Writing

Poetry |

“Anthropocene Villanelle”

“I plant seeds, they sprout, then disappear. / The satsuma tree curls its leaves, distressed. / Still, the weather’s beautiful. And I’m here …”

Poetry |

“Pheasants”

“… waiting for the grass / to quiver, waiting for them to appear / in the near clearing, / the brazen male, the subtler female, / three bronze chicks behind …”

Literature in Translation |

“Sleeping Beauty,” “Eurydice,” “Persephone,” “Silent Writing,” “Winter” & “Loss”

“They will kill me, sever my voice, / cut my throat, cut me out / of the wedding photo, / tear out my heart / and its assignations, / if they discover I’m unfaithful – / not with someone else / but with myself, / and not just once in a while.”

 

Essay |

“Maggot and Tare: From Elegy to Self-Elegy”

“The separation between the dead and the living becomes, if only fleetingly, no longer ‘definitive and fateful.’ It is instead a frail telepathy, a murmured voice at a séance, a portal between life and afterlife …”

Literature in Translation |

from Belle Greene: “The White Marble Palace, 1905-1908”

“Belle had prepared for her interview with painstaking care, acquainting herself with the Murray Hill neighborhood in which the library was located and learning all she could about the man she was going to meet. John Pierpont Morgan.”

Poetry |

“Collective Effervescence”

“… the lifeless laptop screen packed with / opaque square frames or off-tinted faces — / the skittish connections —  Zooming in for poetry / class — sometimes just a nose or an eyeball / appearing …”

Essay |

“Remembered Bodies”

“I hear the last lines of ‘Leaflets,’ which Adrienne Rich published in 1969: I’m thinking how we can use what we have / to invent what we need. And all my body’s forces of animation try to tell me, still, that the task to need better ought to be our common business.”

Poetry |

“Science Matters” & “Going Through”

“I can’t remember what kind of car came next / I was starting to move into my own constellation / & my sister got married & had children who now / Have children & my parents flew past Andromeda …”

Poetry |

“Matches Ghazal”

“Small talk, wine, homemade ragù, more wine, then surrender, lubricant, your bed / a mattress on the floor. Locked bodies confuse the moves made in a tango and a match.”

Poetry |

“Tragedy By the Sea”

“… & knowing we’ll be bored with age / one day & want / to see how time played / Us, to take/ a picture.”