Jacek Dylag Poems for the People by Nicole Tallman, Southern Collective Experience, 2023 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer “Not bad” says Dale Tallman, poet Nicole Tallman’s father, in the introductory blurbs to her new collection, Poems for the People. It is this spirit of fun that carries the collection forward. Here is a clear, candid, funny voice exploring what it means to address readers on the page. Poems for the People is less a political tract and more a colorful convocation.

by Nicole Tallman Pop Emanuel Alexandru Where I come from, there’s a season for guns, as if rifles should be celebrated like Christmas. There’s a smell. I’d like to call it November, but it’s a special blend of blood, rust, estrus, and a winter so cold it freezes the hair inside my nose. There’s a ritual. It’s men dressed in camouflage and hunter orange. It’s the law. And they stay out late on the 40 and chug 40s, perch up in trees or shelter in blinds, chew tobacco and build