Fatherland, Etc.

Fury was the weather

in our house. It blistered

the bread and mottled

the cheese with mold,

but we ate and ate

till my mother and father

rounded on each other

— his salary, her weight,

ringing the changes

of resentment all the way

back to their weekend-pass wedding,

when his mother wore black.

The silverware jumped

when he hammered his

fist on the table.

My father was free

with his hands, when it

came to me: punches,

a kick in the ass

if his son was lazy,

stupid, or a poor

listener. So much

needed to be set right:

a Brillo pad rusting

in a puddle of pink,

talking on the phone

when dinner was on

the table, forgetting

to carry the garbage

to the curb or rake up

the dogshit in the yard.

He fished deep into fall,

wearing his GI poncho,

blacks, bluefish, stripers,

fluke, flounder. I

spaded bones and

viscera into

the roses, sleet

rattling the windows.

I don’t know why

he hit me that time,

something I did

or didn’t do fast enough:

He clocked me so hard

on the side of the head

it made my ears ring

and I sat down

on the floor. My mother

was up in his face:

“Do you want to send him

to the hospital again?”

A light-washed yellow room,

my throat burning

worse than when I ate

chilis on a cousin’s dare.

But that was to have

my tonsils out.

My mother

took me by bus.

I think that’s when

I first wanted to kill

my father, or the first

time I let myself

think it. Something

dark and viscous

filled the sudden spaces

between my kidneys

and liver, between

my heart and lungs,

like oily downwind

smoke from a refinery.

Aaron Fischer’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, American Journal of Poetry, Five Points, Hudson Review, and elsewhere. He won the 2020 Prime Number Magazine poetry contest, 2023 Connecticut poetry prize, 2023 Naugatuck River Review poetry prize, and the Maria W. Faust sonnet contest. He was nominated for a 2024 and 2025 Pushcart Prize.

Note from the Editor: Mike Bove, Spring 2026

In my part of the world, February is still deep winter. It's cold out. There’s snow outside my window. Depending on the day, my driveway is coated in either ice or salt dust, and making the quick dash to the mailbox and back still requires a coat. Sometimes a hat too. And yet, here’s the Spring 2026 issue of Hole in the Head Review. We’re calling it the spring issue in the name of coming warmth, in the name of increasing daylight, and in the name of hope.

Speaking of light, we’ve paired this issue’s poems with María DeGuzmán’s luminous crystal photographs from the series Quartz Secrets. The images are bright celebrations of attentive looking, just like the poems we’ve collected here from gifted writers far and wide.

We’re also thrilled to include the winners of the 2025 Charles Simic Poetry Prize:

Winner: Olivia Jacobson

Runners-Up: Mary Buchinger and Tricia Knoll

Finalists: Michelle Alexander, Dylan Bourne, George Burns, Mary Beth Hines, Aaron Fischer, Rose Jenny, Hope Jordan, Daniel Lurie, Matt Miller, Patrick Meeds, Annette Sisson

Christopher Volpe

Of these poems, this year’s judge Bill Schulz says:

First, congratulations to Olivia Jacobson, the winner of the third annual Charles

Simic Poetry Prize and to each of the finalists.

I read and reread each poem many times before selecting Photograph of My Father,

Age Seven. The poem is a quick 19 lines and few words. It's deceptively simple and

powerful– each word, each line moves the poem forward, from the commonplace to

hesitancy, fear and eventually to a cautious, hesitant hope. 

I am especially grateful to Mary Buchinger and Tricia Knoll. Your poems have stayed

with me.

Thank you to the editors for sending along such a strong group of finalists. You

made my task difficult in the best kind of way. Charlie believed in and respected the

importance of each word in a poem. I think he'd admire this year's submissions.

This year’s Editor’s Choice is awarded to Joanna Young’s poem Dark Rooms, a piece that struck me with its clear, thematic use of darkness to bring forth the visible, bad or good, that surrounds us all.

We hope you enjoy our Spring 2026 issue. Here’s to the light.

Mike Bove, Editor

Pretty Handsome

Separated by five decades, excommunication and death; your image resembles me. The way

your frown, your mouth and mine hold our truth in photos because we know no masks, we wear

our truth like mad mugs in disgust for costumes poorly placed over our masculinity. Yours an

early 1900’s corset black, mine, a faux battle dress and garrison to merino wool raspberry beret,

not airborne but property of an airborne battalion in Fayette-nam, Fort Bragg, First in Flight,

North Carolina, Home of Delta Force and Robin Sage—green beret training grounds and I

wonder if you ever travelled outside our home state to see for yourself what the textbooks

neglect to mention. I wonder if you even found out there were others like us all along, hiding

under a vast array of masks and costumes, marriages and kids, or hung as witches and burned or worked to death as faggots or enemies of the state, that’s what the nazis call us but I

hope you found a way to love who you loved and that special one who loved you back knew

exactly who you were and loved you because of that who you were. Did you find a way to love yourself even when the family refused to love you back? Was your husband, father, brother an alcoholic too, were you like my living aunts, Deborah and Tracey who were too afraid to acquire

a taste for fermented hops. Somehow I doubt it. I think you drank it like I had to just to survive

the reflection of yourself—a person forced into cis-drag—a brutal conversion therapy. Did you

let your girlfriends paint your face and pull your eyebrows out at their follicles just so you could become more becoming? I hope you became what you wanted and not only what they made you.

t love smith (they/them) is a queer, trans/non-binary poet stewarding unceded Wabanaki land. They are a Stonecoast MFA Candidate and Assistant Development Director at WMPG. t is the founder of Trans Poetics Archive. The archive published Maine’s First Transgender Poetry Anthology, Monster Beauties, in May 2025. t’s poetry has been published in new words press, Island Ink, and presented on local radio shows and podcasts.