Literature in Translation |
“blazing cities,” “page blank” & “moment of silence”
“while night and day / cities flicker on under the stars / while things go swimmingly in Amsterdam / I doubt Ghouta / could present you a single dewy lawn / or Gaza …”
Poetry |
“Texas Roaches” & “Inventions”
“What’s dis for? the child inquires, holding out a pair of red tweezers. / The next day, running barefoot through a sprinkler’s spray, a sharp / splinter in her foot supplies the answer, and I try not to look away”
Literature in Translation |
“Canto XXVIII” from Dante Alighieri’s Paradiso
“And when I turned around and my own eyes / Were met with what appears in that vast space / Whenever one looks intently at its circling, // I saw a point that radiated such an intense light / That eyes seared by it are forced to close / Because of its extreme brightness.”
Literature in Translation |
“On Visiting an Absent Taoist Master,” “Endless Longing,” “Drinking Alone by Moonlight” & “Lute Song”
“I try as soul to leap the earth and air between us, but / my dream self can’t get through the gate that marks the Great Divide.”
Poetry |
“Self-Portrait as a Vermeer Painting” & “Self Portrait as an O’Keeffe Flower”
“I was never what the critics proclaimed — / they never touched the core of me, those smug / assumptions …”
Fiction |
“Is Your Heart In It?”
“The dog will be terrified. I’ll grip its lower jaw with my left hand and lift while pressing down on its neck with my right hand. It’s scary for me, too.”
Poetry |
“I tremble sometimes when I remember what that quilt knows” & “What Women Say Only in Quilts”
“Nights and nights at the wooden frame fighting // sleep to finish that quilt — a gift for a couple / whose marriage would last — I fight // for ours”
Essay |
“Alone”
“The week after my husband filled out an online application, people from the program contacted him. He was interviewed on the phone for an hour and encouraged.”
Poetry |
“Alcohol” & “Kent State”
“When you took off your backpack and winced too loudly / at a persistent soreness in your shoulder, the pretty barista / hated you briefly on her otherwise pleasant morning. / The coffee smelled strong. Everyone could see / what everyone was reading. You bought a $12 Heineken.”
Poetry |
“from his wrist,” “each being the / moon,” “eyes upon seize,” “if I’m not that person” & “no one”
“if once you thought yourself smart / if you know what we cannot see with our diligent eyes / if the silver bowl is filled with snow”
Lyric Prose |
“Where Have You Been, You Ask” & “I was tortured by a hundred ‘Gypsy violinists'”
“I was in a mausoleum. Stole in, brought my chicken sandwich & Orangina, cozied up in an empty crypt & napped. It smelled like roses in there.”
Poetry |
“Will”
“dull metal knob / just visible, just ice to touch, / opened on a perfect rectangle of green / pines spread like butter along the edge / of blue lake … “
Literature in Translation |
“Angelic Beings,” “Family Geography” & “Rocks”
“Angelic beings dwell in reflections, / her wrinkled face in the kitchen window, / the young man’s profile in the windshield.”
Poetry |
“How Thirsty,” “The Cows and Corn” & “Storm Cloud”
“I keep planting the corn year after year, / thinking I can harvest it before the cows smell / its sweetness and break through the fence …”
Poetry |
“Eddie Murphy on the Can”
“I am on the can in the school bathroom / watching a video of Eddie Murphy talking about being a dad. / He says I’m a cool dad and you know he is.”