Cigarette smoke woveinto my curls, right through 100%madras from India, breathed blue-tinged, dizzy bluethrough every alveolus,as my mother lurched the cardown Wisonsin Ave., jamming gasand brake pedals, tilting——from “Osmosis,” Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021) We asked Rebecca Kaiser Gibson the same 10 Questions we ask our other contributors. She responded with . . .
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A Review of The Deposition by Pete Duval (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021). I’m going to be straight with you: this is not going to be one of those neutral and dispassionate reviews. The fact is, I know Pete Duval. Not only have I chosen his work (including stories in this volume) for publication . . .
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I am singing about the undone things cited on buried bones.I am singing them because I like to imagine a valley with a library on it.A library with catalogues that don’t always read, sorry for the losses.I like to imagine a lot of things but death.I am familiar with how each momentoutweighs the . . .
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My first instinct is to translatethe word. Make it easier to understandwithout saying the word itself.I feel guikt for this mistake—for changing languages insteadof describing. Isn’t this an easy way out?—from “We Play Charades,” Volume 62, Issue 1 (Spring 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.I imagined my . . .
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But this I aspire to—how to do a job welleven if it fights you beak and wing.How to carry the delicate,difficult thingwherever it needs to go.—from “The Owl Catcher’s Son,” Vol 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.In Tampa, near where I went to college, there’s . . .
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A coal-colored bird, perhaps a blackbird. The frenzied fluttering of his wings contrasts with the amiability of his fellow creatures’ warbling. You’d think he was flailing. This has been going on so long that I want to shout to make him fly away and escape whatever is causing his struggle. Is there . . .
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(Photo: “Because I have company.” Carl Hancock Rux, in an interview about activism, conducted by Carrie Mae Weems) The poet, playwright, director, musician, actor, and activist Carl Hancock Rux grew up in foster care. His older brother Ralph owned a restaurant in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and Ralph managed to locate Carl, who . . .
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Corrosive timescan always happen. Forever youngold servant of morality.Catches trout with bare hands.A slippery salacious sin.—from “Can Always Happen,” Translated by Aga Gabor Da Silva, Volume 62, Issue 1 (Spring 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.It was the poem “Soneto de fidelidade,” written by the famous Brazilian . . .
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(Photo: Kate Winslet as Mare in a scene from Mare of Easttown) I was surprised, and more than a little perplexed, when I realized that Mare of Easttown is a soap opera. I consider myself well-versed in soapy television (I’m currently in the weeds of a dissertation about melodrama), but I had trouble reconciling Mare of . . .
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Corrosive timescan always happen. Forever youngold servant of morality.Catches trout with bare hands.A slippery salacious sin.—from “Can Always Happen,” Translated by Aga Gabor Da Silva, Volume 62, Issue 1 (Spring 2021) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.It was a text about loneliness, titled “Street. The Street Emptiness,” sort . . .
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