Category: Series
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GIRLS OF LEAST IMPORTANCE by K.K. Fox
It wasn’t like you think. Charlie Todd was one of the most popular candidates going through Rush that year, even with a limp and a useless hand. We tried not to stare, but her left arm was lifeless, paralyzed, and her hand curled at the end like a comma. She hit her head in a…
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HEARTWOOD by Rose Skelton
On the day after Hazel died – it was a Tuesday afternoon in early March – George stood at his woodworking bench, whittling a bowl. He pressed the piece of yew down, and used a bowl gouge to scoop a smooth sliver of the pinkish-white wood so that it curled upwards and away, falling…
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THIS IS HOW I REMEMBER HER by Blas Falconer
I am spending the morning with the poetry of Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan, who died in May of this year.` Born and raised in Los Angeles, Claire received her B.A. in English from Loyola Marymount University, an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Virginia, her M.A. in litera-ture at the University of California at Berkeley, and…
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Saturday Morning: Remembering Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnanby Adrienne Su
Twenty-five years ago, when Claire Kageyama-Ramakrishnan and I became classmates in the MFA program in poetry at the University of Virginia, we were the only Asian Americans in our cohort; a third, Roy Kamada, would join us the next year. Both in our twenties, Claire and I were tangling with the role of Asian-American identity…
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DRAG NOTES – FROM A CONVERSATION WITH KINGA by Justin Engles
Davenport, Iowa. If you can believe it. Of all the dive bars in all the world, that’s where I saw my first drag show. I was 19. And there was this queen there —Ginger Snaps. She was a pointer-sister. She really served up the fantasy. I said to myself, that looks like a lot of…
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PRAYER TO ST. MARTHA by Leah Silvieus
Late August the galley blooms fruit flies, smoke-winged & garnet-eyed, circling the soft caves of over-sweet summer fruit: pear & blueberry, clingstone peach. Each night I pray resurrection but am deceived. Faith is not feast but desire, not beauty of the table but what drags us starving there – what was buried…
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THREE POEMS by Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick
ISADORE—THERE IS A DOOR SOMEWHERE paused in the breath of a thousand horses where we wait for light to catch our arms, bodies into nets, golden sea flecked with ravens’ wings. Dear, I want to fly as quick as I can into a canyon, leap hard into your eyelids—how they never formed enough…
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TWO POEMS by Danielle Mitchell
GOOGLE CENTO Enter: kim kardashian body If you know nothing else about Kim Kardashian, you know that she is an actual woman, a physical body: 5 feet 2 inches, 130 pounds, 38-26-42, 34D Kim Kardashian is queen of her self-made kingdom Kim Kardashian’s Entire Body Is Naked in These…
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excerpt from FIEBRE TROPICAL by Juliana Delgado Lopera
I met the Pastores at Iglesia Cristiana Jesucristo Redentor two days after we landed. To my surprise the church was a room, a room, inside The Hyatt a few blocks from our house. Was I the only one appalled by its lack of holiness? Did Mami wave her estrato like a flag of entitlement and…
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THREE POEMS by avery r. young
new testament i. in temple mudda: boy!!!!!!! gonna make my hair fall worryin if yo life still on dis side of groun(d) us been three day(s) lookin fo u u in herr runnin yo mouf hey-zeus: dunno y u worryin bout me u know whatchu had me fo i handlin my father bidness mudda: my God!!!!! …
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Ghosting, Invisibility and the Erasure of Particular Bodies: A Spell by Chris Abani
Introduction by Poetry Editor Nathan McClain: At our 20th annual Cave Canem Retreat last week, I learned that a camera, no matter how good a camera, is mechanical. This sounds like a simple statement, I know, but what it means is that a camera doesn’t see what you see; a camera only sees what’s in front…
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TWO POEMS by Sierra Golden
LIGHT BOAT n. A small fishing boat equipped with several 1,000-watt light bulbs hung from aluminum shades to attract squid to commercial fishing grounds. Jesse isn’t really a pirate, but the Coast Guard thinks so when he calls to say he found a body. It doesn’t matter that she’s still alive, so cold she stopped…