Teeth marks are found in the back of a cop car.Cymbals clang on too-hot grits. My mental chatter is at the speed of rabbits thumping.Asphalt tapes the blood spill. A gold tooth crater smiles into . . .
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A Review of Divine Blue Light (for John Coltrane) by Will Alexander (City Lights (Pocket Poets Series, 63), 2022) Some poets, the best among them, make you learn to read their work. Sure, some structures and narratives inform their poems, but these are not familiar ones (the pentameter line, the regular stanza, the myths . . .
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Introduction from Abla AbdelhadiAll support for my people in Gaza under the genocidal Zionist campaign is important. But this statement is especially meaningful to me as a Palestinian Jordanian feminist. It demonstrates to Arab societies that while Arab leaders spout empty statements of “solidarity” with Gaza, it is the people of the . . .
Read MoreI hear you’re having a sober October?That option, for me, is a Noper.But for you I’ve pursuedAn assortment of brewsSo your boozeless pursuits can be proper. 1.Translucent, refreshing, and lightIs this Upside Dawn Golden. So bright-ly concocted it zipsAs it passes your lipsWith a fizz on your tongue that delights. 2.Just the Haze is . . .
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Crete Senesi. Photo by Gunther Tschuch, 2008 (Earth Primer #5) I don’t know why I ended up with soil as my specialization. I could tell myself it was a matter of chance, since that rendezvous seems to have happened on its own, not as an act of will: I did nothing to bring . . .
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I’ve checked the box acknowledging that, whatever happens,it won’t be your fault—that my insurance policy will covereverything, except what actually breaks, that you are not responsiblefor any data corruption, any mistakes in my bloodwork results,that your mammogram can only detect so much.—from “Poem in Which I Read the Terms and Conditions,” Volume . . .
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Fossilized ammonite mollusk. Photo by Adrien Vieriu Calvino fa la conchiglia [Calvino/Italo Calvinomakes/does/imitatesa/theseashell/shell/spirals] La costruzione di uno scrittore [The making/building/construction of a writer] Editor’s note: To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Italo Calvino on October 15, 2023, the journal California Italian Studies has published a special issue, edited by Anna Botta and Lucia . . .
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while we yellowed in the pale strobes rumors began to arrive of a wide floor blown open of some clever thing —from “Catherine of Siena Fucks Up the Club,” Volume 64, Issue 3 (Fall 2023) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.What first comes to mind is that . . .
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Juanita Morrow Nelson. Photo by Ed Hedemann, 2010 I’ve been thinking of Juanita Nelson lately. What would she think of the state of the world right now, our relationships to the earth, to one another. What would she say about how we are living? Juanita was one of the few people I’ve . . .
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“I tell Rudy that we really really need a new mattress and watch his mouth twist—he’s never thrilled about buying anything, much less a mattress that might take as long to pay off as a new car. The old one was supposed to last twenty years, and Rudy’s hell-bent on getting every . . .
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