Review: Josephine Ornelas's "Sestina"

​by Rachael Crosbie.

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In "Sestina", the waltz of the stanzas lures you in similarly like The Haunting of Bly Manor—you’re in for a gothic piece dipped in romance. Also, there’s a lake involved. While violent, the poem is beautifully written, and its sestina form pushes the narrative forward  better than any other poetic form.
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“Tonight my car’s headlights will beam the lake / cuing that waltz which lulls me back to Luke.” This immersive recount of a lost love pushes and pulls you throughout the poem, a natural ebb and flow, the dichotomy of life and death. Like the water in the lake, there is a certain stillness between the waves, a moment in the waltz, where that gap between life and death comes through.

read ornelas's poem in issue 1