Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956
“A Muslim is speaking at the Democratic Convention! Musa, come down!” my mother yelled over the noisy TV speakers. I left the comfort of my room and trudged down the carpeted stairs to meet my entire family relaxing on the beige sofas in front of the lit television. Next to the CNN logo, commonplace on my TV screen in the past year of contentious campaigning,…
our boards echo under sodium streetlight…
In a few weeks, Portland will play host to an expected 12,000-or-so literary-minded visitors — editors, publishers, agents, teachers, and yes, lots and lots of writers — all gathering for the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, otherwise known as AWP. For both uninitiated and veteran attendees, the many lists of events, readings, offsite readings, panel discussions, and sponsored happy hours can feel…
Re-reading American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes (Penguin Poets, 2018) at the end of 2018 was literally hard to stomach. I revisited the politically charged poetry collection on the day a seven-year-old child died while in U.S. Border Patrol custody and was reminded of the work’s visceral nature. Hayes’s keen focus on bodies creates a striking portrait of contemporary American…
Step 1. Exposure: My grandma wanted a burial at sea. It sounded like something beautiful—like something worth immortalizing in marble, or on canvas. An oil painting the size of a billboard. But this place is nothing like an oil painting. Not slick, not exact. Instead, the Salton Sea is like a Seurat painting: beautiful at a distance, the shapes familiar and concrete—until you walk closer, realize…