Poetry |
“Three weeks” and “Retail requiem”
“May we guard against those forces / shuttled through their online replacements, / may we one day understand the psychosis / that built then eroded what it built, that was us”
Essay |
“It Was the Sound of a Cloud Looking at Itself” and “Thanks So Much for the Urn”
“When I was thirteen, my art teacher asked my mother if I had always been forty. She said, well, she spends a lot of time in the barn … “
Poetry |
“Nocturne with Shaved Head”
“I learned tonight you shouldn’t / dig a grave on a Monday unless you want to dig another one / within the year”
Poetry |
“Today Is the Feast Day”
“Today is the feast day / Of moving to the mountain / And a house in the clouds / Away from the city and people there feeling / Unsettled as clouds”
Essay |
“The Coffee Klatsch,” “The Long Ride Home,” “Timeshare” and “Breathing Lessons”
“… and I’d have this nearly imperceptible fantasy while stirring the Sweet & Low into the matcha that I would cause an explosion, that our little corner of Brooklyn would suddenly burst into flames …”
Poetry |
“Who Knows, Maybe,” “Above the Graffitied Wall” and “Euphrates”
“Who, now, can recall / the impetuous fire sizzling in the veins / of the world? A cold spell, and its impenetrable / forms are dispersed.”
Fiction |
“Response”
“I’d come up with a title for the Beckett essay, which is odd because I hadn’t written a word and I usually don’t title things until after I’ve completed them. ‘Nearer My Molloy Than Thee.’ I worried about the reception of that title.”
Poetry |
“Wild Mother Apples of Tian Shan”
“Nikolai Vavilov’s family knew the gaunt aunt / of famine. He grew consumed with seeds / and craving, peeled away / in delicate curls their genetic passions … “
Poetry |
“Farmers” and “The Long Goodbye”
“Each mass I’d / Stare at the wall / Where the farmers // Stood and smoked, / Near the door, / Before the fields.”
Poetry |
“Nest”
“I shouldn’t have gotten so close, my breath frosting the glass, // when I’m certain I surprised it, two heads perked up, / and after a moment, flew.”
Fiction |
“Kill Price,” “Lemons” and “Baby Cuz”
“He asks for lemons by saying lemons but his wife says can we have some lemons please. He ignores this, at her trying to tell him what to say in English or how to say it as if he didn’t know how to ask for what he wanted.”
Poetry |
“Swear –,” “Anemone,” and “Paris … Moscow, 1925”
“I — still here / at my bodily outpost — / in this city / of resplendent indifference, / penury, / a feral winter in the soul …”
Poetry |
“Above and Below the Sea” and “King of the World”
“The man in sandals wants all things the sea favors. / In a child’s flowered room a man watches him from a window. / A shark tooth gray and wet winces in his hand.”
Poetry |
“I Know the Truth,” “Two Suns Are Cooling” and from “Take From My Hand, This City …”
“… a cloak will clothe you. And you will rise then, wondrous, covered / with its power, and you will not repent that you loved me …”
Essay |
“Poetry”
“Instead of shouting at or attacking me, she reached up to pat me on the sleeve. ‘Listen, girlie’ she said. ‘I’ve lost my poems. I’ve looked and looked and I can’t find them. Will you help me?'”