Begone deadpanmother into stones arranged like a skeleton,begone fatherly blades that scotch my greening. . . —from “Ballad of the Wild,” Volume 60, Issue 1 (Spring 2019) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.Most of my first successful (sort of) poems I wrote in the MFA program at UMass . . .
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They said dragoon and sconce and prithee thenand cursed not their work—rock-hauling, hog-murdering, thatch-gathering,even as it stiffened their fingers, wrenched legs into question marks.—from “What Is the Cause That the Former Days Were Better Than These?”, Spring 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 1) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.My . . .
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A god, speaking to anyonewho wants to listen, paints apartthis person from that limb, this ceilingfrom that sky, this mouth inside a child’s mouthlike those TV puppets that scaredme, sitting wood-jaw & vertebra upright in the lap.—from “The Neighbor’s Dog Would Not Stop Barking”, Spring 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 1) Tell us . . .
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“My father calls in tears to tell me that two burly paramedics have just wrestled my mother to the ground, strapped her into a straitjacket, and forced her inside an ambulance. I am, in this moment, on a meditation retreat. Never in my life have I gone on a meditation retreat. And . . .
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“Emma has only ever seen him in dreams, which is strange because she read somewhere that the human brain can’t create new faces; it just pulls from the features of strangers. But she would’ve remembered his face if she’d ever seen it on a human: eyes that protrude from their sockets; thick . . .
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Today a man pressed a pillowover his 7-month-old son’s face,then strangled the baby’s mother(who was also his 16-year-old daughter),called his mother, confessed,then drove out into the woods and shothimself in the cab of his pickup.—from “Quills”, Spring 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 1) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.One . . .
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“A few years back, I took my daughter and her best friend apple picking in central Massachusetts, where we enjoyed a picture-perfect early fall afternoon. It was the kind of day that shouts NEW ENGLAND—slightly cool temperatures, glorious foliage, and apples waiting to be picked. Our timing could not have been more . . .
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Or as self-medicator,or two-tongued song-singer, or undersecretary of pre-dawn walks,or any manner of otheroffices. They’re justconjectures. I still scrawlmy appointments on the backof my hand, tendto keep them.—from “Poem for Self as Single Mother”, Spring 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 1) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.Sometime in high . . .
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“I have an idea hanging from my head. It’s been out there for ages. Everything suggests it’s a bad idea.”—from “Animal Stomach” by Rui Cardoso Martins, translated from Portuguese by Maria João Medeiros, Spring 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 1) Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.My very first translation . . .
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Jake says: “first time I recall wanting to die I was eight.When I tried and nearly did I really wanted to live.”—from “South Belknap”, Spring 2019 (Vol. 60, Issue 1) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.If I go “deep background,” I remember trying to write a sci-fi story . . .
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