Poetry |
“Beloved Country,” “Failure,” “Ars Poetica” & “The Exile”
“So much of you remains unopened, like music lost inside me. / Country to which I return every time I go broke. / Seal, celebration, vault of trunks.”
Fiction |
“The Queen of Language”
“Valentina wears the standard issue orange jumpsuit with “Probation” across the back, and when she sees me enter, she waves and smiles as though we’d run into one another at a coffee shop. She has run away, been re-arrested, and bounced from the streets to the Halls many times.”
Interview |
A Conversation with Janel Pineda
“Growing up, I internalized a lot of shame around being Salvadoran. Poetry became a space that allowed me to claim this part of my identity, explore it further, and take pride in the people and place I come from.”
Poetry |
“Empty Bus”
‘Some day, an auto worker / promised a young poet // in long-ago Detroit, Some day / the world is ours. Maybe Levine / guessed the dream’s cost …”
Poetry |
“Andrew Wyeth’s Footnotes to Chambered Nautilus (1956)”
“3. I’ve painted her propped-up in the bed, half-committed to rest and half-poised to climb out the window, to join the noonday orb and to let that much heal her.”
Essay |
“My Piano Teacher Talks to God”
“It always took me a while to readjust from my fake piano to Ms. Kim’s real and very beautiful piano each week at the start of my lessons. But once I got into it, I was pretty good.”
Poetry |
“My Body as Hot Metal, My Body as Ornithology”
“When the boy closes his eyes, / does he remember the light / barbs of my fingertips? Does he / see my elbows as the arches // of the South 10th Street Bridge / cradling thousands of crows?”
Essay |
“Innavigable Sea”
“A gaze that, never leering, still seems to undress me, to see something of my insides that should be left there behind my eyes.”
Poetry |
“The Chinese Have Landed”
“Across the room, even facing the TV, / the son has dropped his head. Let him sleep. / The glittering efficient inner rooms / await us. The masked proficiency / of everything near the end …”
Poetry |
“Russian Chocolates,” “In Siberia, I Watch My Host,” and “What Is It Like?”
“Here men from the Caucuses are yanked from the metro / escalator by police demanding their papers. / Back home men and women of color are pulled over while driving …”
Poetry |
“What’s An Angel Like?”
“But then I remember the one / that struck the glass, then fell / dead on the roof outside our window, / 25 stories above the river …”
Poetry |
“Lupus Est in Fabula” and “A Four-Footed Strange Beast”
“When a man struck a wolf with his club / she leapt and clawed the skin off his face. / Once healed, the man began to howl like a dog.”
Poetry |
“Cow Magnet”
“That that would happen / In the dark of an actual / Body was impossible / To believe but / We believed it …”
Poetry |
“Hip Check” and “Convent”
“When one lights on my wrist softly / my mind fails — an easy rush of wild trust / that cold will protect me, simply alter // my chemistry …”
Poetry |
“Hatboxes”
“Every / carpetbag and portmanteau that’s ever / been bumped along a corduroy road is broken / and our jeunesse is gone …”