our boards echo under sodium streetlight…
Grid (4) by Jaydn DeWald
Portland Review’s Partial Guide to AWP 2019
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…
Terrance Hayes on 2018: American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
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…
“Salton Sea,” Gelatin Silver Exposure, 2017 by Kate Bove
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…
The Little Guide by Mia Castro
In an unknown village on the outskirts of a small town miles away from the city, a girl not more than six years of age lives. Three hundred steps from her home, there’s a small, eerie cave. At first, it was almost an hour walk with her clammy little feet. Doing it every day, back and forth for some time, cut it by almost half…