The 2026 Poetry Contest Issue!
A glimpse inside the latest installment of Passager, featuring poems by Joy Nevin Axelson, Lucinda Trew, Matthew J. Spireng, and Rupert Fike.
TRANSCRIPT
Passager’s new issue, the 2026 Poetry Contest issue just hit the stands, so to speak. We’re going to celebrate its publication with a Zoom reading featuring several poets from this issue. It’s Sunday, November 15th 2:00 Eastern time. You can register for the Zoom on Passager’s web site. This episode of Burning Bright offers you a taste of that issue.
Joy Nevin Axelson said, “When I pour out my heartache and confusion through a pen in poetry, inner order is restored. Suffering never makes sense, but it can be redeemed.” Here’s Joy’s poem “Dear Magnus & Renée.”
I’m sorry I wasn’t a better mom…
I just didn’t know any better.
And if you hate your name, Magnus,
that’s your dad’s fault.
Renée, that was me.
It may be old fashioned,
but it means “born again” in French…
and that’s what you have been.
Expecting you two, I was sick as a dog.
They say it’s a wonderful sign,
but that’s not how it played out for us.
I painted the nursery, crocheted you a blanket.
But I imagine you’re grown up now
with no need to keep warm on frigid nights.
Have you got your dad’s blue eyes
and my welcoming smile?
I swear I was ready for you.
I could feel it…even taste it.
With bated breath and empty arms,
I couldn’t wait to meet you.
Just seven months more…
Then you got cold feet
and bypassed earth for heaven.
I’m still longing to hold you.
I’ll look for you there,
so please stick together.
Joy Nevin Axelson’s poem “Magnus & Renée.”
Lucinda Trew said, “The story of Dom Pérignon laboring in monastery cellars and ‘tasting the stars’ captured my imagination.” Here’s Lucinda’s poem “Dom Pérignon.”
when we travel to France at last
we will visit the tomb of Dom Pérignon
pay our respects to the alchemist monk
disciple of Christ, distiller of spirits
Brother Pierre of Benedictine order
who tended to vows and to vineyards
scripture and seed, a silent soul toiling
in the valley of wine, training stock
trellising stem, tilling Épernay soil
the color of cloistral robes
a believer who knew the divinity of dirt
and champagne’s earthly origins –
chalk clay lime
and River Marne, churning current
into hills and gilded nectar
we will bow our heads, raise a glass
to the cellar master, for lifting prayer
and pruning shears to the ripening
tangle, for holy-ghosting black fruit
to gold, and blessing effervescence
into barrels and bottles – yes!
we will toast the monk who stirred
morning harvest into night sky bliss
who sipped the ethereal, crying brothers
come quick, I am tasting stars!
“Dom Pérignon,” Lucinda Trew.
I love diner breakfasts. And fathers and sons. So when I read Matthew J. Spireng’s poem “Sunday Breakfast,” it was a no-brainer.
I’m watching two men—one older,
one in his thirties or forties—going up
the steps to the diner for breakfast
and I think they’re probably father
and son and how nice it would be
to be able to have breakfast with
my father on a Sunday morning—or
any morning—, how nice it would be
to sit and talk with him over coffee
and eggs, or pancakes and bacon, perhaps
reminisce, or talk about the future, or
the upcoming Super Bowl, and then
I remember I’m 76 and I’d be the father
not the son, and I have no children, so
because my father is dead and I have no sons
I can’t be either of the two men just now
entering the diner where they will wait
a moment to be seated before breakfast begins.
“Sunday Breakfast,” Matthew J. Spireng.
The 2026 Passager Poet is Rupert Fike. We’ll end this episode with his poem “Under the Highway 83 Bridge.”
There’s this disturbing whump-whump each time a car
or especially a semi, crosses the Ocmulgee,
the sound of steel plates deflecting then rebounding,
the noise so wrong-sounding you’re wanting
to call the 911 structural engineer hotline except
you know there’s no such thing. Plus your survival
instincts are screaming, Flee!, get out from under
this human-made error, do what you came to do,
launch your kayak into the grace of a Piedmont river.
But even after paddling around two long bends
you can still hear it, you’re still tuned in to those
ever-fainter whump-whumps, the heavy metal thunder
from your kind too much with you same as the world
was too much with Wordsworth. Not that you can
pretend his sensibilities for you are a card-carrying
devotee of the Anthropocene, full-on contributor,
a plastic-bag-using, frequent-flying lackey,
aware of your behavior yet rarely altering it,
you the only critter on the river who even notices
humankind’s whump-whumps — the fat copperhead
certainly doesn’t, it just keeps gliding by, head held
high as a sea-serpent’s, swishing to Monroe County
as though there’s some in-law trouble back in Jasper.
And the line of turtles on a log never stir
from their blood-warming naps, and look, two dragonflies
on your prow, perhaps attracted by its floral red,
going at it, entwined, making more of their own,
the one job we’ve all been put here to do.
“Under the Highway 83 Bridge,” Rupert Fike.
On this episode of Burning Bright, we’ve been listening to poems from Passager’s brand new 2026 Poetry Contest issue.
To order that issue, subscribe to, donate to, or learn more about Passager and its commitment to older writers, visit passagerbooks.com.
Passager offers a 25% discount on the books and journal issues featured here on Burning Bright. Visit our website to see what’s on sale this week.
For Christine, Rosanne, Mary, Johnny, and the rest of the Passager staff, I’m Jon Shorr.
Due to the limitations of online publishing, poems may not appear in their original formatting.
