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Pine Row Issue No. 12 Winter 2026 - Featured Poet
Smirk
–After Marie Howe
Blame my mother’s body, her slick
lying tongue–every word
a jab, sport she learned from her
mother, bourbon-drunk & mean.
Blame my mother’s cold discontent.
From her I learned to clock a man’s
gaze, to rate women’s bodies 1-10.
Blame my mother’s body, her quick
& perfect smirk. She blamed
her mother, her father, my father—
how can I blame my mother’s body,
that open, reliable bruise? So what
if I was her ticket out? So what
if she asked for the shot
to dry her milk, if she
pawned us off on anyone willing?
So what if she became her mother
not bourbon-drunk but mean?
She taught me to be merciless
& quick, like the twist of her
delicate wrist when she hid pills
in her almost-empty pack of Marlboros.
And look at me: mean as I want to be,
blaming my mother’s body,
my every word a jab.
Inheritance: A Bop
I’ll never shake you.
Your words lodged deep within—our history helixed
in every cell. I can close my eyes, become young again &
hear the flick of your almost-empty Bic,
smell the exhale of your Marlboro Red. Sometimes
I dream—still—of the clear-sky blue of your saucer eyes.
I don’t know the sound
of your voice anymore.
I don’t need to—
Science tells me why, despite all these years gone, my body
can’t let you go
These trace-memories, intimate & hidden:
your grandmother’s shame as she carried your mother &
your mother’s bitterness as she carried you—our inheritance
spooling forward & back. Do you know: fetal cells can breach
the placenta & lodge in a mother’s body, stay until she dies—
these problems bewilder & fascinate me: how there was
a you & me before there was a you, a me. Which traces of me are
still with you.
I don’t know the sound
of your voice anymore.
I don’t need to—
Forget science. I want to know how joy survives
a toxic core—why
won't you let me go, no matter how hard I try to stay gone?
Someday—maybe—I’ll ask my children which memories
of me have never let them go, try to trace them to something
we all remember.
Someday—maybe—I’ll explain how we’re expected to
carry both past & future, despite our own twisted ankles.
I don’t know the sound
of your voice anymore.
I don’t need to.
From the Desk of the Poet
From the Desk of the Poet
1. When you revise, what does your process look like—from first pass to final polish?
First pass is usually in pencil in a notebook. Revisions are there too; if there's a poem I feel really motivated to keep working on immediately, I'll keep writing and rewriting--if you were to look in my notebook, for example, you'd see 8 pages of revisions and possibilities of "Smirk": attempts at different forms, going from shorter lines to longer, different word choices and line breaks, new titles, etc. Once I get something I think I want to share, I type it so I can email it to poets I regularly exchange work with. I jot notes from their feedback on a printed copy of that typed version. Revisions after that happen again in my notebook, but I do try to keep better digital track by "stacking" versions (newer on top of older) in a document.
2. What’s on your nightstand right now—anything you’re currently reading (or meaning to start)?
So many that I'm meaning to start! I do my best to read the collections of guests we have at monthly Notebooks Collective events; so right now I'm reading Traci Brimhall's anthology "Eat Your Words" and Marianne Kunkel's "Hillary, Made Up." Next is Melissa Fite Johnson's newer work (on her website/in various journals) and then Gabrielle Calvocoressi's "The New Economy." I also read something that's not poetry every morning; earlier this week I finished "Wuthering Heights". I have so many classics to catch up on. My oldest son and I usually read a book a month together, typically a suspense or mystery.
3. When you sit down to write, what’s your writing process—how do you go from idea to finished draft?
I took a class titled "The Modern Sonnet" from Lily Poetry with Meghan Sterling, and she said that she writes a sonnet every morning. So I decided to write a sonnet every morning. I was doing really well for so long and then life got in the way a little bit; but I'm getting back on that train. The final poem isn't always a sonnet, but it helps me get to the page more consistently than I had before. After I write, the poem either needs to sit in my journal for a while and I'll come back to it with fresh eyes, or it will be one that won't let me go immediately and I'll do what I described in question 1. Sometimes, too, the idea is just a snippet or a phrase or a random thought. Those also go in my notebook, and I'll flip through those books every now and then to see if something grabs me. I guess you could most simply say that ideas in some form go into my notebook, where they live until they're ready to be realized.
4. Anything else we should know - upcoming book, personal website?
Yes! I'm really proud of the work my partner, Rebecca Kirk Connors, and I do at The Notebooks Collective. We have a truly amazing 2026 season of In Conversation events (almost) monthly and we're working on more offerings like classes and time to just be in community, sharing work and generating work. I'd love for more people to know about what we do and join us! Also, my first collection, It's What I Have Left, was published in Februrary by Lily Poetry Review Books. My personal website is lisalallen.com.
Lisa Allen’s (she/her) work can be found or is forthcoming in Lily Poetry Review, December Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, Bear Review, and MER, among others. She has received three nominations for the Pushcart Prize and was a 2022 Best of the Net finalist for her poem “Prolapse: Etymology,” published by South 85 Journal. Lisa holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction and an MFA in Poetry, both from the Solstice Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lasell University, where she was a Michael Steinberg fellow in Creative Nonfiction. With poet Rebecca Conners, she co-founded and co-directs the online creative space The Notebooks Collective. Her first full-length collection was published with Lily Poetry Press in February 2026.
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