Two poems: A Round Porcelain Jam Pot, Again, and Rescue Song by Joy Katz
Two poems: A Recent Transformation Tries To Climb the Stairs, and When the World Was Ten Years Old He Fell Deep in Love with Egypt by Patricia Lockwood
Ceremony for Lying Completely Still by Marni Ludwig
Colony Collapse: The Colony Has Collapsed Before by Erin Lyndal Martin
Colin Cheney, Here Be Monsters. University of Georgia Press, 2010. Paperback, 80 pp, $16.95. Reading Colin Cheney's collection of poems, selected by David Wojahn …
It’s ten a.m. on an overcast Monday morning at the Gore Hotel in west London. Just yards from the Royal Albert Hall, Michael Ondaatje waits alone in a room lined with volumes of …
Melissa Dziedzic: The duplicating of the Grand Canyon is an interesting concept for a story, how did you come up with the initial idea? Did you start work on the piece with a familiarity with the …
A conversation on humor in fiction with Elisa Albert, Steve Almond, Brock Clarke, Sam Lipsyte, John McNally, and Deb Olin Unferth The conversation that follows took place over e-mail in the fall …
The sick queen crochets bees from pockets palsied stevedores serrate, then ties with string the cineplex to suburbs swabbed in pollen. The poet speaks precisely so we hear the “b” in “lamb,” …
I am trying to be simple as ink. But the horns line my spine. I talk to you sometimes in the daylight. At night I try not to suspend. I hope it does not distract you. Celan said this to Liana …
Bear and reindeer cut up on a plate. An endless cave. A duvet of darkness. Your notes piping and plaintive I think are still down there though they traveled ahead of you too. They walked all the way …
X. The self-murder mystery begins like this: We are more likely to kill ourselves than be killed by someone else. I am the pistol saying I will only say this once. Do not open the tiny door in the …
It seems that a certain fear underlies everything. If I were to tell you something profound it would be useless, as every single thing I know is not timeless. I am particularly risk averse. I choose …
We the thirst brother the we water from the inside from the lips From nowhere to the lips We water inside brother we to say it water from the inside thirst and we / Can’t never have …
—What Do People Do All Day, Richard Scarry FIRE! I read in my modern jazz radio deejay voice. A cat mother screams, her iron set the house aflame, her cat-son plays, upstairs, …
When the waitress finally toddled back to our table, she looked really funny: all the hard edges of her features (and believe me, they could’ve cut glass) had melted down in the time that she’d …
The boss wears wrist guards I risk carpal tunnel without them can’t see anything but her fingers palm hidden palm line of the liver line of Apollo line of deposition hidden the line of the …
When I walk into a room the first thing I do is size everyone up fiscally. You people have scored very low. Where are the gifts? Have you heard the latest about politics and religion? Guess …
I: Tom Thumb As they sweep through midnight and spring rain, they seem to step straight out of a vision or a pantomime in which three stoned stage hands join into parody their awkward limbs beneath a …
Within a thick fur of trees, a single sharp black dart punctures the gray sky. A hollow shot sounds throughout fields and mountains, echoes as if from an oil drum’s bottom. A minute dot …
David, an American Fulbright exchange scholar, was staying in an apartment on the Embankment of Canal Griboyedova. His third morning, almost noon, while he was recovering from a hangover, …
No matter how much my best friend Kelly dressed it up for the party, the balcony was too damn small. I was standing with a man I’d just met on a pretty shag rug that obviously belonged …
A fireman is a very noble thing to be. They said, You’re too short to be a fireman, Marty, and really, what service do you think you’re providing the world as a short fireman with a …
I. After you left, I tried to sleep in our bed and found the mattress too hard on your side and too soft on mine. I laid in the middle and pretended I was both of us which worked for a little while. …
For a long time I wanted to go back to the Grand Canyon. Then came the dual catastrophe: an earthquake that left Grand Canyon Village in ruins; a mining accident, the details of which have never been …
Good prose provides an emotional experience (feeling) wrapped in an intellectual experience (reading). The particular problem of short prose is—well, its shortness. How can several …
