Your back is your voice it speaks volumes.It is telling me I cannot see what I hear coming from in front of you.From in front of the circle of backs yours is a part of.What is happening?Is there a body?Is it attached to these sounds of a body in pain?—from “Ownership of . . .
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He could never trust a thing, he says,that bleeds for seven days and doesn’tdie. Ha. Just a joke, he says. Lighten up.Ha. By this red he tries to read me rightbetween the eyes.—from “Portrait of the Woman as Blood”, Fall 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 3) Tell us about one of the first . . .
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Wolf throat, words pacebut don’t exit the mouth. The man in the officeacross the hall is going bear hunting this weekend. All I want to do is jump on the bear’s backand keep my . . .
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October 29, 2018 This interview took place on the telephone on December 22, 1986. Originally published in the Winter 1987 (Vol. 28, no. 4) issue of the Massachusetts Review. BRENDA LYONS: Colored Girls raised a furor in the 70s. In addition to much acclaim and many awards, you were attacked as a traitor to your . . .
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“When the package arrived on Monday morning by overnight FedEx, a disturbance ensued. Mr. Rodrigo made an agitated phone call in his glassed-in sanctum, looking in turns horrified, elated, and apprehensive.”—from “Mr. Rodrigo’s Identification Company”, Spring 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 1) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.I have . . .
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Like vegetation that findsshelter in so many territoriesI swell around the housesurge from your insides whenyou feel death coming—from “That Which Is Only Visible When the Wind Brings It,” Fall 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 3) Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.Some years back I co-translated a short story . . .
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Now all the batterings sustained in gym after dusty gym,red wet faces shoved into his, thick leather mitts pummeling his flanks with a noise of meat being beatento submission look like one long drubbing tattooed into his skinyears ahead of each particular humiliation, while the carcassin the mirror is as scarred, he muses, . . .
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Say it.To smooth a section of one’s hairas if in an unsurfacedconvulsion.—from “In the Other Window”, Fall 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 3) Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.With my co-translator Juan Meneses, I first translated “Two Poems about Poverty,” from Concha García’s 2008 collection, Acontecimiento. (Later, this translation appeared . . .
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“A rumor states that if you wait there for the devil, you can trade your soul in exchange for otherworldly guitar chops or a booming dentistry career or a lifelong tropical vacation. Those down-and-out enough are prone to superstition. They’ll believe just about anything. They’ll even believe that your average Sorbis is . . .
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“But to find women in heroic tales whose roles embrace something beyond spousal identity and dogged faithfulness, we need to move outside Mediterranean and Anglocentric circles. We must look north.” —from “Alone in the Center: Brynhild and Brünnhilde”, Fall 2018 (Vol. 59, Issue 3) Tell us about one of the first pieces . . .
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