Lance Phillips
Winter 2026 | Poetry
[bias against goldfinch sunk in resin pot]
bias against goldfinch sunk in resin pot
is sun descending high energy and multitude
i can’t accept that nothing that position
from now within tree within searchlight
of course it’s not really a tiger’s tooth but
a quality of light which feels solid predatory
and i wear it to remind me of the possible other
series of events but i’m not that character
we’re separate like living light and bird’s out
line civilized in each out of bounds motion
Lance Phillips was born in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1970. He grew up in many places. He attended the University of North Carolina at Charlotte for his BA in English and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop for his MFA in poetry. He has published four books of poetry, Corpus Socius, Cur aliquid vidi, These Indicium Tales, and Mimer with Ahsahta Press, and a fifth book of poetry, Devil-Fictions, is available from BlazeVox Books. His poems have appeared in New American Writing, Volt, Fence, Colorado Review, Slope, Verse, Denver Quarterly, Bennington Review, Bombay Gin, The Tiny, The Elephants, and Fourteen Hills. His work has been anthologized in The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing Anthology, Lenoir-Rhyne University’s tribute to Black Mountain College, Far From the Centers of Ambition anthology, and Fence Magazine’s A Best Of Fence: The First Nine Years.