(Shropshire, EN: Platypus Press, 2020) I discovered Joseph Fasano, author of the new novel The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing, as a poet. A few years back, I read some of his verse, and more recently I heard him … Continued
It’s my daughter’s tenth birthday, and Montpellier the rattlesnake is telling her to kill me again. This is what she screams from the living room as I prepare her favorite blueberry pancakes for lunch. She is trying to … Continued
When I mention a crush I have on some boy I’ll forget in three weeks’ time or never, call it love, Scuba, my closest friend, rolls his eyes, shoots back Did you pee on him so he’s marked as … Continued
(Sefton Park, Australia: Everytime Press) She had inky black skin with matching pupils that seemed to take up her entire eye. Her voice – like the devil. Her walk – unbalanced. Like her body it felt foreign. Clearly, to Davon … Continued
Holding my death in his mouth I’m reminded of a cat Snapping a canary up All blood and blonde feathers and grey fur Tiny beak and talons no match against that Merciless beast Poor creature I have arrived here And … Continued
Mike Ashley’s birthday was on April 20th, the same day as Hitler’s and Columbine and obviously four-twenty, which you observed like a national holiday. Her mother’s name was Marilyn and her family lived on Marilyn Place. Ashley was a … Continued
FOR ALL FORMS OF POWER ARE FORMS OF VIOLENCE AMONG MEN. —MIKHAIL BULGAKOV, THE MASTER AND MARGARITA I gotta get my mind off the pulsing tightness in my chest so my psychiatrist has asked me to think on … Continued
My children stopped eating when we moved to this country. Their sandwiches come home untouched in their sacks, whole apples, whole crackers, un-nibbled pieces of cheese. Breakfast, they refuse fruit, toast, yogurt. They sip dew-beads of water from … Continued
(Spokane, Washington: Lynx House Press, 2019) Already it is mid-July, four months into a global pandemic with no end in sight. From my fifth-floor balcony, I can see Freedom Tower. The infection rate in Hoboken remains uncharacteristically low for the … Continued
Mother tells Girl, who chews the word like bubble gum. Or, newly toothed, Girl really chews an elephant’s helping of gum. More interested in blowing a bubble than in the names of what she can see. … Continued
nunca sé por dónde empezar, así que decido hacerlo al comerme una fresa incontable la cantidad de semillas can you say I’m of two minds? yo diría que tengo ideas encontradas lo cual abre dos posibilidades: que se … Continued
you border crosser in this simulation you constantly slip and call one border by the other’s name the names aren’t straight inside of you and you conflate one with two because you still yearn for another border … Continued
You would have told yourself as your mother sat in the dentist’s chair, had you known who Wittgenstein was then, “I have to imagine pain which I do not feel on the model of the pain which I do … Continued
I haunt you because I love you. You are constantly surprised by this. I am made of papier-mâché. You have dreamt of this before, a serious matter. You delight in torment. We were made for this. I … Continued
(San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 2019) Forgotten Journey, Translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Katie Lateef-Jan The Promise, translated by Suzanne Jill Levine and Jessica Powell There’s a peculiar imbalance between Forgotten Journey and The Promise, the first … Continued
(North Adams, MA: Tupelo Press, 2020) One night after three am, Carol Ann Davis holds her sleeping seven-year-old boy, Luke, as he shutters and mumbles from night terrors, “My boy wakes repeating I don’t know I don’t know.” After he … Continued
(Kingston, WA, Two Sylvias Press, 2019) The clusterfuck that is the year 2020 continues, unabated, and I again am reaching for poetry. I suppose poetry is a de facto litmus test for my fractured attention. If I can read a … Continued
To put off doing what I need to, I plan a trip to Detroit with my mom. I spend hours looking at every Airbnb in the city, thinking of all the empty houses. There’s the ones that burned … Continued
A professor once wrote me that to write of fruit or flowers or dreams, no matter how deftly, is the lowest form of metaphor, after processions. Years later, on the subject again, she said that time indicted horses … Continued
(North Adams, MA: Tupelo Press, 2019) You don’t so much open this book as you step into it. In this pocket-size creation from Tupelo Press, featuring the arresting illustrations of Lavinia Hanachiuc, Katie Farris seduces us into an uncanny dimension … Continued
The lady upstairs is yelling at her kids. I mean, really yelling. The high whine of these kids’ voices and the pitter-patter lightness of their footsteps suggest the oldest can’t be older than ten—or at least not … Continued
The pleasures of the streets, perfumed with hazelnuts and cheese, medieval rivers, edges reduced to ice. Of walking irregular stones, past the silent, frustrated dead, in black shoes with laces. As we pass, my eyes meet his (same sad longing) … Continued
With purpose, you pull up the blinds. Light enters the room like a feeling violating a man. Sitting up in a bed built for a husband and a wife, I think for a second nature has taken us … Continued
(Frankfurt, KY: Broadstone Books, 2019) There certainly is a need for fantasy in our culture. Fantasy novels, sci-fi novels, manga, anime, adult fantasy fiction and films, fan fiction — the list runs like a stream into an ever-growing groundswell of … Continued
For many years, I did not drink beer and then, suddenly, I did. Before that, before I drank beer, I drank wine. For many years when I was asked at a party, at a gathering, at an event, … Continued
So here’s our firstborn. Another child, and another. Here’s a six pack of dark beer shoved through a basement window. Here’s the Montreal bistro I proposed in, that we returned to every year until we didn’t. Here’s the … Continued
(Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2020) Sejal Shah and I have two things in common. We both grew up in the New York/New Jersey area and pursued writing in college. This is about the extent of the similarities between … Continued
They’ll be here soon. I’m not denying that fact. But knowing and accepting are not one and the same. I accept myself, sometimes. I’ll never be more than a fan, but that’s okay, because I’m a good fan. For example, … Continued
translated by Nancy Naomi Carlson for the castaways of the Ker Anna For the first time, we were naked. Who taught us to fall from the tree? What power had we wasted? To which blood founding our … Continued
aux naufragés du Ker Anna Pour la première fois, nous étions nus. Qui nous apprit à tomber de l’arbre ? Quel pouvoir avions-nous perdu ? A quel sang édifiant les palabres ? Combien d’oiseaux seront éperdus au bastingage de … Continued