I hate AJ, Sam says, he stealsmy blocks and punches me. AJdidn’t go to preschool. Here in the kitchenmy son narrates his day: phonics, Play-Doh,the device he calls sand timer whisking awaychoice time.—from “Bioluminescence,” Volume 64, Issue 2 (Summer 2023) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.Fourth grade, a poem called “Breeze.” Everyone around . . .
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Less his offense and more the punishment, how Actaeon was pursuedby his own hounds, devoured by that which he thought he had tamed—is that what I mean when I say I, too, watched hungerconsume me?—from “Actaeon,” Vol. 64, Issue 2 (Summer 2023) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.This . . .
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Al had not been blessed with charm. Or pleasing aspect. Or verve. Or intellect, that I could discern, though she must have had some scrap of it to have gained acceptance in the first instance. She was a lumpen thing, all fuzzy hair, pigeon toes, and befuddled grin, her broad back humping . . .
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After I persuademy students there isa name for everything, for days I mull on whatto call the kind of kinddissembling I’ve done.—from “Dustsceawung,” Vol. 64, Issue 2 (Summer 2023) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.Once I read an interview where Shane McCrae talked about reading some of his . . .
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Right when the dissector picks up the eye, I notice the sunhas already found a place to bruise with light. With slight pressure, she shifts the pink flesh and muscle.That eye can’t see to ask its paths. Or fact its ransom.—from “Blind Spot,” Volume 64, Issue 1 (Spring 2023) Tell us about . . .
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In the same spot where Father died, the dead body of a deer lay prostrate in the rain. Raindrops collected on the ground, flowing like a river. Invisible to the naked eye, electricity trickled into the moist soil as if through the veins of leaves, electrons packed closely together. Micro-organisms gnawed away . . .
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For every year you aren’t a tongue away: America clogs. I ice the WhiteZin, choose a filter, call this mood. Not to say I’m a hunterbut I refuse to see the syllableswhich luck your name—from “A Toast to the Narcissist’s Exit,” Volume 64, Issue 2 (Spring 2023) Tell us about one of . . .
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Maria slinked in corners and stood next to objects that did not move, pretending that she was an object. She held on to her growing belly. It wouldn’t stop moving, wriggling like a worm exposed to the sun. She tried to wear bigger clothes, pretending that nothing was happening in the area . . .
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The nanny Fidelia Córdoba kept her rhythm in her tetas. She’d been born on the banks of the River Sipí and she had bulging tetas, small and round like a pair of corozos, with retractile nipples that also had a sense of direction. They were all at once compass-sextant-weather-vane-plumb-line-quadrant-astrolabe-point-you-left-point-you-right, or wherever you . . .
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Whenever my mom and dad were at the dinner table (the place of memorial and celebration, the place of conversation), I’d ask them about their days. I wanted to imagine their lives without me, their movements and rhythms when I was not there. What I was getting at, though I didn’t know . . .
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