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Alina Kalontarov

@alinakaywrites

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📍 NYC teacher
📝 Words in POETRY, Threepenny Review, HAD, Only Poems, Rattle (forthcoming)
📖 Anthology editor & reader @gatherpoets

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Surreal and honestly mind-blowing to see my author page on @poetryfoundation. Three poems of mine are coming out in their November issue and I can’t wait to share them with you. by @alinakaywrites

What an absolute dream to see my poem (and this tender, messy, open heart surgery of a poem in particular) on the pages of The Threepenny Review and in the company of so many incredible voices, including Andrea Cohen and the indomitable Sharon Olds. I’m full of gratitude and out of words. by @alinakaywrites

Alina Kalontarov’s poems will make a room in your heart and they’ll never leave. If you haven’t already done so, she’s our Poet of the Week and we’ve published 6 of her poems with a long wonderful interview! by @alinakaywrites

Thought I’d be whimsical and try collage art. Turns out I can’t really do whimsy but here’s some existential dread + fury aimed at patriarchal and dogmatic systems of oppression. 🎳
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#collage #collageart by @alinakaywrites

Thank you @swwimmiami. I’m honored to have this poem join your catalogue in the company of so many incredible female writers.

This poem was originally inspired by @_gbengaadesina in a @gatherpoets session facilitated by @isabellecorreawrites.

#swwimeveryday #witch #femalepoets #womenwriters by @alinakaywrites

today from @alinakaywrites ❤️‍🔥

https://www.havehashad.com/hadposts/this-is-not-a-ghost-story by @alinakaywrites

It’s October and the veil is thin. Here’s a little ghost poem without ghosts, originally published in @onlypoemsmag. You can also hear me read it on their beautiful website. 🦋
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#poetry #poetrycommunity #griefpoem #loss #poemoftheday by @alinakaywrites

Another magical book launch with these incredible people and their beautiful minds and hearts. Thank you @gatherpoets ♥️ by @alinakaywrites

I always hate myself a little when I greet someone with “How are you?” The social contract of asking the most important thing of another person and not actually wanting or expecting an answer. Has it become a pleasantry because we want to cosplay care without the actual investment or is it just an impossible question for anyone to answer honestly? I tried to imagine, with this poem, what “how are you?” would sound like if we meant it. But all I came up with were more impossible questions.
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#poetry #poetrycommunity #mentalhealth #poem #poemoftheday by @alinakaywrites

A perfect @gatherpoets weekend in Toronto celebrating our 2026 Fall anthology 🍂🫶🏻

Thank you @typiststudios for hosting our reading! Special thank you to everyone who came and laughed, cried, and celebrated with us. We are so grateful ☺️

If you missed us in Toronto, next Sunday we’ll be in San Francisco at @goldensardinesf reading more poems 💗 by @alinakaywrites

✨Congratulations to our Best of the Net nominees!✨

I need everyone to understand how impossible these choices were. I made a longlist months ago, and I truly hated every single time I removed a piece from that list. Nominating pieces for awards is one of my favorite parts of being an editor, but also simultaneously one of my least favorite parts of being an editor. I fall madly in love with every single poem, flash piece, and artwork that we publish. Every single one. Which makes this process quite difficult. 🫠

Please join me in sending love to these wonderful contributors. I am grateful for each and every one of you!

-Ophelia by @alinakaywrites

Welcome Alina Kalontarov (@alinakaywrites) to our contributor spotlight series!

Alina is an educator, poet, and amateur photographer from New York. She collaborates on the editorial teams of various publications and is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee with work that can be found or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, ONLY POEMS, Sky Island Journal, Gather, Thimble, Sand Hills and elsewhere.

Her composite photograph for the Moon issue, "Tides," was created by layering two pictures: a photograph of the Moon taken through her telescope, and the other is a long exposure shot of street traffic at night.

In her own words:

“I know that the Moon, symbolically speaking, is traditionally aligned with the idea of change. In its bright round belly, it carries cycles, tides, the passage of time. For me, however, the Moon has always represented a constant. I was born on the other side of the world and so much of what was once a given (homeland, language, identity) was left behind in the diasporic arc. It was the Moon that followed me across continents and an entire ocean.

As a child, before I knew anything about the laws of physics (I still arguably don’t know much at all) I would look out the window of a plane or a bus and marvel at how the Moon seemed to be stapled to the wind, how it always knew where to find me. To this day, on any night where I find myself outside, I instinctively look for the Moon the way one might reach for the hand of a parent in the dark. In its face, I see a guardian, a witness, a kind of night light left on for anyone roaming.

I’m a newbie to tarot, but I imagine the Moon card as ultimately pulling from these associations to represent an outward manifestation of intuition, that inner constant and compass that remains with us though the ground keeps shifting beneath our feet. We must learn to trust it, as easily as grabbing a mother’s hand or looking to the sky on a midnight street. Life will go on spinning, in and out of our control. The Moon is a reminder that there’s a way back to center, a way to fall back into orbit around ourselves."

Pictured here: Alina holds up The Moon from @this_might_hurt deck by Isabella Rotman by @alinakaywrites