Poetry |
“Doxology” & “Great-Grandfather Thacker Talks in My Ear”
“Buzzed on Kool-Aid and ginger snaps, / we build a temple from Popsicle sticks. / My friend Glenda sees Jesus’s face / in a piece of toast …”
Poetry |
“Myers-Briggs” & “Minivan Mafia”
“I took a personality test that claimed I was a passionate idealist, so I printed off the results and flossed my teeth with them because I refuse to be compartmentalized into eight different traits like deli meat tubs at a sandwich shop …”
Poetry |
“The reign of dinosaurs ended in spring”
“Whatever worldlings mutation made, / the eons hatched endings: immolation, ice. / Only our latest extinction arrived // from without, a sentence tied to a stone …”
Literature in Translation |
from Professor Schiff’s Guilt, a novel by Agur Schiff
“The past I am being asked to submit to you, distinguished members of the Special Tribunal, is my family heritage, for good and for bad, and when it rears its head, I cannot pretend to be surprised.”
Poetry |
“Poem Begun on a Map of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery” & “August”
“Headlights in daylight, / I scrawl in the blank space / by the Old Croton Aqueduct, where I stand / looking down on the graves, / the hearse, the procession of headlights.”
Poetry |
“Wyoming” & “The Baker’s Wife”
“Each hold tools of the literate — / he the volumen, the scroll, she / the wax tablet and stylus. / But oh, how the experts go on …”
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.”