Fiction |
from Life Sciences, a novel by Joy Sorman
“… she knows perfectly well that this malady didn’t land on her randomly, that it didn’t come out of nowhere, but from a slowly formed bed of history and time, from layers of pathological strata …”
Poetry |
“Gaza And Jerusalem: A Triptych”
“Worlds / reassemble / in our minds, these / sides of the line. / Tell us where / and we’ll put / them there.”
Essay |
on “Poems Not Written” — a recurring feature On The Seawall
“We have to be okay with letting our writing rest. My friend reminds me that if poetry makes nothing happen, as Auden said, not-writing poetry has quite the opposite effect.”
Poetry |
“Watching”
“When a wave hit — / it shook its head, / biting the air. // When two swans passed by, / they looked whiter / than usual.”
Poetry |
“The Young Herdsman,” “Pastoral (Eclogue)” & “My Manifest”
“… and in more time / each summer once the heat is broken by the pine / spare parts become common, and to include them / commonplace …”
Poetry |
“Dispatch,” “Reflexive,” “Monumental Life Building” & “saw, circular”
“The teacher told me / my heart was roughly / the size of my fist // and I saw my hand / clench around / the new knowledge …”
Poetry |
“Meditation on Comprehension,” “Meditation on Direction,” “Octet” & “Looking at Cy Twombly’s Cold Stream and Feeling The Heat”
“The line, / like the river, / does not know to stop. / Nothing on this earth is straight —/ not the sky, the sea, the self, the stream — “
Fiction |
“Apartment” & “A Record of Her Months”
“In October, she tried to escape: the gate, ladder and over the back wall of the hospital. The first time, the nurses understood and told her to quit it. The second time, they limited her hours outside. The third, they called her husband.”
Poetry |
“Breaking,” “Once Upon A …,” & “Sumatra Wharf”
“… but this boundlessness breaks the spell of confinement, / vast and vaster and all the things you ever saw, / or held in your hands or thought or said, / will remain unspoken, / because they haven’t taken place.”
Poetry |
“Middle School,” “Metamorphosis,” “Persephone’s Friends” & “Metamorphosis”
“They cropped her // Out of images and didn’t say her name / Except to agree she never really was // That great a friend and maybe she was / Asking for it braless in that tank top.”
Fiction |
“Spoons and Thimbles” and “Coital Headache”
“… and if she finds herself in a dance hall of only ladies, Prince’s “Kiss” is going to play, and if “Kiss” plays, she’s going to take all six feet of her taut self to the floor and grind against everything her evangelical mother warned her about …”
Poetry |
“Literal,” “What Is That Song You Sing for the Dead?” & “Last Ocean”
“She wanted to see the comet that appears only every seventy-five / years because she knew she wouldn’t be alive the next time. / She said, I think that’s it, and pointed up — the whole-note stars, / the yard beneath muddy and humming.”
Poetry |
“Mirror, Mirror on the Wall,” “Verbal Alchemy,” “Oh Muse” & “Decreation”
“This sweet yearning to spark // with the word the depths of the dark. / Make gold from nothing but the vital name / and let the rest go up in smoke.”
Essay |
“Robert Desnos in the Desert”
“This is impossible, but Desnos is standing on the Mexican side of the Stanton Street Bridge, facing downtown El Paso. He is waiting for me to close the distance from one side of the international border to the other.”
Poetry |
“W. G. Sebald’s Last Walk”
“But a return to / Footsteps in chalky / Sand // Recalling vestigium / Meant trace or / Footstep”