The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books.
there are trees. A tall one
that has shed all its leaves,
has its roots in my heart.
One, still bright with red
and orange, touches
the great loves of my life,
while a spruce, evergreen,
keeps me shamelessly naive.
I like art best when its artifice dissolves. Pull back the curtain: It’s me, looking sheepish. Which me is almost irrelevant: I’ll answer to any name you call. Surrendering is only erotic when what you’ve held inside too long has named you. Made you its shape.
(nonfiction)
Can violence be made into beauty? Can beauty be used to dignify the stain of violence? Sloan seems to suggest so, perhaps, by conceiving of Ophelia’s body as part of nature—indistinguishable from it.
(reviews)
Shiki wrote haiku—tens of thousands of haiku—elevating himself to the immortal ranks of Bashō, Issa, and his personal hero, Buson. However, Shiki did not want to go back to the past and its masters; he wanted to reinvent what he believed was a dying art.
(reviews)
Part of a series of Native poetry collected by Mark Turcotte.
Springtime is for the seeds and letting light into the home our spirits live in. We prep the soil for the ones who sleep there. Summer picks berries for playtime.
(poetry)
if the Earth would just split in two
& one half would take its leave
I’d take a seat on the other half
& absorb the blue skies above
(translations/poetry)
Farmwork required
strong hands and body
not the somersaults
of ABCs in the mind.
(No Place is Foreign)
Some art just makes you think instantly of the seven deadly sins. Not because they traffic in, say, lust, but because they arouse feelings in you with such painful precision that it seems some dark magic has occurred.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“I wish I could once again see / your benches where the weary come to sit / and watch their burdens bloom into butterflies.”
He wonders if his life has been a lie. Was he ever really a selenophile? Were the yearly parades a waste of time? The protests. The fights for equality.
(fiction)
