Poetry |
“Blue Oracle” & “We Forgot”
“I was born into violence, of word, / of body, but we did not speak of it outside our house. / We never spoke of it inside either. I didn’t know / what happened there happened elsewhere …”
Poetry |
“Poem In Which I Insist This Is A Good Day“
“The textile mills in my hometown / in Rhode Island are mostly dead. My parents are both dead. They wore / heart monitors with sticky tape and both took Coumadin / which thins the blood.”
Literature in Translation |
from Lonespeech (Ensamtal)
“the smoke goes into the eye / the eye into the smoke / also they have / only that grave”
Fiction |
“Teeth,” “The Man and the Woman” & “The Carpenter”
“Since the floor was a darkly stained oak polished to a sheen, the ceiling could see his own reflection if he looked intently, as one lover might look into another’s eyes and see himself captured there.”
Poetry |
“Imperial Virus (Scarab)”
“… He had affixed himself / to the side of my sandal like a brooch. / As I realized who he was, I could feel I was about // to be frightened: stopped myself.”
Poetry |
“Nothing So Beautiful” & “Under all there’s little difference”
“Yesterday, I had faith in the spindle / of an aspen / and the taut skin / of a flat blue sky / I knew the alphabet / rolling across the tongue / the way the wind knows far- / flung leaves”
Poetry |
“Nightly,” “Under a Cloudless Sky” & “Aubade with Selfies”
“If I think of a field of wheat in September, tawny and rippling, can I set it aflame? Will the fire kneel after it consumes every stalk?”
Poetry |
“Dear Mother VI” & “For the Tired Ones”
“It’s not that beautiful things must live. / But they look like the butterflies children draw, / & if we’re killing even beautiful things / what chance is there?”
Essay |
“Unmoored: A Meditation”
“Weeks have passed since the evening explosion in a neighbor’s attached garage, the fire that followed consuming the bulk of their house before the volunteer firemen’s hoses were even unspooled.”
Poetry |
“Right to Life” & “Burying Jews Since 1973”
“Look, it isn’t lonely here / any more than an idea is lonely // before it shows up (or not) in your mind. You know that feeling / when it half-exists? That’s the beauty of / The Void.”
Poetry |
“From the Body”
“we longed for wet darkness the aftermath / of burial and that fractioning of flesh / far in the circular currents of the earth”
Essay |
“The Water Lot”
“Stories were the common currency in lumber camp, kitchen, and barn. Tink, who began logging at 13 years old and weighing 108 pounds, blessed our family with a lot of those tales.”
Literature in Translation |
“That the Song May Return to Sinera One Day” & “The Governor”
“I have stopped time / and cling to memories I love / from past winters. // But you will laugh / since you see how Catalan lips / stay sealed.”
Poetry |
“Self-Facing Ghazal” & “The Body is Nothing but Stories”
“Ochre, vermillion, and deep blue gashes / cohere in one of the truest records of a face // you knew best from dwelling in it, your gaze / focused for endless months on another’s face.”
Interview |
A Conversation with Jennifer Jean
“The word voz means voice in Portuguese. The poems aren’t so much about what I’m voicing or the fact of voicing, but how I’ve decided to voice — my answer to the lyric by Amalia Rodrigues — Com que voz chorarrai meu triste fado? Which means: With what voice will I cry my sad fate?”