“My brother Terrence came by to see me the night I came home. He asked me about Grandma’s funeral, about the food and the weather, about who would take over her house and her dogs, if I found any pictures of us as children there, if I would ever go back.” —from . . .
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“I sipped my ice water like a martyr. The ballast to all of it, of course—the thing that kept me from contentment—was envy. I was jealous of everybody, for everything. I was jealous of the couple for their house, their jobs, their drinks, each other. I was jealous of Bors for his . . .
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You fuss in the hospitalbed one vein sharpacross your foreheadis a rill. . . .—from “What Color”, Fall 2017 (Volume 58, Issue 3) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember—I remember writing a poem about the sun when I was . . .
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“Her father handed her to us. “No kiss,” he said, a few times. “No touch.” The diminutive old man, bent from hard work, gave his daughter a stern look that I couldn’t quite decipher except that it made me vaguely uncomfortable. However, the promise of no kissing was easy to give. “No kissing and . . .
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Almost immaterial in the way of paper animals folded fireside — haloed and almost-burning, a branch of sun lit starlings. . .—from “CLosure” (Volume 58, Issue 3, Fall 2017) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.Although I’d written short fiction since childhood, I was twenty-one when I composed my first . . .
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“We pored over several more boxes, then I followed her into a windowless chilled room lined with open metal trays that pulled out of the wall, like trays at a bakery. Instead of pastries, the trays held dozens of ‘skins’—birds preserved for study, their soft organs removed. To say that my spirit . . .
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After the third biteAdam found himself suspendedbetween two cities and understood them to be parchedby the contagion of time. . . —from “Cosmogeny of Shame,” by Filippo Naitana, translated from Italian by Ann Lauinger (Fall 2017, Vol. 58, Issue 3) Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.The first thing I . . .
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Dopo il terzo morsoAdamo si trovò sospesofra due città, e le seppe arsedal contagio del tempo. . . . —from “Cosmogonia del pudore,” Fall 2017 (Volume 58, Issue 3) What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?Because this is my first published poem, I’ll simply blush and mention some . . .
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“Egress: how does it work with the Virgin? Can we ask her for anything? Must we be on our knees? What must we say and how many times? For how much time must we stay? Should we look at her directly? Does it not work if we ask before we thank? Does . . .
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“Dawn ices the sky and drives back the stars. It took the entire night to complete his ascension: moving gear onto the platform—sleeping bag, ropes and harness, water, a little food, the brush and paint cans—using the torch to cut free the billboard’s decrepit ladder as he climbed, leaving the seventy-foot column . . .
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