This week, we at The Metropolitan Review are excited to publish poets Marcela Sulak and Jason Barry. These two poems examine questions about both the everyday and the profound. What do we see? What weight do images hold? And, most crucially, what is the right answer to ambiguous questions? The stunning language in these poems examine both the domestic and the spatial relationships we have not only with each other but also with the world around us. Enjoy the read.
—The Editors
Fish, Stone, River, O
Inside the mother’s mouth was a fish, and inside the fish
was a grandmother’s wedding ring. You’d always believed
that the mother was a rock on the neck of a river.
That grandmother had been here is clear,
what is the flow crashing into now?
A stone mother sitting at the neck of a stream.
Who would have imagined a mother as stone,
a lode, a burden, a way, a course.
A stone mother sitting at the neck of a stream,
what wants the child? Only what was promised to her.
The child had been promised a lode, a burden, a way, a course,
something to be followed, a strong drink.
And most of all, her grandmother.
In the morning her jaws were aching
for holding the o of the gold ring.
Maybe she was the fish inside her mother’s mouth.
Maybe she was the golden ring.
Marcela Sulak is the author of five poetry collections, most recently, the National Jewish Book Award finalist, City of Skypapers, and The Fault. Her translations from Czech, Hebrew, and French have been recognized by the NEA and PEN. She directs the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing and edits The Ilanot Review.The Long Way In
Allegheny County, Pennsylvania
Between the half-burnt
farmhouse and the sign
for Cherry Road,
my radio stuttered:
interest rates, dust storms,
tech wars with China.
Thirty miles to go
before the skyline flickered.
Students returning,
hardhats on the bridges.
A cracked smile
and handshake with the boss.
Then the low fog lifted—
a bear, sleek as Clairton coal,
tongue lapping puddles
from the asphalt.
Maybe she was scared,
or maybe not. My truck screeched,
skidded. Neither of us
knew which way to go.
Jason Barry holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University and a Master’s in Applied Linguistics from the University of Oxford. A finalist for the 2025 Donald Justice Prize, his poems have appeared in Subtropics, 32 Poems, Barrow Street, Poetry Ireland Review, Literary Matters, Cimarron Review, The Cortland Review, Bad Lilies, Thrush Poetry Journal, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Fossil & Wing, won the Wil Mills Award from the West Chester University Poetry Center, and his work has been featured on The Slowdown. He has been offered artist scholarships and grants from the Poetry Society of America, Boston University, Poetry by the Sea, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
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