Justin Bigos (poetry, ’08) recently read at the 2012 Texas Institute for Literary and Textual Studies’ Summer Workshop.
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Jynne Martin (poetry, ’06): Jynne’s poem “How Long is the Coast of Britain” appears in the Spring 2012 issue of Granta.
How Long is the Coast of Britain?
Eels loop frantic in buckets of blood,
the log aflame cracks as it collapses to ash,but the shot doe slackens in silence.
It is the hour for farewells. It is the hourfor suckling the stray, for swaddling the runt,
a last chance to smooth back your hair...[Keep Reading]…
Dilruba Ahmed (poetry, ’09): Dilruba was recently interviewed by fellow alum Justin Bigos (poetry, ’08) for the American Literary Review.
At a recent poetry reading, an audience member described poets as people who have a sixth sense, a kind of super-sensory power that allows them to detect things that are not readily apparent to others. I think that’s probably accurate—that poets possess a kind of hyper-sensitivity to people and places, to relationships and history, to language and its capacity to capture/shape/disrupt experience, and to the collision of imagination and perception in making sense of the world. So maybe it’s just that sensitivity that lends poets the kind of double vision you describe—permitting them to fashion, for example, from two unlike things a powerful metaphor that transforms understanding and helps us see the world anew, or to somehow stand simultaneously here and there...[Read the full interview]…
Dilruba is the author of Dhaka Dust: Poems (2011, Graywolf), winner of the 2010 Bakeless Prize for Poetry.
Jasmine Beach-Ferrara (fiction, ’01): Jasmine recently visited the White House for the third annual LGBT Pride Month reception.
It was a pretty incredible experience, and an honor, being in that space … the experience of having the doors of the White House not just opened to LGBT people, but so warmly opened, and saying, ‘You’re a part of this country,’” she said. “It left me with a lot of hope of what’s possible as we move forward.
Jasmine is Executive Director of the Campaign for Southern Equality.
Catherine Barnett (poetry, ’02): Catherine’s poems “Categories of Understanding,” “From the Doorway,” and “Apophasis at the All-Night Rite Aid” appear in the Summer 2012 issue of the Kenyon Review Online.
Apophasis at the All-Night Rite Aid
Not wanting to be alone
in the messy cosmology
over which I at this late hour
have too much dominion,
I wander the all-night uptown Rite Aid
where the handsome new pharmacist,
come midnight, shows me to the door
and prescribes the moon,
which has often helped before.
Catherine is the author of The Game of Boxes: Poems
Muriel Nelson (poetry, ’06): Muriel’s poem “Borage” was recently featured in the Producing Poetry blog series at the Seattle Times:
Borage
Odorlessness of oxygen,
cold taste of cucumber,
touch of moth — tender,
barely felt, nearly
soundless in the mouth —
the appearance of borage in the garden is
like a multitude of eyes.To eat or drink any flower is odd.
But to take this one in wine or salad
not for courage, but for color,
is to take this bloom forgetful
of its lore as it flies
on a breeze whole,
as eyes take eyes
with a glance,and naturally,
unknowingly,
particle by particle,
swallow
God.
Muriel is the author of the poetry collection Most Wanted
RJ Gibson (poetry, ’11): RJ’s chapbook You Could Learn a Lot has been named co-winner the 2012 Editor’s Prize from Seven Kitchens Press. The book is scheduled for release this winter.
His previous collection, Scavenge, won the 2009 Robin Becker Chapbook Prize, also from Seven Kitchens.
Gabriel Blackwell (fiction, ’09): Gabriel’s story “The Behavior of Pidgeons” has been reprinted at Alphaville, a Dutch online magazine. The story was originally published in Conjunctions in 2008. The newest version includes Gabriel’s illustrations for his forthcoming collection of essays and short fiction, Critique of Pure Reason (November 2012, Noemi Press).
The Behavior of Pidgeons
Methods and Materials
There are seven Walter Pidgeons seated in a waiting room measuring twenty-two feet by twenty-two feet. A picture window (a) takes up most of the wall opposite the door (b). The door, serving as entrance to the waiting room and as exit to the examination rooms, fulfills all of the functions of the “office,” as the sole means for patients to be seen and the doctor(s) to see them. Four groups of chairs (numbered 1–8) paired around four knee-high, magazine-laden tables (c) make up the bulk of the room’s contents. Above a water cooler (d), there is a shelf, painted a dirty off-white to blend with the walls, which holds a bowl of peanuts and a stack of small waxed paper cups with a floral design for the water cooler. Letters in parentheses refer to Figure A, below. Not shown in this drawing are the Walter Pidgeons, whose total bulk narrowly exceeds that of the room’s furnishings. This diagram is not drawn to scale, and should only be referred to when considering the position of Walter Pidgeons in relation to each other...[Keep Reading]…
Rolf Yngve (fiction, ’12): Rolf’s piece “Moonstone” is currently up at The Common, as part of their weekly series, Dispatches.
Moonstone
Three days of dirty weather and everyone saw it on their way home from work. It was dumped onto the Silver Strand State Beach parking lot— the keel naked and scabbed with barnacles, the mast canted. Someone said the park maintenance people must have hauled it up out of the surf. It looked like a forklift had punched two holes in the hull.
Some of us came from our homes across the highway to get a better look. We were the usuals who know each other because we walk our dogs: Butch’s mom, Lilly’s mom, Shamrock’s dad, all of us with our plastic bags tied to the handles of our leashes. Drugs, it must be drugs, someone said. Or immigrants. Illegals...[Keep Reading]…
Michael Jarmer (fiction, ’97): Michael’s first novel, Monster Talk