Aftershock (Writing Prompt)Fox / Plague Year Season 3 by Polly AtkinEditorial Note by Max WallisPolly Atkin’s three poems move through pain, body, endurance — and with Fox / Plague Year Season 3 she leaves us with survival as practice. The fox is both real and emblematic: a creature stepping into the road, alert and cautious, a guide through the wreckage of the plague years. It’s not mystic but pragmatic, teaching vigilance, mask-wearing, the refusal of shame. It’s a presence to hold onto in the glare of denial, a reminder to stay fleet, masked, unashamed.The fox steadies the speaker through sickness, across borders...
2025-08-1801 min
The Daily Aftershock (Writing Prompt)Pain Parade by Polly AtkinEditorial Note by Max Wallis“Polly Atkin’s Pain Parade takes what most of us try to hide or name in whispers and lets it arrive at full volume, in costume. Pain becomes pageant, procession, myth. A bruise turns into a banner. A body’s flare transforms into dragon, unicorn, moth, owl.Chronic pain is not an event; it’s a life. It doesn’t visit for a night and leave quietly, but rather marches in, day after day, reshaping everything. Polly Atkin’s Pain Parade understands this. It refuses the lie of a single ima...
2025-08-1601 min
The Daily Aftershock (Writing Prompt)Frogsong by Polly AtkinEditorial Note by Max WallisHere, Polly Atkin shapes desire as discipline. “Frog Song” begins with refusal, not abandonment, not anger - and turns the body toward water and sun. Relief arrives as touch: a “cool scarf of water,” a face warmed back into itself. Polly asks what it costs to seek light, and what it means to want recognition: “selfdom,” “gilded halls,” the hope that joy might be a passport. Its frogs are not just cute emblems but a chorus for solidarity; amphibious witnesses to crossing points and shared weather. The hunger for cleansing is complicated… light that “throws...
2025-08-1201 min