Poetry |
“Little Mirror”
“… then a fish swimming close / to the image of something familiar, // but from another world, this molten / phenomenon, which might be wreckage // from a lighthouse keeper’s mantle …”
Poetry |
“How I Became a Bird” & “Cabbage Soup”
“My father kept a Rosary in his pocket. / He was known for giving away inexpensive / holy medals and pocket prayer beads. / At one point he handed out gold-colored / lapel pin doves.”
Fiction |
two selections from My Body is Paper
“He was already shirtless and, as he started loosening his belt, the metal buckle picked up reflections of my room, my face on the bed, my look that this will solve everything, that I can lose myself here, that I can’t let my mother rule my life.”
Poetry |
“Saturn Return” & “Fragment Found in a Ballot Box”
“… The stark order of sex / disagrees with me. I like to stay home / and make up mysteries, like we did that winter / the rain kept changing to snow and back again.”
Interview |
A Conversation with Jesse Nathan
“My process is a kind of deep listening, a hesitating, a holding back as long as I can … the poem comes after a long process of induction — a process of creating the conditions out of which I must speak, need to speak, can’t stay silent any longer.”
Literature in Translation |
“Chaïm Soutine’s Obsession”
“That his rage was in a painting did not suffice to appease his rage against the painting. He kept taking back his works from those who had bought them, to destroy them.”
Essay |
“All Elegy: What Are Poems for in a Destitute Time?”
“I find myself asking, what can a poem possibly do to confront or alleviate or expose the climate crisis? How can the poem possibly avoid the hazard of merely “making us aware,” an increasingly helpless and self-indulgent realization.”
Poetry |
“The Theory of the Multiverse”
“I live uptown I live / downtown I live all around / say goodbye to the mythopoeic / no more receiving holy orders / just remember to pay attention”
Poetry |
“A Way to Restore Beauty to the Universe” & “A Garden, Post-Catastrophe”
“… we spoke to a copper sundial to call on womankind, / our sisters in the desert, our mothers on the coast / evoking laughter not yet forgotten in a season of grief –”
Essay |
“Appraisal”
“Having clipped it from the classifieds, my mother showed us the ad: Cash for Class Rings — This Weekend Only. Most households still subscribed to daily newspapers then, retrieving the bundles from lawns or landings and yanking off green rubber bands to flatten them out before reading.”
Poetry |
“What’s The Past Like?”
“But / now I recall the sound a gray bird // made to wake me from a crazed dream. / Like a scratch awl with its fluted wooden // handle chipping bark off an oak tree.”
Essay |
“Bad Seeds”
“Pop a seed into your mouth and you enjoy an elfin sip of its juice, tart and sweet at the same time. In an instant, the pleasure is gone and you’re left with only the white core, bitter and unpleasant to chew.”
Literature in Translation |
“The Bird’s Birth,” “The Bird (II)” & “The Old Woman’s Song of Herself as a Young Girl”
“this is the bird / in whose one eye / there is the last leaf of fall / and in whose other eye / there is the news / of the spring baby’s hasty birth”
Poetry |
“Autobiography of Melancholy” & “Silence”
“All day I was drugged with sadness. / Asleep, my fists curled like thoughts unspoken. // I am a realist bothered by reality. / Someone who dreams with eyes wide open.”
Poetry |
“Eternal Summer”
“Split a penny in half and use it twice / he jokes, gesturing at $6.99 / neon laundry detergent jugs, dented. / I couldn’t afford these back then.“