Vol. 13 (2025) - Tab Journal

The 2025 print issue explores concepts of trickster, chance, and shifting expectations. The trickster appears in the folklore of many cultures and is one of the oldest expressions of growing civilizations. The trickster embodies wit and deceit, taking advantage of expectation and chance, building meaning only to unravel it. To “describe the trickster is to say simply that the boundary is where he will be found—sometimes drawing the line, sometimes crossing it, sometimes erasing or moving it, but always there,” writes Lewis Hyde in Trickster Makes This World. Poetry, too, invites convention and surprise as it creates lines, crosses lines, erases, and moves.

The design of this issue of Tab Journal echoes this duality, complementarity, and contradiction with the contrast between striking color and stark black and white, as well as the layered scapes that alter reality into warped realms that redefine portals, trap doors, and concealed dead ends and loops. Typography and alignment shift playfully between order, disorder, and reorder to mirror the trickster’s sleight of hand in the process of reading the poem. The format revisits the large sheet of earlier print issues, folded to create the expectation of order but ultimately revealing deconstructed panels and variations of skew.

Tab Journal Vol 13.1 January/February 2025 Download

Liz Ahl: Variables

Variables by Liz Ahl

Allison Blevins: You are the Center of the Universe

You Are the Center of the Universe by Allison Blevins

Panika M. C. Dillon: the fossil fool seemed so promising

the fossil fool seemed so promising by Panika M Dillon

John Gallaher: All the Times I’ve Worn This Suit So Far

All the Times I’ve Worn This Suit So Far by John Gallaher

Grant Hier: another life

another life by Grant Hier

Jen Karetnick : A Sonnenizio for Thrifting

A Sonnenizio for Thrifting by Jen Karetnick

Sally Rosen Kindred: Not-Prayer with Mass Deportations

Not-Prayer with Mass Deportations by Rosen Kindred

Chrissy Kolaya: Fighting Chance

Fighting Chance by Chrissy Kolaya

Sophia Terazawa: Harvest Moon

Harvest Moon by Sophia Terazawa

Cela Xiè: 游人 The Wanderer and 游人 The Tourist

游人 The Wanderer and 游人 The Tourist by Cela Xiè

Jonathan Chibuike Ukah: If I Decide to Die

If I Decide to Die by Jonathan Chibuike Ukah

Special Issue: California Coastal Commission Poetry Contest

Every year, Tabula Poetica selects finalists for the Coastal Poetry Contest for K-12 students hosted by the California Coastal Commission. This year, Chapman University students in Tab Journal Editor Anna Leahy’s MFA poetry writing class selected the finalists. Tab Journal is thrilled to share the poems of young Californians as part of this collaboration with the community and Annie Frankel, the Public Education Program of the California Coastal Commission.

Tab Journal Vol 13.3 June 2025 Download