Badminton with Annie Dillard
sneakers with jagged blue diagonals. I am her dazzled student whom she has agreed to volley. We are not keeping score. Every other shot she makes is a soaring lob. Her flashy underhands shuttle the cock just shy of the gym ceiling’s high beams.
The Social Virtues Series
Recent Posts
Nine Winds (i am only ever writing about love)
I. Pandemic IT IS THE FIRST WEEK OF MARCH WHEN WE CROSS THE BORDER INTO MEXICO, continuing the long drive from the temperate rainforest of the...
Four Poems
Uterus, You Always the gracious hostess, stretched thinto accommodate your growing guests—threepregnancies a breeze. Until the physicaltherapist...
Ornithology
LAST NIGHT I DREAMED I was a child. Mother on the front porch, watering flowers. Daddy on the couch, book fallen to the floor. Too young for words, I know nothing of their worlds. Ornithology. Site fidelity. Geraniums. Faith. I know nothing yet of the split between science and God, between men and women, between want and need. Home is a set of sensory perceptions: the rough-smooth texture of my father’s wool socks; bright red tomatoes on the windowsill; my mother humming “Abide With Me” as flowers outside remain abundant, carrying full green leaves.
New Contributing Poetry Editor: Lupe Mendez!
GMR is happy to announce the addition of Lupe Mendez as our new Contributing Poetry Editor!
A Review of MIRACLES COME ON MONDAYS by Penelope Cray
Miracles Come on Mondaysby Penelope CrayPleiades Press, 2020 Please lock me in the quiet room so I can once again concentrate and give Penelope Cray the attention she exacts from each story of her debut collection, “Miracles Come on Mondays,” published by Pleiades...
My Afmerica: A Review & Conversation with Artress Bethany White
In her second collection, My Afmerica, Artress Bethany White grapples with the grief of generations of Black mothers in America. Her title reflects the reality that black skin, for many whites, is an unwelcome insertion into white consciousness of country, and, of course, that being Black in America is its own cultural experience, a world apart.
A Review of INSECURITY SYSTEM by Sara Wainscott
Ever read a crown of sonnets and wish you could read another one, and then more? Me neither, until the winningly, teasingly, loosely, expertly assembled array of fourteen-line items that comprise Sara Wainscott’s Insecurity System. It’s a contender for my favorite first book this year.
A Review of Deborah Landau’s SOFT TARGETS
A Review of Adam Clay’s TO MAKE ROOM FOR THE SEA
An Unmapping: A Review of MAPS AND TRANSCRIPTS OF THE ORDINARY WORLD by Kathryn Cowles
At a time when many of us are yearning for clear directions from a reputable source, when a simple how to get from here to there feels impossible, when the world seems anything but ordinary, Kathryn Cowles’ Maps and Transcripts of the Ordinary World is a reminder to see the world around us, a beautiful return to noticing, an invitation to circle and remember.
A Review of CROSSCUT by Sean Prentiss
Crosscut by Sean Prentiss University of New Mexico Press, 2020 In a time when human communities have become more divorced than ever from the natural world, Sean Prentiss’ debut collection of poems, Crosscut, celebrates the binding and clarifying effects of...