Farewell and Welcome!
Laura Orem is retiring after almost two years as one of our dedicated volunteer poetry editors. Farewell, Laura!
While we’ll miss Laura—and her sense of humor—we’re delighted to welcome our newest poetry editor, Tori Cárdenas.
Tori is a queer Tainx/Latinx poet from Northern New Mexico. In 2014, she graduated from the University of New Mexico with a dual Bachelor of Arts degree in History and English, with a concentration in Poetry. She returned to UNM in Fall 2017 to earn her Master’s of Fine Arts in Fiction. She served as Blue Mesa Review’s 2018-2019 Poetry Editor, and serves currently as the 2019-2020 Editor-in-Chief.
Tori’s work has appeared in Conceptions Southwest, VICE, Pantheon Magazine, Writers Resist online journal, and Writers Resist: The Anthology 2018, and it has been nominated for the Best of the Net anthology and a Pushcart Prize. Her works have also been featured as finalists in the 2018 and 2019 Rabbit Catastrophe Press Really Good Poem Prize contests.
Tori lives with her dog Sophie in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Please join us in welcoming Tori—and celebrating her poem. …
White
upon buying a new car for visibility, practicality, and functionality,
the car and insurance salesmen convince me white is the best color—
it’s functional, keeping it clean is as easy as keeping the dust off of it.
at night, you will be easy to see, less likely to get pulled over or questioned,
folks will stop to help you with flats on the shoulder. on long road trips,
bugs splatter every color across your grille, red and brown and yellow—
won’t it be pretty