Fiction |
“The Reading Lamp”
“At the end of the hallway, I could hear sounds of excited voices speaking in loud tones behind a blue painted door. This was the voice, if I was to believe my assignment, of the person who was said to be the greatest reader of literature in the world.”
Essay |
“Better Not to Say: Apology in Poetry”
“The present cultural moment in the US does not seem receptive to the inevitability of discomfort as it pertains to living with one another and of letting each other move on, or get on, with their lives … there is always someone looking to hold another to account and/or demand them to apologize publicly.”
Poetry |
from On Dangerous Ground: Film Noir Poems
“Poetry and film noir both often rely on set formats, manipulate narrative coherency, and proceed by implication. As for the doomed film noir protagonist, it is not unusual for him, and it is usually him, to have the temperament of a thwarted poet …”
Poetry |
“The Known Consequence of Living” & “Defining or Defying Gravity”
“In the hierarchy of all I don’t know / about the world, invisible force / is in the upper echelons. / I should have leaned harder / into geology or biology / or archeology for rocks / & blood & bones to touch.?
Poetry |
“Death Was My Doula”
“The priest at my wedding / crossed our marriage and last rites in a two-for-one special / with a wink and promise to see our favorite guests again / before the year was out.”
Poetry |
“Why I Am Not a Mother” & “Inheritance”
“She improved everything / she touched, re-hemming her skirts with // lace, replacing the plain blue buttons / on a winter coat with a set of red leather, / twisted to fashionable knots.”
Poetry |
“April 9th, 1965, Appomattox”
“I lived not far away in Lynchburg / where my friends identified me as ‘Yankee’ / since I was born in the north and had lived there / for a while …”
Poetry |
“Exercise Path Off the Lackawanna River Heritage Trail“
“But does / our distanced bond / with nature, along with / a shift in focus / so far from where we are, / mean we already seek answers / elsewhere?”
Essay |
“Coming Back to the Page 101 Times,” an excerpt from Craft
“My struggle with meditation taught me an important lesson about my creative process: the imagination flourishes in that split-second before the editorializing and judgmental mind intrudes.”
Poetry |
“Five Ways of Being Alone,” “Sunday Morning, March 13, 2022” & “Rules for the Dance”
“He can never get the help / that would help him feel / the help that he never received. // And therefore he / is beyond help.”
Poetry |
“Entering the Genome” & “Dirge for a Dying Barn”
“The DNA comes back / whispering secrets / you can’t connect / to anything you know.”
Literature in Translation |
from Dostoyevsky in the Face of Death, or Language Haunted by Sex
“Retired Lieutenant Dostoevsky, age twenty-seven, for having taken part in criminal designs, having circulated a personal letter filled with impertinent expressions against the Orthodox Church and the sovereign power and for having attempted, together with others, to circulate works against the government through means of a private printing press, is condemned to death.”
Essay |
“I see a postman everywhere”: Elizabeth Bishop’s Postcards
“Bishop often mailed postcards from locales while expressing a longing, on the written (verso) side, to be elsewhere. Or she editorialized the postcard’s depiction of her location, adding captions, often ironizing or qualifying it.”
Fiction |
“Eid Mubarak”
“Her dad said it like a punchline: ‘In December, there’s a card, white inside, and handwritten: Eid Mubarak. I nearly fell over.’ Few of their neighbors knew that Eid was the Muslim gift-giving holiday. Back then, even fewer cared.”
Literature in Translation |
“The Missionary”
“It was pointless to warn him about the perils of crossing the sea and the dangers of the continent noir, the newly branded missionary would hear none of it. He left as if off to his honeymoon …”