after Carolee Schneemann (1939-2019) I met a hapless mana literary critic—but I’m not only thatI’m a poet myself— he said we are fond of youyour poems are charmingbut don’t ask usto read them we cannot there are certain poemswe simply cannot toleratethe personal clutterthe persistence of feelingsthe touchy sensibilitythe diaristic indulgencethe painstaking messthe dense gesturingthe…
Does it surprise you to learn that I once had a wife?Someone to whom I showed my wounds, who made medangerous because, at unstrung moments with her, I wasso happy? It’s not something I talk easily about. She vowedto help me get my fate straight, a task obviously notwithin her power, but she seemed to…
A coyote runs across the dirt roadand into the woods. Light gray fur,all haunches and tail. Nuisance. I have seen her running once beforelike an animal released, breath ofeverything filling her lungs. Desire or flight?I could not tell from my car, the windshieldcovered in dust and pollen—feeling grizzled myself,time dilated into clusters and clusters of fallow. Bitch.My eyes…
In poetry, our winner is Aurielle Marie for her poem “a psalm in which i demand a new name for my kindred.” Of her poem, poetry judge Fatimah Asghar said, “The language in this poem is incredibly unique—every line is a slight twist, a turn, a surprise at the end of the breath. The language…
Same one we’d keptin the garage or in the toolshedmy whole life, same loose handle, same tarnishedblade. I’d seen my father sharpen it on the bench grinder,sparks flying, to cut through roots or hardenedsoil. Same one I’d used to replant our overgrowngeraniums one spring, from the front of the houseto the back lot. Now, I’m…
Ignore that I am invisible to you,a man old enough to call a girl a girl when I see one. Ignore how I am held up by a half-Windsorslouched under teeth yellow as a work day is endless. Ignore the depth of my voice and listen. It’s not the van.Or the bumper. Or the rubber…
Not my daughter and me saying once, and once again, to remember we need tofu. But more me saying, please call if you’re going to be really late. And then we’re way past re-, and eyerolls won’t undo it, and compulsion won’t let the mind rev any way but. There’s a moth—the greater wax moth—that…
There was a time when, sitting in a parking lot, I could make the parked car in front of me dematerialize. Could drive straight through it, if I wanted to. That was an unwashed time, birdcalls trapped in drawers, matching sets of months when a face could never move a face again. Dematerializing the parked…
She never set foot in that house, wason the other side of the world, livingher life as if every day were Sunday, thoughgiven her location this was noblessing, just another day ofshortages, of thuds in the distance that madeone’s mind leap even when one’sbody was in bed. One day bledinto another, the ash of intention…
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