Erica Wright is the author of the poetry collections All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned (Black Lawrence Press, 2017) and Instructions for Killing the Jackal (Black Lawrence Press/Dzanc Books, 2011), the chapbook Silt (Dancing Girl Press, 2009), and the novels The Blue Kingfisher (forthcoming from Polis Books, 2018), The Granite Moth (Pegasus Books, 2017), and The Red Chameleon (Pegasus, 2014). Her poems have […]
Near enough to hear the rough language of men, I watched my father and uncles string an electric fence between yard and field. One read the worry on my face, explained how the shock just pinched beasts so big, just told them their limits. When left alone, I threw sticks at it, then grabbed hold, […]
Like Saint-Exupéry before me, I draw a crate with a sheep inside, knowing my sheep is sure to disappoint should he see the light of day, sure to be a sickly, mongrel sort of pet. I keep him locked away, sneak in at night while he sleeps, feel in the dark for his curls, rub […]
Did your mother ask when you’ll bring a wife, purse her lips until they disappeared? Did you show her the ceramic bird then shut it away with the other birthday gifts? You say you’re better off than most married folks you know, and I want to toss off, let’s you and me make a go […]
Not man enough to hold a man like a child until the morning, I would fight the ache in arms not built for labor if hard-pressed by you, near ghost with head upheld by want and pain-killers, the kind I used to hide along with the knives. I lied about not minding blood, and once […]
I The TB hospital was locked up years ago, but quarantine remains advised and sometimes lobotomy, though no one speaks of it outside certain circles. What can be done with so much real estate—all the tiny rooms? Who would like to haunt the floors with whatever lurks in the medicine closet, long-emptied of laudanum and […]
Erica Wright, Poetry Editor at Guernica, talks about a poem she wishes she’d written.
Erica Wright, Poetry Editor at Guernica, talks about the genesis of her poem Taking a Punch.