“After Hearing of His Passing” by Rose McLarney (poetry ’10), published by The Millions.
I kept sliding lemon under the skin
and herbs into the openings
of a chicken, its cold countering
the recalled warmth of eggs
in the time when we
collected them fresh
from beneath hens. Our hands,
feather-brushed, found ways
to come near one another.
[… continue reading “After Hearing of His Passing” at The Millions.]
“Sweet Land” by Jill Klein (poetry ’16), published by Scoundrel Time.
Everything’s coming up oranges.
“Ollie Ollie in come free,”
it’s all the statue can do to whisper.
Meanwhile, cats prowl the edges of wildfires,
eagles abandon their towers—
dropping knee pads and hats on an underclad country.
And the FLOTUS floats above this great country,
in gowns that will never be orange.
The handmaids watch as she enters the tower,
as children and chickens roam free—
cage to cage, scratching like matches that can never light fires.
Voices fall in the Capital, to lisps and backside whispers.
When I say wiretaps, I mean the kind that hears horses whisper—
even assholes have assholes to let out the gas. Imagine a country
where they do not. Which begs the question of who fires
first. Which begs the answer. Armpits or oranges?
Imagine the speed of a sea turtle freed
from a six-pack ring that once held Dos Equis. Up to the seaweed tower!
[… continue reading “Sweet Land” at Scoundrel Time.]
“The Unexploded Ordnance Bin” by Rebecca Foust (poetry ’10), published by Verse Daily.
our son found the hollow shell
snub-nosed & finned
& looking like an Acme cartoon bomb
where we raked for clams
he wanted to keep it
& we wanted to let him
even the old oysterman wanted
to let him but we’d read about
the shell found & kept
for three weeks by a boy
in Oregon before the powder
dried & it went off
[… continue reading “The Unexploded Ordnance Bin” at Verse Daily.]
“The Conditional Joke, a Tool for Fiction Writers” by Kate Kaplan (fiction ’18), published by Fiction Writers Review.
Here’s a joke from the 4th or 5th century, CE: Shopping for windows, a Kymean asks if there are any that look south.
Here’s a joke I heard two years ago, at my MFA program: What’s the difference between a poet and a large pizza? A large pizza can feed a family.
These jokes are conditional jokes. That is, they’re jokes which work when listeners have the information necessary to get the point. They have something else in common: in both instances, the conditional information is supplied by the joke itself. I have no doubt that readers understood the jokes even if they came to this essay ignorant of the way the ancient world stereotyped Kymeans and unaware of the presumed impecuniousness of poets. Conditional jokes can educate, and that means that they can be used as exposition.
Done badly, exposition can interrupt a story with a lecture, change the narrative distance, or force characters into artificial behavior—reminiscing where reminiscence isn’t called for or telling people things they already know. Jokes avoid those pitfalls. They engage readers because they’re lively, short, and have unexpected endings. They don’t distort character behavior or change narrative distance, because all kinds of people—all kinds of characters—engage with jokes as tellers and listeners.
[… continue reading at Fiction Writers Review.]
“Sharon Tate” by Alyson Mosquera Dutemple (fiction ’19), published by Unbroken.
A lot of things happened to you but I was only there for one of them. Fall, 1989, fully 20 years after the grisly stuff, maybe a little longer after Valley of the Dolls, a boy, not from my neighborhood, dressed as you for Halloween. He wasn’t what you’d call thin, no. Fleshy, maybe. Certainly fuller than you were in the photos I’d see later. Certainly not much of what you’d call a resemblance in a ratty wig and somebody else’s, probably his mother’s, shoes.
[… continue reading “Sharon Tate” at Unbroken.]
“The Day After Christmas” by Trish Reeves (poetry ’83), published by New Letters Magazine.
One icy night, seven years after his return from as far away as he’d ever been, just south of Bologna, ready to penetrate the Axis’ last major defensive line of the campaign, Frank walked into the extra bedroom upstairs on Union Road and heard one hundred head of cattle lowing. He flipped on the light and thirty donkeys began braying, while the bleating of two hundred sheep rolled across the room. At his next heavy step, the shrieks and wails of thirty awakening babies found their places in the surrounding sound waves. Frank stood stunned by the sounds, then backed up slowly until he had left the room. They’d turned on him for some reason, he thought.
[… continue reading “The Day After Christmas” at New Letters Magazine.]
“Angels Coughing” by Shadab Zeest Hashmi (poetry ’09), published by MoonPark Review.
What made the angels cough— the thick cloud of dust— was once our bodies. In the dust were our lepers, tanning addicts, tornado chasers, fakirs, pearl divers, nuns, organ smugglers, cosmeticians, in it were Olympians with prosthetics, in it were serial killers, chocolatiers, day laborers, stringers of prayer beads, muralists and miniaturists, in it were wombs that had once held tiny gardens gushing with nectars and fountains run to the rhythms of the mother’s heart, in it were what were once uncountable hearts, each with its piercing cry, in it were minds, which, when all unfurled at once, formed a loosely-seamed tent as big as the universe, singing with sparks along the edges.
[… continue reading at “Angels Coughing” at MoonPark Review.]
“November 5, 1980” by Reginald Dwayne Betts (poetry ’10), published by the Boston Review.
I have called, in my wasted youth, the concrete slabs
Of prison home. Awakened to guards keeping tabs
On my breath. Bartered with every kind of madness,
The state’s mandatory minimums & my own callus.
I’ve never called a man daddy; & while sleep, twice
Wrecked cars; drank whiskey straight; nothing suffices—
I fell in love with sons I wouldn’t give my name. Once
Swam at midnight in the Atlantic’s violence,
Under the water, rattling broke the silence. I cussed
Men with fists like hambones & got beaten to dust.
[… continue reading at “November 5, 1980” at the Boston Review.]
“Withholding Information in Nathan Englander’s ‘Reunion'” by David Saltzman (fiction ’17), published by Craft.
As students of fiction, we’re often taught that in crafting a story, the writer should rigidly mete out information, ensuring that a reader is always, without exception, situated as to speaker, scene, and story. When Nathan Englander withholds information, however, what would generally lead to unproductive ambiguity in the hands of lesser writers can instead generate mystery, curiosity, and even narrative momentum.
Instead of viewing ambiguity as unequivocally negative, Englander parcels out isolated details such that readers find themselves suspended—for a word or a paragraph or a page—in the absence of crucial information: speaker, scene, setting. The stuff we’re supposed to put up front often, well, isn’t. The technique tends to manifest as a sense of unease in me, but his prose is so confident that, as a reader, I have faith that what I seek will come in time. When it does, placed precisely in the wake of the mystery created by its absence, it carries more weight than it otherwise could, leaving readers constantly grounded less by specific details than in Englander’s authority. He does this throughout his work, but the short story “Reunion,” in For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, contains several instructive examples.
[… continue reading at Craft.]
“Extractions” by Shannon K. Winston (poetry ’18), published by the Cumberland River Review.
Picture this:
me and my mother
on our hands and knees
tearing up an orange
shag carpet
in our old apartment.
Peeling back foam
and mold, we groped
our way to wood.
We’re fixing up the place,
my mother said,
but I was already dreaming
of Paris. Of the men
in Gustave Caillebotte’s
painting Les raboteurs de parquet.
[… continue reading “Extractions” at the Cumberland River Review.]
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