Poetry |
“Hyperemesis Gravidarum” and “While I Was Out”
“… never saw the contours / of the larval life form waxing in your womb, / a pitiable spineless lone crescent sardine / of a half-written girl …”
Poetry |
from the “Little Soul” series
“Little Soul has no ancestral memory / but knows, thanks to MyHeritage, its DNA / is pure Ashkenazi, a lineage of wanderers / and damp wool, shtetls, ghettos …”
Lyric Prose |
“The Smell of a Peeled Orange from Across the Room”
“… she told me I was a stupid boy and that meant that there would be no other night like this for me and I couldn’t remember my name but her name was Sally …”
Poetry |
“The May Poets” & “Wigilia (Christmas Eve) on East Meadow in Dublin”
“The February poets wished they were flyers. They loved saying ‘Sopwith-Camel.’ / They all agreed that a Zeppelin was more beautiful than the Apollo Belvedere. / They were often shot in the back as they looked up at the sky.”
Interview |
A Conversation with Daniel Olivas & His Story “The Chicano In You”
“Gabino Iglesias was on Twitter talking about his surgery to remove a lump from his neck, and it wasn’t malignant. I then wrote to him to say he had just inspired me to write a new story, and I would dedicate it to him. ‘Nacho’ is about a man who notices he has a lump, has it removed, and puts it in a jar. It eventually grows into his roommate.”
Poetry |
“When Year After Year I Receive an Evite to A Party Where I Know No One, Not Even the Host” and “Abecedarian”
“Could have been the folk masses, the relentless brown plaid, / detention for every day late, that made me start the group against / enlightenment …’
Literature in Translation |
from 13 Lunas 13 / 13 Moons 13
“moment for rest, / for the simple intimation of a dead time / in order to think of you, / to invite you to my table, / to invoke women who were of my blood and inhabit an uncertain memory …”
Lyric Prose |
“Four Interiors,” “Distance Prayer,” “Mala” & “John Donne: A Closet Drama”
“She would scratch my back and shoulders lightly. She would call me Angelique. We were close and we were not. The world was full of things we could not say, so many I barely noticed them.”
Poetry |
“home,” “dreaming language,” “king matjaž visits his village” & “talking with thistles”
“but don’t come too close! / my lines have hooks / that will crudely catch your ears / with spiky words and stalks …”
Interview |
“Structure with the Mystery”: A Conversation with Gail Mazur
“I’m grateful when the poem begins with an urgent impulse. Not just the urgency of getting to work, but that the poem is starting already, and you’ve got to get where you can write it, which isn’t always ‘convenient,’ but you have no choice, you’re in it!”
Poetry |
“Three Months Before My Mother Died We Went to Dollywood,” “At Home” & “Fourteen Mondays”
“The picture we used for the obituary / was one I took across the table at the restaurant / where she took me for my birthday. / It burned down the winter after she died.”
Essay |
“Art of Revision / Act of War”
“A Russian colleague took me to a restaurant with Soviet decor and menu. He entertained me with stories from his Soviet past. A show for the visiting American.”
Fiction |
from Monsters Like Us
“Viktor will remember France as if he were looking through binoculars, just held the wrong way around. The numbers in the lift of the Clara Schumann Hospital are absolutely clear as he goes up the five floors to Surgery II.”
Poetry |
“Recipes, Logistics,” “Divine Mushroom,” “Saucer and Cup,” “Giant Black Bear” & “Encores”
“… things that are true in their own rights, springing up after rains, and have no need of my understanding to complete them, nor have they any use for appraisals of their worth …”
Poetry |
“But maybe …” “So it’s said …” “For a long time …” “Line like …” “Deep inside …” & “Behind the lips …”
“Behind the lips / the unutterable waits / tears at the umbilical cords / of words // the martyr’s death of the alphabet / in the mouth’s urn / spiritual ascension / out of searing pain –“