Shira Dentz

Vampires

The iris is iridescent
as a mirror.
A sherbet haze and
crescent forms, night
after night. Heels wipe
clean. A manhole
clinks its circle.
Echoes are dry,
dismantling your love
of day.

Shira Dentz is the author of five books including SISYPHUSINA (PANK Books), winner of the Eugene Paul Nassar Book Prize and due to be republished by Astrophil Press in spring 2025, and two chapbooks. Shira's poetry, hybrid and visual writing, nonfiction, criticism, and conversations have been featured in diverse venues such as Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Waxwing, VOLT, Brooklyn Rail, Lana Turner, Cincinnati Review, Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, jubilat, Pleiades, Annulet, Apartment, Diagram, Denver Quarterly, Berlin Lit, Colorado Review, Idaho Review, New American Writing, Poets.org, Verse Daily, Poetry Daily, and NPR, and she’s the recipient of awards including an Academy of American Poets Prize and Poetry Society of America's Lyric Poem and Cecil Hemley Awards, and most recently NELLE Literary Journal’s Three Sisters Award in creative nonfiction and an NEA/NYS arts grant for an image-text work in progress. More at www.shiradentz.com.