Rebecca Kaiser Gibson's novel,The Promise of a Normal Life, is out now from Arcade Press. Her poem "Osmosis" was featured in our Summer 2021 issue.
Climate Issue contributor Joseph Earl Thomas' memoir,...
She says, I care little about what's said in the short term. She cracks her shoulder blades. She wonders if she waters them, would they grow wings? She says, I care about what happens tomorrow or the next day or the end of next month when the doctor pronounces my heart obsolete.
—from "That's Still Short Term, I Care About Long Term." co-written with Leigh Chadwick, Volume 63, Issue 4 (Winter 2022)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
It’s hard for me to identify what “first” means. I’ve had so many stops and starts in the writing world. I wrote many things in my childhood and teen years, including a poem published in an anthology I have somewhere in a box. I managed and wrote for a...
Our old ones are dying. Their parents restrained every syllable. the children floated away from their homes to boarding schools. graveyards, and war zones. It is my fifth day in the hospital. Outside for the first time. I hold my medicine bag in my pocket, and I think about Granny Marie. A dandelion stands out amidst a patch of grass.
—From "Snake Dance," Volume 63, Issue 4 (Winter 2022)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first piece that I ever got published was a poem called "The Falling." I wrote it as an underclassmen in college, and was thinking a lot about drought and leaving the church. The opening line was one that had stuck in my mind for awhile and I don't remember the original reason it...
"I am a writer," and I hate this part. I am a writer, so I am grateful for the requisite third-person: she is a writer and she hates writing about herself.
This is her name. This is where she lives, and how. Here are a few facts that are true but safe, carefully chosen for mass appeal. This is how she wants to be seen.
—from "Third-Person Bio," Volume 63, Issue 4 (Winter 2022)
Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
My elementary school had an artist-in-residence program, and when I was in second grade my class worked with a local poet. One of our assignments was to write about a day of the week, so I wrote a poem about how Tuesdays are blue. At the time, I felt that I was being completely literal—...
The process of becoming sick may be familiar to you,
or it may not. First, I had unexpected pain. This is not
to be confused with previous unexpected pains.
Actually, the unexpected pains had continued back for
as long as I can remember.
—from "Untitled (from Ghostdaughter)," Volume 63, Issue 4 (Winter 2022)
What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
I’m most interested in poetry as a language of directness, and affinity as well. My father, who wrote, inoculated me in a poetry I no longer have affinity for. Eliot, Stevens, the other names you’d expect. After my disenchantment, I spent several years actively not writing until I discovered other poets whose truths were more...
Front Cover by Fred Wilson
X (detail) from the Exit Art portfolio Tantra 2005
