You Can Read Some of Alise’s Work Here
Grub Street Literary Magazine
"Just me…………..The Joshua trees And the Milky Way (no light pollution)..."
The Wrath-Bearing Tree
"The birds with conviction Tap out their lyrics in the snow..."
Circle Show
"How many naked photos of me, taken lovingly, exist in the ether between..."
Poydras Review
"My father did not have sons, he had daughters He raised to be strong women..."
Penumbra 2020
"Soft Softy woman There is still strength in the swath of soft skin..."
Academy Heart
"The cold break of day The burst of chlorine—ice-sting against just-shaved legs.."
Rebelle Society
"As I approach my 10-year high school reunion, I ruminate on the glory and derision I have for small towns..."
Womens Spiritual
"This is a poem about the earth and the moon and sun… It's about how our roots run deep into the sacramental dirt, how connected we are to all of it..."
Elephant Journal
"The sun has put out her flames of golden fire on the leaves of poplar trees
And she lies to rest behind them..."
Sivana East
"We are so attached to things as Lunar New Year approaches I feel behooved to implore you to detach from what no longer serves you. In essence, purge...."
The Tattooed Buddha
"I have always been so much more than what you see T.S Eliot wrote the most fertile words out of a wasteland-he was a bank teller..."
Ultraviolet Tribe
"Hold a space for me Between The darkened winter leaves Breathe the frost Clinging to frozen oaks..."
Three Drops
"Welcome to another issue of beautifully strange and strangely beautiful poetry and flash fiction...."
The Opiate
"'You don't look I-talian.'
'Do you get dark in the summer?'
'Do you know anyone in the mob?"..."
Cog
"Intimacy is that look you receive when you undress each other for the first time Say wonderment..."
Entropy
"This soft, human flesh Proves insufficient covering Belies the strength of muscled mass..."
Enclave
"I'm sending messages to ghosts
With every ink ingrained letter pressed into paper Which I burn like sage..."
What Rough Beast
"Alise Versella I Don't Care to Be Pretty I will never be the girl with the pretty mouth
For the girl with the pretty mouth is the girl
Who will eventually get slapped Along the length of it
Who will grow ashamed Of its curling corners..."
The Rail
“Gabriel. Boy child in an indigo dress, fluid as a fish and just as holy…”
Apricity Magazine
“If four-leaf clovers are lucky
Then Clove Lakes Park is gold at the end of a rainbow
The victory on a boulevard of childhood…”
Visitant Lit
“How foreign-delicacy we must look
So glittering-feast for silver handcuffs like fish hooks
On the fishing lines of Met police
Our fleshy white meat
Scattered like bait in the woods…”
Umbrella Factory
“To all the men I’ve allowed to come inside of me, I don’t just mean physically…”
Neologism
“When the mud fills my soles and becomes a bed of unknowing,
remind me of where I was going.
In mud is where the lotus blooms, petals like disciples with their hands clasped.
Be for me a map.”
The Courtship of Winds
“These tunnels stay dark until
The light hits
This season stays cold and lonely till
The spring rain collects…”
Front Porch Review
"Come now down to the harbor
where the boats all float like Ophelia..."
"Consider the knots that nature forms in bark and those humans tie
Believing that they're in love, that their bonds are strong and unbreakable..."
"I’ve lived a year of solitude in a century
"I have let myself be devoured
as the cactus after dry rot
the longhorn beetle and her larvae burrowing for food
it is time to become the thing that does the devouring..."
"I will come out the other side of puberty
Pretty
As an antelope is pretty caught grazing, all loping legs and meaty flank
The oppressors’ prowling through long grass
Cackling hyenas all staring at my ass
This is how rumors spread..."
..."
"...Café
Bustelo takes me back
To a particular time of day
The way
My father takes
The Sambuca
To an espresso cup, much too small for his callused and arthritic hand
Places a twirl of lemon curl
Wet around the rim and drops it in..."