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

A PEONY FOR LIU YUXI

Waist high
the peonies wait,
Liu Yuxi.

An ankle keeps
the knees in time.

Wrist, thigh

elbow high.

A ruby mallow

the sugar ants
unhinged.

Chuck Stebelton is author of One Hundred Patterns & Three Heuristics (Green Gallery Press, 2023) and Easterly (The Year, 2026). He currently serves as Director of Special Projects & Initiatives at Woodland Pattern, and since 2018 has held an ongoing artist residency at Lynden Sculpture Garden. He makes pamphlets, broadsides, collaborative print objects and such under the Ben Tinterstices Editions imprint. Ted Berrigan, “interstices // bent.”

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