The Issue 49 Poetry Round-Up!
While highlighting all of the wonderful work that makes up Pulp Literature Issue 49, we invite the poets amongst us to pay particular attention to the winners of the 2025 Kingfisher Poetry Prize, and to find inspiration in these works while you consider entering the 2026 Magpie Award for Poetry. This contest is for poems up to 100 lines in length and closes on April 15th, 2026, so be sure to get your entries in soon!
Enjoy the opening lines of these winning poems below, as selected by final judge Jude Neale. To read these poems in full, pick up a copy of Issue 49, Winter 2026.
My Preschool Teacher Rips Tape from the Roll
by Atma Frans
Each piece she applies with lipstick precision
like pulling wings from a fly
I nearly wish she’d be rough
Soon my mouth will be buried
Later, I will tell Mama
each syllable a frost flower between us
A robin flies into glass
The teacher’s nails on my cheeks
piercing my feathers.
Atma Frans’ poetry has won Quagmire Magazine’s Inaugural Poetry Contest, was nominated for Best of the Net 2026, and has been published in Arc Poetry Magazine, FreeFall, Prairie Fire Magazine, The Ampersand Review, Obsessed with Pipework, Lighthouse Literary Journal, Contemporary Verse 2, and elsewhere.
finding my mother’s field guide to birds
by Sarina Sullivan
at the bottom of a box full of photographs and tired choked
poems all of it steeped in nicotine, wrist deep, full to the throat
with the last nor’easter, kneeling next to artichoke sprouts reading
about magpies blue jays titmice by the radiator that shouts all night
waiting for the damp spots to appear on the ceiling when we sleep when it all
is ending, this season, the river flooding high in the woods behind the house
Sarina Sullivan is a chronic New Englander interested in mixing myth, nature, and the mundane. She writes poetry, non-fiction, and genre fiction.
When Limitation Yields Abundance
by Maryam Imogen Ghouth
When I think about having it all,
I think of my big sister planting a fig tree
in her garden.
I see her there, in my head —
knees in the dirt,
hair tracing her face in arched streams
like a garden sprinkler,
hands patting the soil
while Poppy, her pup,
digs chaos in the mud.
Maryam Imogen Ghouth is a literary artist working across written, audio, and visual poetry and prose. She has received twelve first-place awards for work that spans short stories such as ‘The Clearing’, poetry such as ‘Ashes’, and poetry films such as ‘Not Alone’. She is the author and narrator of I Ask My Being: Reflective Poems on Staying True, a chapbook with audio and neoclassical music. Her poem ‘When Limitation Yields Abundance’ explores the coincidence of opposites, a theme that defines much of her recent work. Learn more at maryamghouth.com.
To continue reading these poems, pick up a copy of Issue 49, Winter 2026!
Want to take home a prize for your poetry? The Magpie Award for Poetry is open to entries until April 15th, 2026! Send us your poems for a shot at the $500 top prize and publication in Pulp Literature.
For all of the details on the 2026 Magpie Award for Poetry, and to enter, check out our contest guidelines.
And for more poetic inspiration, you can read excerpts from last year’s winners here.
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