Venus Davis

Venus Davis is a 21-year-old queer black writer from Cleveland, Ohio. They are the editor in chief of Periwinkle Literary Magazine. They are a former poetry reader for Random Sample Review and Gordon Square Review. Their work has been featured in Marias at Sampaguitas, Royal Rose Magazine, Ayaskala, Crepe and Penn, and many other publications. They are the author of Sensitive Divination, an astrology microchapbook as well as the microchapbooks, Blue and @ngel number(s). You can find them on social media @venusbeanus.

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Prismatica Magazine •

Red Rover, Red Lover by Preston Smith —

Red Rover, Red Lover, published by Roaring Junior Press in March 2020, is the debut poetry chapbook by Preston Smith. The book follows the trajectory of the Apollo Space Missions and the speaker’s relationship with the god, Apollo. This chapbook has themes of the speaker’s relationship with love, sex, and the divine. Within these twenty-four poems, Smith brings the reader along for the entire narrative arc of the speaker’s relationship with Apollo which is unique for such a short collection. My
Marias & Sampaguitas •

Review by Venus Davis

Book Review: Letters to My Lover From Behind Asylum Walls by Robin Sinclair Letters to My Lover From Behind Asylum Walls is a poetry collection written by Robin Sinclair and published by Cosmographia Books in 2018. This collection is a series of letters from Sweet Jane, a mental hospital patient, to her lover, Eleanor. I found this collection to be incredibly honest in it’s dark depiction of what it is like to be trapped in the walls of an asylum just as one might feel trapped in their mind bec
Marias & Sampaguitas •

Review by Venus Davis

Book Review: Letters to My Lover From Behind Asylum Walls by Robin Sinclair Letters to My Lover From Behind Asylum Walls is a poetry collection written by Robin Sinclair and published by Cosmographia Books in 2018. This collection is a series of letters from Sweet Jane, a mental hospital patient, to her lover, Eleanor. I found this collection to be incredibly honest in it’s dark depiction of what it is like to be trapped in the walls of an asylum just as one might feel trapped in their mind bec
Marias & Sampaguitas •

Review by Venus Davis

Where I Ache is a poetry collection by Megan O’Keeffe published in 2019. Thematically, the book touches on depression, suicidal thoughts, self hate, and heartache. The book is broken up into six sections: My Foggy Head, My Weak Spine, My Bruised Heart, My Grieving Knees, My Greedy Green Eyes, and My Soothing Arms. Each section includes poems that reflect different parts of the speaker’s journey to finding themselves. There are simple yet effective illustrations by Kevin Furey interwoven througho
Marias & Sampaguitas •

Review by Venus Davis

Human Tetris is a collection of missed connections and wanted ads for romantic relationships and hook-ups. Each poem is filled with wit and brutal honesty which is delightfully shocking to the reader. The jarring language juxtaposed with the intimacy of love and sex makes for an entrancing and intriguing read. The two different writers voices, although completely opposite, come together to form the many characters that make up this enticing collection. This collection of poems has recurring the
Medium •

Venus Recommends “Venus” by Sleeping At Last

The night sky once ruled my imagination. Now I turn the dials with careful calculation. After a while, I thought I’d never find you. I convinced myself that I would never find you, When suddenly I saw you. The year was 2017. I had hated my name for years upon years. As a child, I assumed it was just because my name was common. I won’t tell you the exact name but think along the same vein as “Jessica”, “Megan”, or “Kelly”. I wanted to feel special and different and like my name meant somet
Marias & Sampaguitas •

Poem by Venus Davis

Do you still think I look like Kimya Dawson? You said I looked just like her and I can’t tell if it’s because we share the same shade of skin or because of my curly hair or just because I really do look like her reflection. I’ve typed her name into a search box millions of times just to see what you saw that day in my like me when I think of you now. It might’ve been full of a kind of disgust that I could not piece together at seventeen. A hate that I still wonder about at twenty. It
Juliette Sebock •

Micro: a microchapbook of micropoems

“I have to say ‘I love you’ / in a poem . . . ” Micro is a microchapbook of micropoems by Nightingale & Sparrow editor Juliette Sebock. This tiny book contains 10 short poems and measures approximately 2.125 x 2.75 inches. Each book is handmade and numbered, representing its place in the limited 100-copy run. Each copy is uniquely hand-crafted, cut, and folded; because of this, some uneven edges do occur. We think it gives them more character! “Readers take things away from small poems constant