Christy Prahl is an Illinois Arts Council grant recipient and the author of the poetry collections We Are Reckless (Cornerstone Press, 2023), With Her Hair on Fire (Roadside Press, 2025), and Catalog of Labors (Unsolicited Press, fall 2026). A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, her past and future publications include Bear Review, Poetry Daily, the North American Review, Arkansas International, CALYX, Salt Hill Journal, SWWIM, Tar River Poetry, and others. She splits her time between a small workers’ cottage in Chicago and refurbished Quonset hut in southwest Michigan.
I sleep with a whale, says my mother, referring to my father, his body a leviathan hump in the bed, heating pad at full torque beneath his tailbone, space heater a hum. My father wears a thermal layer inside his pajamas, his skin thinned to cheesecloth. My mother runs hot, sweats in the sheets, watches him breathe through heaving lungs,… Read more →
The arm of the living room chair amputates itself again. Nothing stays whole for long around here. The right tool for the job may (never) be a (staple) gun or orphaned glove. A cracked dish can draw blood from a finger, preventing the injured from counting to ten. From the back of a kitchen drawer, the world continues to dissolve. Cities… Read more →
