Poetry |
“Nancy With the Laughing Face”
“I can hear her sloshing in the bath. / The phone rings. Ma yells, ‘It’s your boyfriend.’ / She bursts out still wrapping herself in a towel.”
Poetry |
“That Winter,” “Unshed Tears and the Snow” and “Do You Dare?”
“That winter when the night sky was violet, I was sure I would remember it, / and the sight of unbroken snow in the morning, I would remember that too …”
Interview |
on Dark Testament: A Conversation with Crystal Simone Smith
“In the process of erasure, you’re empowered to change voice, setting, any of the original elements. Erasure in this subject matter worked extremely well because the process of hiding also reveals.”
Literature in Translation |
“Guaranteed By Clouds,” “Cry As a Bird,” “How Little Use I Am,” “Winter,” “Promise to a Dove” & “Birthdays”
“I was here. / I pass through / without a trace. / The elms at the roadside / wave to me as I approach, / green blue golden greeting, / and forget me / before I’ve gone by.”
Essay |
“Pol Pot’s Secret Prison”
“… how, when they returned to their homes in early 1979, after the Khmer Rouge had been toppled, the villagers found their rice fields littered with mass graves and wells stuffed with corpses …”
Poetry |
“Little Speech” & “Spring Summer Fall Winter”
“Undesirable you may have become, wept over / by no one, your green age passed by. / Don’t you remember the first chill / in the fires wasting August, / our last great season?”
Lyric Prose |
“The Barn Swallow” & “Picasso vs. Dali”
“The church gave me permission to hang a painting in their hidden poker room. I’m not religious, but the church and I have a professional relationship.”
Poetry |
“Martial Arts” & “Coming Back”
“At the start of every lesson the teacher / asks, What’s your best defense // in a dark alley? Upstairs our son swings / his legs, kicking neatly like a clock // at the quarter hour …”
Literature in Translation |
“In San Mamete With Morris: In Memoriam,” “Death of a Painter” & “Buried Crowd”
“Of many dreams, now this: plane parts / buried in the fields. Black iron / blanketed with moss over the years, / a broken wing. / Never had a thing to say. Not one thing.”
Literature in Translation |
from The Abduction / Le Rapt
“Me, I’m divorced / Don’t panic / it’s not so bad / except if you’d been there / my child wouldn’t have been taken from me”
Poetry |
“Dad and the Eye Exam” & “Milk Run”
“My chin rests in this little sling / and I let you come back from the dead. // Go ahead, sit by the magazine rack / as the optometrist taps our history // into the record …”
Essay |
“Nightwalking”
“Sometimes it seems I spent my childhood walking at night, hiding in ditches, calming wandering dogs. Of course, that was only part of my childhood, the night half, the hidden half …”
Poetry |
“I Do Not Always Feel Sad When I Think About Humankind’s Eventual Mass Extinction”
“Today in the park, roses / dormant, the foliage all / undressed for the wretched / months to come, my daughter / waving from her stroller / at squirrels, I heard the hawks / circling …”
Poetry |
“Growing Up in the Mouth of the Wolf”
“Firearms enforce the wolf’s freedom. A boy/must learn to be/a wolf. //The wolf swallowed me. The men/of my childhood hated. They ate/with their eyes.”
Poetry |
“Dream Song” & “Born Again”
“From our team leader with secrets / I felt the graze of her gaze on my legs, / I grew lean, played guitar and drew portraits, / inhaled the scent of roses …”