Current
Issue
Volume 12.2
John Fadely
—
Topography
It’s not as if I had
a mind to be diverted,
my flow valved
and concrete-lipped,
nor was it my intent
to be kissed by mouths
of vapor fluxing down
from the Pacific, acres of
my aquifers washed out to sea.
These weren’t of me.
When a sinkhole swallows
two cars whole or the Salinas
running swift and wild
to the coast sweeps a boy
away, I’m the natural
not the disaster:
nerve endings
on the face of it,
the sway before
the shimmer and shake,
fossil bed for unclaimed bones.
John Fadely’s debut book, Before Leaving the Island, won the 2025 Trail to Table (an imprint of Wandering Aengus Press) Book Award in Poetry and was published on April 21, 2026. After 30 years in Asia, including practicing law for 25 years, John wrote Before Leaving the Island as part of journey from Hong Kong through Singapore – both islands – to California. Currently he is co-translating an illustrated edition of Tang and Song dynasty poetry. John co-founded a reading group that meets regularly to explore modern and contemporary long poems through close readings, and is an active participant in the Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (ModPo) community hosted by the Kelly Writers House at University of Pennsylvania. Earlier this year, John founded Fifth Stanza Press with the mission of publishing first and second collections of poetry by writers in midlife or later. Its first reading period will start on May 1. John resides in Portola Valley.
