Finishing Line Press

01/01/2026

All That Blue traverses geographies of place, mental illness, coming-of-age, and desire. The poems take on a variety of free-verse forms and hinge on images of the natural world as they reflect the speaker’s interiority. Blue forms the connective tissue between natural places; desert and ocean are elided through their blueness. So too do the interior and the exterior landscapes combine: a blueness of mind and of body. All That Blue contends with questions of identity and how to represent the self on the page, ultimately landing on a shape that is both fragment and shadow, a shape that demands the logic of lyric.

Allison Field Bell is a multi-genre writer from northern California. She is the author of the poetry chapbook, Without Woman or Body (Finishing Line Press 2025) and the nonfiction chapbook, Edge of the Sea (CutBank Books 2025). Her website is allisonfieldbell.com

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/all-that-blue-by-allison-field-bell/

01/01/2026

A Poem by Allison Field Bell
https://paddockreview.com/2026/01/01/a-poem-by-allison-field-bell-2/

Skeleton I have tried to paint the bones and the blue – Georgia O’Keeffe In my backyard, field of grass tall as a toddler. Knees in dirt, tunneling through warm green. I bu…

12/31/2025

The fifty-seven poems of but for this mess represent nearly two decades of the author’s collected works. Their subjects and inspirations range widely in scope, yet each poem reads with a clear-eye sense of place, time, and personal significance unique to its source. Through the agile and abstracted language of poetry, Cara Lorello recounts scenes from a rural upbringing in the Pacific Northwest observed from the back of a horse, on long-distance travels between estranged family, repeated bouts of mental illness, late-bloomer love and loss, up to her present existence as a day job-working poet. The result, however odd or imperfect, reveals an unfiltered portrait of a writer whose greatest challenge is the balancing act of meeting the demands of a puzzling world with her drive to create in spite of everything. loss

Cara Lorello is a poet currently residing in her hometown of Spokane, Washington. Lorello is the author of the chapbook, but at least you’re beautiful (Dancing Girl Press, 2022), and but for this mess (Finishing Line Press 2026). Her poetry and writing have also appeared in several online and print literary journals, most recently Ponder Review, SnapDragon Journal, and Noble Gas Quarterly, among others.

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/but-for-this-mess-by-cara-lorello/

12/31/2025

A Poem by Cara Lorello
https://paddockreview.com/2025/12/31/a-poem-by-cara-lorello/

BUT FOR THIS MESS I know what I would give for better now, if I could but for this mess. Now is a party for the wolves, their latest victory before all bearing down, all of them stari…

12/31/2025

David Appelbaum’s latest collection, Mana, the Magnificent, is a book-length poem—luminous, somber, tangled—where reflection meets fracture. Appelbaum binds ecstatic utterances with loss and renewal, weaving the everyday’s sharp edges (decay, grief, philosophical longing) into passages of unexpected hope. The narrator—as with a glass eye—both sees and does not, suggesting a way of perceiving that’s at once attentive and distant, lucid and mystified. For readers who dwell in shadow and light alike, Manan, the Magnificent offers lines that echo: things once broken still cast reflection.

David Appelbaum, founder of Codhill Press, has served time in the university as well as in publishing. Former editor of Parabola Magazine, he is the author of Everyday Spirits [SUNY Press], notes on water [Monkfish], and more recently, Portuguese Sailor Boy and The Collector of Lapsed Times [both, Black Spring Publishing Group].

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/manan-the-magnificent-by-david-appelbaum/

12/31/2025

A poem for 2026

12/31/2025

Between Sunsets memorializes transitions of seasons, relationships, and lives. This hybrid collection of poetry and prose speaks to those everyday moments of growth and navigating life during those in between moments of loss.
sunsets transitions loss love friendship self-hood womanhood sisterhood seasons nature woman blackwoman blackwomanwriter blackwriter writer

Originally from Nashville, TN, Yvette J. Green has made the Washington, D.C. metro area home. Yvette is a graduate of Xavier University of Louisiana (BA in English) and University of Maryland, College Park (MA in English). Her poetry can be found in 45th
Parallel, The Mark Literary Review, Silk + Smoke, among others. Yvette’s creative nonfiction has been featured in Salon, Slate, midnight & indigo, among others.

https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/between-sunsets-by-yvette-j-green/

12/31/2025

A Poem by Yvette J. Green
https://paddockreview.com/2025/12/31/a-poem-by-yvette-j-green/

Choreograph the Poem Move in free verse with your hips wide, full, feminine Part your lips to mark time the hips carry the narratives listen to the feminine the moment has to be h…

12/30/2025

Poems for a Broken Marriage Man is a poetry collection reflecting on the dissolution of one woman’s relationship in the wake of her spouse’s addictions and the emotional abuse that stemmed from those addictions.

These poems from author Leslie Archibald’s debut collection are mini memoirs told in images and metaphor as a way of healing and letting go of the fear, shame, and guilt that comes with leaving. Through these poems comes an understanding that we are not meant to save others and sometimes you must leave to save yourself and restore hope.

Leslie Archibald’s nonfiction and poetry has appeared in Interstellar Flight Magazine, Synkroniciti magazine, and was included in Colorstory2023.
https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/poems-for-a-broken-marriage-man-by-leslie-archibald/ .archibald

12/30/2025

A Poem by Leslie Archibald
https://paddockreview.com/2025/12/30/a-poem-by-leslie-archibald/

This poem is from the chapbook Poems for a Broken Marriage Man by Leslie Archibald (Finishing Line Press), and can be found at Leslie Archibald’s nonfiction and poetry has appeared in Interstellar …