The following works from "Mexican Utopia" were featured in The Southeast Review Vol. 33.2 "Mexican Utopia" Artist's Statement: Mexico is a singular country but we need to find those different Mexicans, Mexicans that can find their own way of assuming their own membership. “Hecho en Mexico” needs to be more than just a mark in a imported box. One of the transcendental parts of us, as Mexicans, is our identity. The way that we are often characterized is through our euphoric pat

Cara Dees is the author of the debut collection, Exorcism Lessons in the Heartland (Barrow Street, October 2019), selected by Ada Limón for the 2018 Barrow Street Book Prize. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as The Adroit Journal, Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets 2016, Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, The Journal, Poetry Daily, and The Southeast Review. An Editorial Assistant at Cincinnati Review, she has also served as a founding editor an

Flamingos As the nurses pushed your bed into the OR, you extended your arms toward us, & we promised we’d take you to see the flamingos in the hospital garden downstairs. When you woke up, you refused to pee on the diaper underneath you (you’d been potty-trained for months), so we brought the bedpan & explained you couldn’t walk yet, but soon. I learnt to listen to your monitor in my sleep. The worried aren’t supposed to be hungry, but I ordered food because it was

A Dark Bird There is no right answer to how a young girl finds a home. Sometimes, she marvels at the swift larks or names the crows after their shadows. I have been a dark bird with a compass in her throat, flock searching. I have been a young girl looking for something to love that did not strike fire to her skin. My body symmetries two landscapes, two countries to which I don’t entirely belong: I have lived next to sprigs of wheat for twenty years, and still, they drop thei

The Only Confession I did something wrong I carved a name into a tree and it wasn’t even mine the name belonged to someone I used to love the tree belonged to no one at all and I wept as soon as I dug in the knife how hard I tried to make the vowels sing but the old tree said nothing it was both witness and victim it was one of those trees with too many hearts too many couples leaving so cruelly their initials I believe in a poem there’s room for only one heart in this way it

The following works were featured in The Southeast Review Vol. 36.2 Arms / 2018 / Felt tip on paper Car / 2017 / Felt tip on paper Hand / 2018 / Felt tip on paper Hand Up / 2017 / Felt tip on paper Hands / 2016 / Felt tip on paper Headssss / 2017 / Felt tip on paper Long Arm / 2017 / Felt tip on paper Van / 2018 / Felt tip on paper Marcus is originally from Norfolk, a coastal county in south-east England. His work is inspired by many things – both retrospective and contempora