Welcome to “Poetry at The Arts Fuse.” A new poem every Thursday

The Story

doesn’t bother with chronology. The story contains
no diversity, no humanitarian gestures, no jobless
Harvard grad sob stories. There are no stories
within the story, no trash within the trash, no haste
makes haste, no waste not want not, no birds-eye
of Mama Heaton lying in the bed she started dying in.
No brokenness. Nobody is broke. Nothing breaks.
The story is productive. The story is efficient.
The story shines like an unused muffin pan. There is
no hunger, no grief, no fat lode, no hidden meaning.
The story is fastened to an elegant page. The story
is the Shen Yun of stories. Its acrobatic perfection
shall be marveled. The story wafts of fake gardenias.
The story is bottled water. The story is a gift
re-gifted and re-gifted again until the audience breaks
not into applause but into a collective heaving. I’m so
glad there are no poor people, no dead workers, nary
a feathered glitterbombing drag queen in this story.
No payaso triste. No words from other languages.
No solipsistic grinding. The story is a halo gone slack,
turned golden rope, enough with which to hang ourselves.

Winner of the 2023 Tenth Gate Prize and a 2023 Alma Award, Nicole Callihan has two recent poetry collections: chigger ridge (The Word Works 2024) and SLIP (Saturnalia March 2025). Other books include This Strange Garment (Terrapin 2023), the 2019 novella, The Couples, and a new chapbook, griefbeing, from Lily Poetry Review Books. Her work has appeared in Sixth Finch, Tin House, Conduit, The American Poetry Review, and as a Poem-a-Day selection from the Academy of American Poets. Find out more at www.nicolecallihan.com.

Note: Hey poets! We seek submissions of excellent poetry from across the length and breadth of contemporary poetics. See submission guidelines here. The arbiter of the feature is the magazine’s poetry editor, John Mulrooney.

— Arts Fuse editor Bill Marx