Slowest-footed day of the week,wrong noted & creaking onthe credenza while the other influencers gossip in the kitchen’slinoleum.—from “Tuesday Feeling”, Vol. 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.The first time I wrote a poem was in March 1994. I remember it so vividly because . . .
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you are falling for someone in hell. which may mean that you aretrying to love in america in there is no guarantee. there is never a guarantee& yet here is your foot, willfully arched over the edge.—from “you are falling for someone in hell.” Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021) Tell us . . .
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God sees meas a birdsees an airplane moving at a greatdistance.—from “God Sees Me”, Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.When I was in tenth grade I had an English teacher who asked the class on a regular basis to write short stories . . .
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The biggest snakeis an albino so huge his scales, when they lift from his bodyas he curves around a rock or rodent, look like big, dry, flakes of oatmeal.—from “The Rattlesnakes They Keep in the Life Sciences Building Remind Me of My Dog” Tell us about one of the first pieces you . . .
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I realize my daughter just turned seven and doesn’t knowI was seven when my mother crept into my carpeted roomwhile I played a video game to say my father, who had beenfar away taking fluids from tubes in a California hospital,has died.—from “Scrubbing the Skillet”, Volume 62, Issue 2 (Spring 2021) Tell . . .
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Cigarette smoke woveinto my curls, right through 100%madras from India, breathed blue-tinged, dizzy bluethrough every alveolus,as my mother lurched the cardown Wisonsin Ave., jamming gasand brake pedals, tilting——from “Osmosis,” Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021) We asked Rebecca Kaiser Gibson the same 10 Questions we ask our other contributors. She responded with . . .
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I am singing about the undone things cited on buried bones.I am singing them because I like to imagine a valley with a library on it.A library with catalogues that don’t always read, sorry for the losses.I like to imagine a lot of things but death.I am familiar with how each momentoutweighs the . . .
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My first instinct is to translatethe word. Make it easier to understandwithout saying the word itself.I feel guikt for this mistake—for changing languages insteadof describing. Isn’t this an easy way out?—from “We Play Charades,” Volume 62, Issue 1 (Spring 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.I imagined my . . .
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But this I aspire to—how to do a job welleven if it fights you beak and wing.How to carry the delicate,difficult thingwherever it needs to go.—from “The Owl Catcher’s Son,” Vol 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.In Tampa, near where I went to college, there’s . . .
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A coal-colored bird, perhaps a blackbird. The frenzied fluttering of his wings contrasts with the amiability of his fellow creatures’ warbling. You’d think he was flailing. This has been going on so long that I want to shout to make him fly away and escape whatever is causing his struggle. Is there . . .
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