A wonderful review of my poem "The Playground is Alive" in Strange Horizons!
Thank you to Locus Mag and Charles Payseur for the glowing review, excerpted below!
Strange Horizons had a big August, and I’ll start my coverage there with a look at one of the mid-month poems, “THE PLAYGROUND IS ALIVE” by Rainie Oet, which finds a rather rowdy group of friends dealing with a life that’s suffocating them. Fighting each other is what makes them feel awake and real, invigorated in a way they can’t full explain. And yet in that fighting is also a refusal of other emotions, a rejection of recognizing or giving space to gentleness, because violence is too centered, immediate, and gratifying. But when things go wrong – when things go too far – it means things go profoundly and irreparably wrong, the rules broken in a game that was never, and can never be, just for play. Oet crafts a powerful and impactful poem that demands careful attention.
— Charles Payseur, in Locus
You can read the poem on Strange Horizons!