Poetry |
“Solstice”
“Winter dulls the world and / the yearly deaths begin. / I can see a distance through the woods now.”
Literature in Translation |
“Pagans Love Poetry”
“Pagans love poetry / they use it to enchant their gods and their kings, / to curse other gods and kings.”
Poetry |
“Before the End of Time”
“Last night the moon shone so near, it seemed / a neighbor’s yard had flung its sundial skyward, // time to give a proper send-off to the cosmos”
Poetry |
“This Time Next Year”
“Fifteen minutes into the rain, the papier-mâché torso / of the makeshift guerrilla statue gets soggy // and the likeness of the dissident hero / bows to every passing commuter.”
Interview |
“Fortunate Cul de Sacs”: Two Poets in Dialogue
“The tensions in contemporary American poetry created by sibling rivalries, ageism, and histrionics are like junk food –– they’re plentiful, and have an addictive taste and empty calories.”
Lyric Prose |
“Forfeit”
“He puts his birthplace down as Brooklyn, of which he knows nothing. When he was a baby he was rescued from Brooklyn. Beside his stats: he hails from.”
Poetry |
“Garden Augur”
“As if the fox while I was fasting / had run a blade / slit its prey / gobbled the guts & // left a skeletal coat …”
Essay |
“Soap: Art of Failure”
“What if instead of saying we have failed we say that we are failuring? What if a practice of imagination is often also a practice of failure?”
Literature in Translation |
“This Loss”, “Words at the Entrance to Jerusalem,” “Luckily,” “Labyrinths” &
“So difficult, this loss: / to imagine your pages / are those of a dead man, / and that death’s colleagues / are the ones / consoling you now.”
Poetry |
“Pilgrims” & “Postcard”
“This is a cross-state / drive of faded billboards, endless sagebrush, // crowded rest stops and unemployed landmarks, / a countryside the boy quietly grows to accept, // until they reach the first signs of city life …”
Literature in Translation |
“B’s Grave,” “September 18, 1953” & “February 21, 1954”
“The past comes and walks by your side once more. / Don’t change your heart, don’t be charmed. / Don’t linger, take leave of the time …”
Fiction |
“Versions of Miriam”
“What would it be like to spend an entire night here, not waiting for anyone? The thought edged plausibility. If she was lonely and looking for a place to drive and feel unbothered, this would be the place.”
Poetry |
“Young Widowhood (ending in the ICU)” & “Monitors”
“Your usual grief is thick, pervasive, oozing / over everything, but tonight it’s erratic, an itchy // tag that scrapes your waist and some days you think of him / less …”
Literature in Translation |
“An Obituary for Roman”
“I called upon all residents of Omsk who follow me on social media to contact the fitness club where Roman was working and demand his firing for threatening women. My request went far and wide — tens of thousands of reposts, scores of news items in major media.”
Fiction |
“The Rock of Ephyra”
“The rock was beginning to understand that each day would be different, each day bringing subtle changes in the experience of being rolled up the hill and released to forge new trails.”