Poetry |
“Juvenilia”
“She found the bird beneath the tree. It was a kinglet, / ruby-crowned, a juvenile. Stiffened by the time it took / to find it, fledging dropped from the numbered nest.”
Poetry |
“Souvenir From the Gone World”
“I asked the address / of his childhood home // and was told, It’s on Second Avenue — / You go down a little hill, / then half way up a hill …”
Literature in Translation |
from Emerald Wounds: Selected Poems
“Yet another dagger pulsing under the rain / Diamonds and deliriums of tomorrow’s memories / Taffeta sweat homeless beaches / Madness of my flesh gone astray”
Poetry |
“Dear Deborah” & “The History of Western Philosophy”
“The body is nothing, trembling here / Waiting for the room with its antiseptic bed / To be clarified and readied — a life suspended / Between two infinite middle fingers …
Fiction |
“Walking on Our Knees Backwards Home”
“… let me assure you the pain eventually will subside, but the memories will continue to haunt. Even after 65 years, my imagination wades to the bank of the Tallahatchie River where my son died.”
Poetry |
“What I Want Isn’t What I Want to Want” & “And What of the Fleshy Contents of My Skull?”
“I want to dig in, eat fancy-lace polymers / for breakfast, each inorganic molecule /’ a unicorn in captivity.”
Fiction |
“Infection Control”
“The citrus scent hit her nostrils, the smell of long ago summer days while polishing the big cherry dining table to the sound of Little Beth and her friends chattering outside while they played four square on the driveway.”
Poetry |
“Ars Poetica III (Time Destroys All Things)” & “When We See (No Joke)”
“And in plain sight the missionaries and pickpockets — the mouths they refuse. / Including the baskets and hours that form the world you have no use for.”
Interview |
“I Will Not Walk Away”: A Conversation with Jennifer Franklin
“Anne Carson has famously said that poetry isn’t therapy. I agree. Poetry is better than therapy. It’s always been poetry that has helped me transform the trauma, grief, and suffering of my lived experience into art.”
Poetry |
“Caribbean Nocturne” & “At the Bottom of Tea Cups”
“I’ve never heard anyone say / referring to a tea drinker // that he was in his cups / though it could be said of me …”
Essay |
On Reading The Postcard and Reclaiming Jewish Stories
“I spent hours reading immigration papers and marriage certificates, but I longed for the sort of sensory-rich details that Berest uncovered in her research …”
Poetry |
“By Rote”
“An oak tag string of ABCs / Block style hangs above the blackboard. / Chalk dust tinges the letters of the law. / Diligently, a small girl copies …”
Fiction |
“A Terrible Gift”
“I’d always had trouble dedicating myself to one mode for long. I oscillated between the abstract, the realist, the symbolic. Beyond the embarrassment, it was a source of fear that I’d never be more than a tinkerer, a dilettante.”
Poetry |
“After Our Shift. Sanitarium 51,” “The Troubled Sleep of Jimmy L. Sanitarium 51,” “Mrs. Asra Leaves a Note Under the Vase. Sanitarium 51” & “The Professor Calculates Spring Using Schrondinger’s Thought Experiment.Sanitarium 51”
“No flashlights, just moonlight. Behind Dining’s dumpster. / Insomniacs and talkers, in rat grey pajamas. / Yeah, true we were breaking Rule Seven …”
Poetry |
“Felled Oak”
“For you, an eyesore, for me, an object / of light and form dignified by age // and trust, weathered or beaten, but there — / as if it would have reason to stay, // as if I had cause to see it as lovely.”