Love
We wanted to believe in something powerful and true, like love. We wanted to believe in something powerful and true. We wanted to believe in love. And so we raised our heads above. And so we were a me and … Continued
We wanted to believe in something powerful and true, like love. We wanted to believe in something powerful and true. We wanted to believe in love. And so we raised our heads above. And so we were a me and … Continued
(Portland, OR: Tin House Books, 2014) Before I understood what it meant to be in love, I was afraid of sex. At school, I learned sex before marriage meant risking pregnancy or catching a disease. At home, there was the … Continued
you try again; ball up your fist, the hand with a tiny dove carved from marble cupped in your carved-marble palm; its curve of as-yet-unused girl-hand frozen in the want to be offering whatever it has; you’re too old, throw … Continued
When Charmian, the senile novelist in Muriel Spark’s Memento Mori, picks up the phone and hears, “Remember you must die,” she cheerfully says yes, she does remember. The other elderly people, who also field similar phone calls, perceive the phone … Continued
Translated from the Afrikaans by the author (High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire: And Other Stories, 2015) First signs include sudden onset of fever, fatigue and muscle pain, a sore throat that can be easily confused with the flu. The virus, not living itself … Continued
While touring Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds Exhibit in Denver, CO Walking the exhibit where they’ve skinned the dead and positioned them like ice skaters, lovers, archers, I should be contemplating mortality and matter, the slowly failing connections of bone, ligament, … Continued
VI. Music so faint she mistakes it for thought. By morning she usually forgets whatever songs she wrote the night before. Sometimes she salvages one and figures it out on her guitar, but the new song is usually so different … Continued
(Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2012) As a writer, I create yearlong, but because of my position as an instructor of English composition, summer remains my season of “play,” three months when I treat writing like a full-time job. The giddiness … Continued
Teresa called Chuy at work and asked him to stop by the house and watch the boy. Her call was what he’d wanted, a sign she was cooling off, but Chuy couldn’t relax as he sat in his old living … Continued
Translated from the Afrikaans by J.M. Coetzee (Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2014) Being a free and independent woman for the first time in her life, the narrator of Wilma Stockenström’s The Expedition to the Baobab Tree is eager to collect … Continued
Translated from French by Alison Anderson A shiver of hope went through them when they first saw Olga. To be sure, she did not seem particularly kind. Tall, dry, with a prominent jawbone, jutting elbows, and sallow skin,when she first … Continued
(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2014) Writers are often recommended to chronicle their dreams. Once recorded, one is expected to find the consequences within the strange images, the symbolism, the wild transformations. I could never capture them. My nightmares were never … Continued
The town I grew up in is famous for two things. One is granite, which supposedly made my great-great-grandparents rich. The old quarries are still there, empty and echoing, the jutting ridges of which we climbed as children. Like magic, … Continued
Translated from the German by Sheila Dickie (New York, NY: New Vessel Press, 2014) Taguchi Hiro is sitting across from an older businessman who wears a necktie, a “salaryman” as they say in Japan. They are strangers who find themselves at the … Continued
Dona Celia is absolutely certain that the dress she is wearing is the perfect choice for the occasion of greeting her son and his American wife, yes, wife. Alberto just called; they have already passed through customs and will arrive … Continued
After Herbert In paradise the work week is fixed at thirty hours and manual labor is only pleasantly more tiring than typing so that a morning chopping wood is barely enough to make the ham sandwich and the cold bottle … Continued
I’ll spend hours eating all your kisses A feast for me from dusk til dawn Eat them all, sour tart, Some with sugar, some with blood. I’ll beat the devil’s maw for swallowing And fill a prophet’s head with food … Continued
(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2014) “Sun’s yoke a greasy sputter in morning’s blue Teflon.” Lee Ann Roripaugh opens her poem “Trompe l’Oeil: The Annotated Version” with these words, which I read as I sit at a diner down the road, … Continued
Are you lonely there? Yes, I want you here. * Welcome, day of hearts on paper, night of lights that punctuate and propagate the dark. Honor the … Continued
after gilles deleuze City is a way of forgetting the darkness that surrounds us so fly me east toward the gathering of names. It’s a dance of mechanics, just a couple of lights: not only, but it’s me and lonely. … Continued
(Wilkes-Barre, PA: Etruscan Press, 2014) The expert hunter kills quickly, precisely. With enough training, the hunter can cause death to his prey in ten seconds or less. These wounds are called “quick kills,” and are thought to be a form … Continued
How it happened isn’t clear to her. Roger Weber is possibly the product of a dream that made the leap from her subconscious into her waking life, but his habits are human enough in their predictability. He sticks to a … Continued
(Cleveland, OH: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2014) More and more contemporary American poems, particularly those of younger poets, seem preoccupied with the nexus of family, self, and identity. While these topics are not inherently flawed or unworthy of exploring, … Continued
And all around me, only disappointment: Only my house, slowly sinking into the ever-muddying earth. Only my horses, my one remaining milk-cow, lying together upon their sides, moaning in the swamp of our fields. Only my crops, my husk- barren … Continued
There was a hypothetical pregnancy. The woman in question accumulated a box-full of video cassettes featuring pregnant characters. She wore beads around her waist and sat up late in bed with a shawl of her own hair. Roommates circled her … Continued
He’s lying there looking up at the ceiling, yellow and peeling, and the low thrumming noise is growing. Maybe the town is just hushed at night so that he can hear the irregular murmur in his head. Isn’t there a … Continued
The problem of water is that it’s odorless Water is not sensed until it is too late You think you are alright and then water It has been said water moves faster than horses but it has not been said … Continued
(New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014) One of the great benefits of a close and long lasting friendship is banking on time served. There is no need for polite “how’s the weather” chitchat. When observed by a stranger, … Continued
I’m a scarecrow in the middle of the endless field of my wife’s beautiful faces. I want to enjoy the landscape of her but two crows are arguing on my shoulders. One has my mother’s voice. The other speaks in … Continued
Your jet contrails stream across my face of sky like a money shot in slow motion. Only, I receive no money, just the muffled sound of jet fuel transforming your tiny plane into frosting. O great blue cake, inspire the … Continued