Out of the blue, I say, I’m from the state of Texas.
What’s that supposed to mean?
I know my son is gonna survive these ass-whoopings no matter how many of them there are. But when it’s five against one and there’s not a grown-up to intervene, I’m gonna instruct Dev to pick up a rock or a stick and leave a mark on somebody. Let’s hope it’s not your kid.
My uncle’s a lawyer, she says.
My daddy’s Pete Karr, I say, and hang up.
mary karr
Tag: read women
interview w/ scaachi koul
Rumpus: There are more events to be had, in Canada and abroad, but what are some lessons that you’ve learned while touring for this book?
Koul:
1) Teach people how to say your first and last names before they go up to a microphone.
2) Sit up straight at live events.
3) One glass of wine is not enough, three is too many, but weirdly enough, five is perfect.
the one & only! full Q&A over at the rumpus
review: STOMACHS by luna miguel (tr. luis silva)
This review was originally published at Ploughshares on 7.14.17
Let’s romanticize purple. Let’s use it when something is so maudlin that it becomes gaudy, to describe a thing that contains copious amounts of weltschmerz. Let’s have this consensus: purple is not the way you (should) want your work to be described. But there are times for sadness and severity and all things bleak, and what do we do then?
Luna Miguel might not have solutions but Stomachs reminds us that melancholy is not always destructive. Translated from the Spanish by Luis Silva and published by Sacramento indie Scrambler Books, Stomachs is Miguel’s first poetry collection available in English. While some covers mean to obfuscate, the design here is blunt—even belligerent, gnarly and grotesque. In a reproduction reminiscent of old-fashioned film, the same image is produced over and over: a naked woman splitting herself open at the abdomen, blood stains trekking toward her navel. It announces that this collection is not for readers seeking cute haikus about cats, or the heartbreak that would rather focus on coffee mugs left in kitchen sinks. This is the ugly kind.
full review here
What I really want
is the resurrection of everyone
I ever loved
I will put them in a room
and never go inside
sarah bartlett
review: AN ARRANGEMENT OF SKIN by anna journey
Sometimes being a poet means something inside you snaps, but not like a balloon too close to the ceiling. It bends and begs and burrows, and you, flailing like a sad firefly, break all the things you’re not supposed to break, trying to find it. You start with the things that keep you sane, and move outward, until the most feral version of yourself is alone on the phone with a stranger.
You call a stranger because of the shame, or because other lines have been cut. You’ve cut them, with the breaking. Except the phone call isn’t really about the things you’ve done—it’s not about the recitation. It’s asking someone, anyone, if you can still exist apart from your mistakes. Can you see me? Can you hear me?
For Anna Journey, it starts at the University of Houston, during the last year of her PhD program.
full review here
4/2/17, JMN
This poem was originally published at bloof books on 4/2/17
i was ready to sit any porch
any overstuffed couch damp with rain
headlights in the mist like a patterning of mold
in my own life
i wrote my outfits on the calendar
like a protection spell
the days went by like Mikasa plates
plus the tasteless touch of a too-smart woman
i shot Goldschläger in art class
i got kicked out of the cotillion
for sneaking mint Schnapps in the coatroom
remember the trailer
in his parents’ backyard
pulling on my baby-t and jeans
to run inside and use his parents’ bathroom
i never wanted to be rich or poor
just trouble some trouble
all those painstaking poems i wrote in the diner
at 4am
in an aesthetic of middle class failure
i had no where to put my middle finger
remember the apartment where 299
hit the mountain
that summer drinking 40s
with the girls from the Blue Moon
i was happy to listen
she told me she could only come now
when she was dancing
skinny like a child i thought
she could never make my body
or
i could never make my body
—jenn marie nunes
review: TELL ME HOW IT ENDS by valeria luiselli
This review was originally published at Ploughshares on 3/9/17
Here’s a challenge: tell me a story, without knowing the beginning, middle, or the end. Now, tell it in your second language, or one where the handful of words you know transforms you back into a child. No, let’s say you are a child. Let’s say this conversation will be recorded, and what you say—and how you say it—will determine where you are allowed to live. Let’s say you came alone.
This situation happens every day at the immigration courts in New York City, where novelist and essayist Valeria Luiselli volunteers as an interpreter. In her expanded essay Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions, Luiselli outlines the intake form for undocumented minors. The procedure, on paper, is simple: Luiselli presents the questions, the children speak, and Luiselli transcribes their answers in English for the lawyers who will fight to secure their legal status.
