Inverted Syntax

12/12/2025

SPOTLIGHT on an excerpt from Marie Williamson’s poem, “Panniculus Carnosus” published in Fissured VI | May 2025

“The hosanna in a hay fever

The heaven in a rising hemline

Caught in the rivulet of a fissured tongue—
Each Ponderosa side stitch”

🔗Link to the entire Fissured poem + writer & artist about statements can be found in our bio

We fell in love with this gorgeous little riot of a poem that twitches like its namesake muscle. Between sonic ricochets and unpredictable enjambments, you’ll find yourself in a full-on linguistic convulsion where sound is used to bring the poem to life, echoing Williamson’s reflection on her process (via Frank O’Hara), for the poem to be its own subject. “Panniculus Carnosus” turns the body into a whole ecstatic micro-universe, where language *should* get weird, grotesque, tiny, and should be holy as hell all at once.

⚡️About the Writer: Marie Williamson is a poet from Southeast Michigan. She received her MA in Creative Writing from Eastern Michigan University in 2022. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming in Action, Spectacle, Cult. Magazine, Notre Dame Review, and Chicago Review. Currently, she is doing her best to be a well-adjusted adjunct as she teaches creative writing at her alma mater.

⚡️Featured Art: “Retraction” by J G Orudjev. Mixed media collage, 5 x 4 inches 2023
About the Artist: .g.orudjev.art J G Orudjev (she/her) is a mixed media artist, collagist, and sculptor living and working outside of Washington DC. Her work explores the nature of memory, transformative and transitory states, and the act and language of making meaning.

12/12/2025

SPOTLIGHT on an excerpt from Marie Williamson’s poem, “Panniculus Carnosus” published in Fissured VI | May 2025

“The hosanna in a hay fever

The heaven in a rising hemline

Caught in the rivulet of a fissured tongue—
Each Ponderosa side stitch”

Read the poem here https://www.invertedsyntax.com/panniculus-carnosus-8203by-marie-williamson.html

We fell in love with this gorgeous little riot of a poem that twitches like its namesake muscle. Between sonic ricochets and unpredictable enjambments, you’ll find yourself in a full-on linguistic convulsion where sound is used to bring the poem to life, echoing Williamson’s reflection on her process (via Frank O’Hara), for the poem to be its own subject. “Panniculus Carnosus” turns the body into a whole ecstatic micro-universe, where language *should* get weird, grotesque, tiny, and should be holy as hell all at once.

Check out more under Fissured Tongue Series

⚡️About the Writer: Marie Williamson is a poet from Southeast Michigan. She received her MA in Creative Writing from Eastern Michigan University in 2022. Her poetry can be found or is forthcoming in Action, Spectacle, Cult. Magazine, Notre Dame Review, and Chicago Review. Currently, she is doing her best to be a well-adjusted adjunct as she teaches creative writing at her alma mater.

⚡️Featured Art: “Retraction” by J G Orudjev. Mixed media collage, 5 x 4 inches 2023
About the Artist: .g.orudjev.art J G Orudjev (she/her) is a mixed media artist, collagist, and sculptor living and working outside of Washington DC. Her work explores the nature of memory, transformative and transitory states, and the act and language of making meaning.

11/06/2025

✨ Winner of the 2024 Sublingua Book Prize for Poetry ✨
Forthcoming from Inverted Syntax Press (2027)

✨ As we read through the 2025 Sublingua submissions, we’re taking a break to share a little teaser from our 2024 Sublingua selection. Consider it a glimpse 🤩 of what’s soon to unfold ✨

Jessica Reed’s award-winning collection, ALL MOTION SHE BELIEVES (forthcoming 2027) 💖 is the inaugural winner of the Sublingua Book Prize for Poetry and is a luminous inquiry into the intersections of poetry and physics.

✨In the spirit of Niels Bohr’s reflection that “when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry,” Reed’s work delves into the mysteries of motion, relativity, quantum mechanics, and the multiverse with lyrical precision and philosophical depth.

🔥Reed is also the author of the chapbooks *Still Recognizable Forms* (Laurel Review Greentower Press), now being taught this winter at the University of Indianapolis by poet Liz Whiteacre, and also *World, Composed* (Finishing Line Press), a finalist for the Etchings Press Whirling Prize.
Her work has appeared in Conjunctions, Quarterly West, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Inverted Syntax, Bellingham Review, New American Writing, DIAGRAM, [PANK], and more.

Discover more at jessicareed.info (https://www.jessicareed.info/

08/12/2025

We’re looking for writing that disrupts with precision, unusual, but composed, work that fractures form with intent, language that is subverted and strained until it mutates into something so damn necessary.
If your writing is subversive yet disciplined, experimental and sharpened, we want it. If your language resists norms and knows exactly what it’s doing, submit submit!
Link in bio 💅🏽

🌞TWO POETRY CONTESTS:
🦩Sublingua Prize for Poetry (1st Book Award): for debut collections by female-identifying writers.
🦩Aggrey-Tabbikha Prize for Poetry: for any writer with first or second collections who identifies as Black and/or part of the S.W.A.N.A diaspora.

🌈Both contests EXTENDED until AUG 20

🪻$500 prize
🪻publication
🪻25 copies
🪻writing retreat to a Victorian mountain home in Colorado
🪻support with book launch

*Runners-up receive all the above except prize money.

▶️Checkout the guidelines and remember:
There’s no genre policing here.
No theme.
No prompt.
No framework.

We read with curiosity, not a checklist.

07/08/2025

Inverted Syntax is where the margins take center stage and our two poetry contests were created to deliver on that promise.

Now accepting submissions to our annual poetry book contests for writers residing in the US: the Sublingua Prize for Poetry (1st Book Award) for exceptional debut collections by female-identifying writer,
and the (now combined) Aggrey & Tabbikha Prize for Poetry for writers with first or second collections who identify as Black and/or part of the S.W.A.N.A diaspora.
We welcome intersectional, hybrid, experimental, and speculative poetry, including visual work and multilingual text, as long as the manuscript is primarily written in English. Winning entries receive $500, publication, 25 copies, a writing retreat to a Victorian mountain home in Colorado, and support with a book launch.
PS. We are also open to submissions in all genres for our Fissured Tongue Series Vol. VII.

And free Palestine

06/26/2025

Inverted Syntax is where the margins take center stage and our two poetry contests were created to deliver on that promise.

Now accepting submissions to our annual poetry book contests for writers residing in the US: the Sublingua Prize for Poetry (1st Book Award) for exceptional debut collections by female-identifying writer,
and the (now combined) Aggrey & Tabbikha Prize for Poetry for writers with first or second collections who identify as Black and/or part of the S.W.A.N.A diaspora.
We welcome intersectional, hybrid, experimental, and speculative poetry, including visual work and multilingual text, as long as the manuscript is primarily written in English. Winning entries receive $500, publication, 25 copies, a writing retreat to a Victorian mountain home in Colorado, and support with a book launch.
PS. We are also open to submissions in all genres for our Fissured Tongue Series Vol. VII.

And free Palestine

05/17/2025

Fissured Tongue Volume VI is a whole vibe—it can be read as a meditation on how we hold on when the world feels broken.

From Weekes’ love illusions that feels that love is but a liar and flips the script on affection, to Perry haunting us with memory’s shadows. And where Reid’s chaos is a body’s language, Haddad’s illness is painted with quiet light, "with the illusion of life," and Carrier, whose work moves through intimate spaces of friendship, language and spirituality, unfolds as a meditation on how connection is a form of resilience.

You cannot help but hear Tim Carrier’s confrontation with what it means to exist in this world, reminding us that art must be a straight-up act of resistance. And that’s just a glimpse into some of the pieces in this volume. Indeed, Fissured Tongue Volume VI speaks to the complexity and fragility of being, while also suggesting that when we connect, witness, and name, these are the ways by which we can resist using the arts.

Ready to feel something? 
Dive in. Vibe out.

Fissured VI Cover art: “The Thorns of Anxiety” by Ann Wong WanYee. Oil on canvas, 80 x 60 cm, 2024

Fissured VI Contributors: Crista Reid | Laura Gamache | Wendy BooydeGraaff and Susan Wider | Tim Carrier | Marie Williamson | Tor Strand | Mary Herrington Perry | brice maiurro | Amy Haddad | Carla Schick | Cady Favazzo | Dana Tenille Weekes | Janice Heiss | Jennifer Griffiths Orudjev |
Serge Lecomte | Michael Thompson | Ann Wong WanYee | Robb Kunz | Velibor Baćo

Fissured Volume VI was curated and edited by Nawal Nader-French, Editor, and Jesica Davis, Editor

02/17/2025

Sublingua isn’t just a prize—it’s a vibe✨
work that echoes from another dimension, enchanting and at times unsettling, but always straight-up electrifying⚡️

✨CONGRATULATIONS to JESSICA REED, WINNER of the 2024 Sublingua First Book Prize for Poetry, with ALL MOTION SHE BELIEVES
and to MK FRANCISCO, our runner-up, with INSECTS OF THE DATA LAKE✨

Both books will be published by Inverted Syntax Press, coming in 2027.
We cant wait to see their words in the world✨

02/14/2025

A celebration of words that echo, inspire, and transcend. After much anticipation, the moment has arrived —

unveiling the WINNER of the 2024 Aggrey Prize for Poetry:
POLLYNATION: A SEMINARY OF SELF by SHERESE FRANCIS
And the Runner-Up:
SERENADES AND INCANTATIONS by DEVYNITY WRAY.

Both books will be published by Inverted Syntax Press, coming in 2027.

Congratulations to our winner and runner-up. ✨

(Stay tuned for the Sublingua announcement!)

11/16/2024

when we recognize that legal structures can be tools of domination and erasure, we, as artists and writers must accept the responsibility to address this narrative—challenge the system, amplify the silenced—do our part to reclaim justice. 🇵🇸 🇱🇧

09/16/2024