A Series of Misunderstandings
About blood: it’s only one means of being alive.Every living cognitive doesn’t have or use itto transport nutrients & oxygen. Sometimescreatures use alternative systems. This meansthere are ways of being alive that look nothinglike the somatic supposition opposite...
The Social Virtues Series
Recent Posts
Two Poems
Every train I’ve ever run for has left me & still, I find myself gripping my straps & pounding pavement, waving down whoever’s evening blurs...
Matrix of all Relation: The Death Spiral
The Death Spiral by Sarah GiragosianBlack Lawrence Press, 2020. “To rend: this is what I want,” says the intrepid and metamorphic speaker of...
She Says
We’re dreamswalking in the worldon the landof red skin red bloodon the land of a civil war She sayswe will walkon rifles for freedomon missiles for...
Girl Twirling
You orbit around a young star/In a rocket you travel to a pink planet/Fifty-seven light years from Earth
A Review of SUMMER SOLSTICE by Nina MacLaughlin
“What’s the start of summer for you, the signal that it’s here?” Nina MacLaughlin asks in her book-length essay Summer Solstice, published by Black Sparrow Press. And with that invitation the reader’s imagination is kindled, fueled by the flush of inquiries that follow: “Is it the last day of school? The lilacs or the day lilies? First sleep with the windows open?”
Three Poems
We leaned back/in the planetarium/seats, looking up/into the dark–/a father and his/two sons. We heard/what could have been
Our Chernobyl
From my window, I look out at Montpelier’s empty streets, trying to tune out the COVID-19 news updates that ping and bing on my phone, asking myself why this all feels so eerily familiar. I know this jumble of emotions. Fear, helplessness, despair, and also the sense that we’re all in this together.
Surrealism as a Mode of Memory and Instruction in THE FIRE EATER
Surrealism is a flight against Oblivion. Taking to the winds of Memory on the magical wings of the supra-real. Reality through an extraordinary idea of Reality. What creates memory and what creates forgetfulness, surrealism asks us to ask ourselves.
Freight
Your anger arrives on the back of a train/Arrives in my yard. The neighbor’s grass too long, and the city getting interested
Scissors of the Air
A visit to the hair salon every seven or eight weeks for me is the emotional equivalent of attending a high school reunion, the kind where two popular girls, naturally both cheerleaders, rush you in the restroom line, singsong, “Are you married yet? We didn’t think so,” and whizz off in a confetti of giggles.
Two Poems
Picture a garden, circling it, a field on fire, rich with color, but in that color is lack, and at first, you can assume a grander theme; assume a seduction associated with color or vibrancy, but that’s one of the first things you learn in school: everything is made up of shades.