February 8, 2026
Brennan Sprague
Brennan Sprague is a poet from Rochester, NY. His poems have appeared in Vallum Magazine, Schlag Magazine, Jet Fuel Review, The Adroit Journal, Glass, The Shore, Afternoon Visitor, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for The Adroit Prize and a Best of the Net nominee. He is currently pursuing his MFA in Poetry at Syracuse University.
I can be dumb, vain, clueless. I watch videos
of strangers climbing sickeningly tall infrastructures
without harnesses and my knees go weak. To flirt
with death like they have nice teeth.
The poem is smarter than its writer always, as are our dreams in our waking lives, so using surrealist techniques as a poet feels the most natural, with the deepest potential for surprise and interpretation. The surrealist Paul Eluard’s quote that “There is another world, but is in this one” is a talismanic mantra in ways both spiritual and material.