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?”
Poetry |
“Constellations”
“On my back at the physical / therapist’s office I consider / why in the tiles overhead // the spray of holes / echoes a starfield photograph …”
Essay |
“Windows”
“Jim and I had restored many double hung wood windows during the time we worked together. We had also become pretty good friends, and then partners in a small but fairly successful restoration business.”
Poetry |
“Divination” & “Linked”
“With one massive arm / she hugged the huge / brown ram around its chest / so its legs hung, / hooves grazing ground. // In the other hand, ungloved, / shears buzzed.”
Poetry |
“The Relics We Carry”
“The head of St. Catherine, the heart of St. Camillus, the tongue / of St. Anthony, the blood of St. Januarius. The relics we carry.”
Fiction |
“Incandescent Obsolescence”
“But our life expectancies hover around 203. More than enough time for an average of four twenty-year marriages with a full gender array of spouses — organic and AI — with the final decades of our lives whiled away on the well-appointed Archipelago of the Old, wrinkle-free and comfortably numb …”
Poetry |
“The Underworld” & “Mudman”
“I press on through the half-light, reaching // at last the crossing where she’s kept. Amber / light projects her number on the plinth. // Make no mistake. This is the one you seek …”