Today, summer is over.Today, everybody is readyfor autumn’s crimson sleight of hand. Everybody wants to peeloff a green dress, flirt with the bittertemperature, get into a fight. —from “Rosh Hashanah” by Mónica Gomery, Volume 64, Issue 2 (Summer 2023) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.I wrote constantly as a kid. . . .
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I was, and continue to be, impatient. During the rests, I never counted properly, always stumbling forward to get to the next note. I didn’t understand how a song worked, how to contextualize notes and phrases, the arc of a piece. When I performed, I relied on muscle memory: if you stopped . . .
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I never gave Judaism much thought until college. I happened upon a seminar on the Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel, who argues that holiness can be located not within space but across time, with each cycle of weeks binding us to the moment of creation. Enchanted by this idea, I started to . . .
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Our ambulance pulls up to the white bungalow in Three Oaks, Michigan. The 911 caller, Tim Harris, is waiting for us outside his house. He circles his porch like a hound. I can see him from the back window, his hands stuffed into his blue slicker. Red Lights flash on and off . . .
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Listen hard! Do you cheeka windchuckle against a coldyear? I promise you,in a place with everyonethere is patience, and a warmthready to give you full home. —from “My Heartful Songlikes,” Vol. 64, Issue 2 (Summer 2023) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.I don’t really remember much of how the . . .
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Mimi herself wasn’t on great terms with the ancestors. Her altar was stuffed in the corner next to the laundry hamper, a sweat-stained sports bra thrown hastily over the incense sticks. She hadn’t made a chicken thigh or alcohol offering since Po Po’s diagnosis three years ago. And she certainly would never . . .
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It helps to think of your mindas a landscape. Picture the groovesand valleys carved like a penknifeto bark from years of compulsions;it’s so easy following where the floodknows it must go.—from “From the Porch, A Moth,” Vol. 64, Issue 2 (Summer 2023) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.One . . .
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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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