Disappearance: North Sea Poems. Lesley Harrison. Shearsman Books, 2020. 78 pp.$18.00 (paper).Civil Bound. Myung Mi Kim. Omnidawn, 2019. 96 pp. $17.95 (paper).Colonize Me. Benjamín Naka-Hasebe Kingsley. Saturnalia, 2019. 112 pp. $16.00 (paper).Doomstead Days. Brian Teare. Nightboat Books, 2019. 176 pp. $17.95 (paper). This spring, during Michigan’s stay-at-home order in response to the coronavirus pandemic, I …
Voyage Around My Room. Xavier de Maistre. Translated by Stephen Sartarelli. New Directions, 2016. 244 pp. $14.95 (paper). In 1790 Xavier de Maistre was put under house arrest for the offense of dueling. His sentence was forty-two days. As I enter my third month of social distancing (at the time of this writing), I suspect …
Bel Canto. Ann Patchett. Harper, 2001. 336 pp. $25.99 (cloth). In these unsettling/upsetting/unprecedented times, as so many corporate emails begin these days, I find myself annoyed with articles promising me THE BEST BOOKS TO READ IN QUARANTINE. What irritates me about these lists is the implication that a particular kind of book is most satisfying …
Babel-17. Samuel R. Delany. First edition Ace Books, 1966. Vintage, 2001 (withEmpire Star). 336 pp. $15.95 (paper). For a science-fiction novel about space travel and intergalactic conflict, Samuel Delany’s 1966 book Babel-17 begins with an unlikely scenario: poet Rydra Wong is asked by the government to help save the universe. Like ours, Wong’s Earth is …
Author’s Note: This play was commissioned by the Passage Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. It was developed without input or approval from the Dr. Bronner’s Company, and all representations of Emanuel Bronner and his family members herein are entirely fictional. This play was originally developed and co-conceived with Sammy Zeisel; it would not have been possible …
It takes almost nine minutes for sunlight to reach earthso there is a glance of timein the morning, the predawn graymy children love, when light has departed the station, outfor delivery, and we don’t even know what ultraviolet thought movestoward us. Three times this weeka book has reminded me we are madeof the dust of …
Red-tailed hawk Redring from a milk jugencountered on the MisheMokwa Trail But it wasn’t that plastic piece of dread No The redof someone’s pony-tail holder something shed as involuntarily as red blood cells Mariafatigued unknowing blaming age I blamed some unknownhiker careless I thought dropping trash amidst the blacksage and juniper Who drinks milk on …
filoplume semiplume bristles an emptycalamus Feathers receive no nourishment They are deadstructures On a bird feather each barb holds smallerbarbs On us each loss encompasses smallerlosses Feathers soften the lines where different partsof the body meet They sculpt the body into a teardropshape There is a phrase in Vietnamese—chia bu`ôn— that translatesloosely into sharing sadness …
At six, I didn’t know more than riding a Schwinn and climbing banyan trees. “Do you believe in God?” the two blonde girls from four doors down askedas our bikes circled endlessly in figure eights around each other. Well, I suppose one girl asked while the other simply rode, silently and blonde.They weren’t twins, but …
•A hot dog in the park becomes a handgun I take two bites from, fire a round at a low-flying plane.•Mom bayonets the cake, chops the heads off candlesbefore I can find my tongue in the trash and make my wish.•One minute I squirt some children with a garden hose, the next I sniper foreheads, …