John Murillo Q&A on the pleasure of writing
John Murillo talks about the pleasure and challenges of writing.
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Northwest Passage
Standing on this deck I have watched Morning’s first pale peach jeopardy Of light flush alleys and rooftops, Just touching my neighbors’ gardens, Until they seethed like the green smoke Of a new world. On these sidewalks, With the linden’s melon scent twined Around an untuned engine’s blue carbon Monoxide and Wednesday’s trash, I’ve […]
On the Death of a Circus Elephant Electrocuted in the Initial Y
–YouTube, 126,000+ hits Because the weather of old film is Northerly You find me as if looking through a window Flawed in January. How ardent your breath, Pent, like the gray mares of the bareback queen, Restless in their freight-car shunted To the margins of a year early […]
When I Was Beautiful
I was forgiven my raucous laughter. Wedding guests feasting like wasps on soft-skinned fruits and sweetened wines, even as a noise more appallingly intimate than thunder shocks some foreign air into tiers of voile. Leaves shuddering from trees; the body harrowed of will. My sister was safe when […]
Averill Curdy Q&A on coming to poetry
Averill Curdy talks about how she first became interested in poetry.
Averill Curdy Q&A on her poem “On the Death of a Circus Elephant Electrocuted in the Initial Y”
Averill Curdy talks about the genesis of her poem “On the Death of a Circus Elephant Electrocuted in the Initial Y.”
The Summer Carnival
Summers, the football field that bordered Burnham Lake transformed into a carnival—canvas tents streaked with dust; midgets and untidy animals unpacked and left to sit, blinking, in the sun; until someone remembered to send a boy for water, or caught the smell of soured droppings on clipped grass. I imagined their sometimes month- […]
A String of Days
In a hotel with cobalt paint and yellow trim, one room had only books and windows, and no clocks by which to tell the time. One room was a well within a shaded garden. Another had only silence for furniture. One room once held a prisoner of war—its walls covered with messages he scratched on […]