Winner of the 2023 Tenth Gate Prize and a 2023 Alma Book Award, Nicole Callihan has two recent poetry collections: chigger ridge (The Word Works, 2024) and SLIP (Saturnalia, 2025). Her other books include This Strange Garment (Terrapin, 2023), the 2019 novella The Couples (Mason Jar Press), and a forthcoming chapbook, griefbeing, from Lily Poetry Review Books. Find more at nicolecallihan.com.
Poetry
Spring 2025
Knot
The Kenyon Review · “Knot” by Nicole Callihan Bowline. Clove hitch. Anchor. Alpine butterfly. What’s tied to the boat. Or, I felt it rising in my throat. But what was […]
Poetry
Spring 2025
Wheelbarrow
The Kenyon Review · “Wheelbarrow” by Nicole Callihan The wood beneath the tarp in the corner of the shed is to be stacked into the wheelbarrow to be carried down […]
Poetry
Spring 2025
Thimble
The Kenyon Review · “Thimble” by Nicole Callihan A small cap usually of metal. In the early twenty-first century, artists of the East End used it to measure tequila. As […]
Poetry
Spring 2025
Lightbulb
The Kenyon Review · “Lightbulb” by Nicole Callihan The glass which is screwed into the socket in the ceiling casts a shadow of the thing which stands between the source […]
Poetry
Sept/Oct 2021
grief being a pink pearl
a mixture of an abrasive and rubber vulcanized to bond the ingredients carried in a star-strewn satchel knocking against the knee of the girl her graphite mistakes to be rubbed […]
Poetry
Sept/Oct 2021
grief being thin as an envelope
flat so flat & verily fragile beloved item of the archivist the veins visible through the skin the hand which shook while writing the words the dried-out inkwell the birds […]
Poetry
Sept/Oct 2021
grief being a movable city
in such that Chinatown is uptown that the SoHo corner where you smoked in the snow is deep in Sunnyside in the even deeper summer and the flowers you threw […]
Poetry
Sept/Oct 2021
grief being a procession of people
usually organized along a street, often in costume, often accompanied by marching bands, floats, hats, flowers, baton twirlers, sometimes very large balloons, like this one, in which I see your […]