A portfolio of Tracey Physioc Brockett’s “Daily Tangles” series can be seen here or in our Winter 2017 issue, Vol. 58, Issue 4. Tell us about one of the first pieces you created.I have been painting and drawing my whole life, though I was banned from finger-painting in kindergarten, because it was all I wanted to . . .
Read More
On the night of his execution, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, immigrantfrom Italia, fishmonger, anarchist, shook the hand of Warden Hendryand thanked him for everything. I wish to forgive some people for whatthey are now doing to me, said Vanzetti, blindfolded, strapped downto the chair that would shoot two thousand volts through his body.—from . . .
Read More
“I wouldn’t tell any of the guys this, they’d never let me live it down if they knew, but I threw up in the bushes after seeing what they did to that girl in the basement. That’s like a real pussy thing to do, right?”—from “Players,” in Winter 2017 (Volume 58, Issue . . .
Read More
It’s not indispensable, poet, that you write it.Your elegy.You won’t help her die by doing so.You won’t bury her more.If anything you’ll unearth her. A footamong clods of humus in the Wax Museum. —from “To the Nicaraguan Poet Francisco Valle, Exhorting Him to Not Write His Corresponding Elegy to Alejandra Pizarnik,” by Carlos . . .
Read More
“I secure my head scarf and get out of the car. My driver, Latif, is with me; women don’t drive here. Months ago, when Latif met me at the airport, I told him I came to Kabul to teach English. His eyes brightened and his eyebrows lifted, ‘Ah, my granddaughter wants to . . .
Read More
“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 . . .
Read More
“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 . . .
Read More
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 . . .
Read More
“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 . . .
Read More
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 . . .
Read More