Poetry |
“Histoire” & “Idyl”
“When I lifted my violin, the men at the bar // begged for Skynyrd, not Coltrane. / So I volunteered to be lonely.”
Poetry |
“Bitter Greens,” “Matisse in the National Gallery,” “It Is What It Is” & “Field Notes”
“If they could speak, they’d sound exactly like / those cranky ladies slowly poisoning themselves / on front porches up and down Brenwall Avenue / in 1964 …”
Poetry |
“Scrubbed”
“The house smells like candles. ‘It’s my birthday!’ I say. / It’s not. My birthday over, nothing left to celebrate, I rinse the pot, heave it / back on the stove …”
Interview |
A Dialogue with Joy Ladin on Shekhinah Speaks and Gender Transition
“I realized that the Shekhinah – in Jewish mystical tradition, the immanent, female aspect of God who silently dwells within each of us – was both a precise and safely obscure metaphor for my sense of being female despite being born male.”
Fiction |
“Otra Noche En Miami”
“Santi and I came here — I mean Miami, not Mango’s — to be queer as fuck. Queer as possible before being shipped back to Honduras, closeted and impossible.”
Literature in Translation |
from Decarceration
“And in a flash, this insight that you are / matter which has crossed centuries of flesh, // which makes you feel how much you are, / already, there, / off the subject.”
Poetry |
“I Want to Be an Adirondack Chair”
“I want to have a front row seat / when the neighbor’s paper gets delivered // at four am.”
Poetry |
“Nothing Takes Me Back Like the Sound,” “Lilith Dreams” & “Lincolnville Beach”
“Fractal facts of our existence / matched us up: we are a species // that sees archers, horses, heroes / in the sky …”
Essay |
“Filling In the Shadows”
“Perhaps our unconscious need to reclaim our identity — our sense of self — explains why we go to great lengths to replace the body’s lost accessories — the ones we can live without but often define us in others’ eyes.”
Poetry |
“On the Island of Sark” and “October 8th”
“You, gorse: I slow my steps / around the thorns you bare to take // the blood of the unaware.”
Literature in Translation |
from Pina
“What she had was better than a first name. Tera Vahine. That Woman. Nothing cruel about those two words. Not when they’re just words. Just a way to name the person they all steered clear of.”
Poetry |
“Little Brother”
“You cough in your sleep and I almost pray for the first time / in eleven years. Just because I’m not religious / doesn’t mean I don’t want to be.”
Poetry |
“As if Confusion Were Part Of It”
“I remember standing in line by the river to be baptized. / The heat had soaked our clothes. There was singing / and honey locusts perfuming the riverbank. And flies …”
Poetry |
“Goshawk”
“It’s a big falcon that sits so still / it could be a twisted branch / of the tree I stood under / for ten minutes, chatting / with other birders …”
Poetry |
“Cayucos State Beach” and “Bangkok”
“We come to the same shore each year, believing we know her tide. // Dark kelp with flies, sand dollars, washed / bones — my sister, ankle deep, captures white-ribbed wavelight.”