Fox Frazier-Foley

A Railroad Puja In the stampede at Godhra, the first child is trampled. The Sabarmati Express stalls at the platform like a suitcase bursting. The bogie’s coupling is cut, the railcar isolated, sprinkled with kerosene. Look what happens. When we collide a struck match drops. Our arms flail from shattered windows. Charred chappals graze the rails. Dusty pant legs flutter, brimmed with flames. Our mouths gasp small choking o’s. Now the whole city smells like paan, a gritty red splatter on gravel-strewn sidewalk. We know we are too many. When the burnt bodies are swathed in faded salwars, tossed in the bed of a rusted pickup, and carried to the Ganga, we want only the warm silt of flour dusted over a chapatti. We turn the fan on high, cup a tea light in our hands. Watch our prayer flicker. lowering his hood flares out, spectacle pattern like tessellations, the [...]

During 2016, the Spotlight Series has (usually) focused on the work of (approximately) two poets per month. This month’s second poet, whose feature concludes this series, is Raena Shirali. Fox Frazier-Foley: Talk to me about the core of your creative drive and the expression it finds through poetry. There are lots of ways to be creative in this world—what motivates you to write poems, specifically? Additionally, what motivates you to navigate the poebiz landscape? Raena Shirali: Much of my motivation on a poem-by-poem basis comes from a resistance against silence, as well as a desire to enter into and provide a new understanding of various psychologies. I first fell in love with poetry because of persona, because it provided opportunity to escape my own thoughts (at least, that’s what I thought persona was offering me as a young poet), and I still return to persona or ekphrasis whenever I get [...]

Cannibal Island Housing Everyone who moves to Cannibal Island is given a house. The houses are okay. On one hand, the houses all have Thermo-Twin windows, which are very expensive and come with 3 full pages of warranties. On the other hand, everyone who sleeps in the houses on Cannibal Island has nightmares in which their fingernails fall off and there is a dead ferret under the sofa in the living room that they can’t seem to remember to call animal control about. But it’s all right, because every Tuesday the cannibals go door to door handing out cake! Cannibals make very good cake. Surprisingly, (and no one ever believes this at first), the cake is vegan. The cannibals also have excellent memories because if a non-cannibal expresses that they have a peanut allergy or a penchant for red velvet, the following Tuesday the cannibals make sure to accommodate. The [...]

During 2016, the Spotlight Series focuses on two poets per month whose work and consciousness move us, challenge us, inspire us. This month’s first poet is Margaret Bashaar. Fox Frazier-Foley: Talk to me about the core of your creative drive and the expression it finds through poetry. There are lots of ways to be creative in this world—what motivates you to write poems, specifically? Additionally, what motivates you to navigate the poebiz landscape? Margaret Bashaar: As far as I can recall I’ve always been driven to create—I think most people are, honestly, it’s just a matter of cultivating that drive. I’ve created in a lot of different mediums—I used to sing for many years (I took voice lessons for almost 10 years), I played the violin when I was younger, I used to draw and paint a lot—but poetry was always the medium that I carried with me no matter [...]

“’I know / there is violence in all of us,’ these ‘problematic feminist’ poems assert. This work reminds us that what is truly problematic is poetry devoid of awareness of complexity and complicity, and feminism without nuance. Some Other Stupid Fruit lays bear the strangeness, the rot, and the inherent hypocrisies of our gendered identities, and refuses to put a cherry on top.” —Arielle Greenberg “Musings on maneuvering through the rapey ol’ patriarchy. Margaret Bashaar’s newest chapbook hits the ground in heels kicking for the artery. In case you haven’t been listening to her poetry thus far, Some Other Stupid Fruit all but grabs your stupid face and wills its words to crack your orbital bones and release the gooey insides of your eyes. Honest, brutal observations in rapid succession, enough to leave the reader concussed. The roar of a self-aware woman in today’s asshat weird world. Some Other Stupid [...]

Yolanda J. Franklin’s work is forthcoming or has appeared in African American Review, , ’s American South Issue, and The Hoot & Howl of the Owl Anthology of Hurston Wright Writers’ Week. Her awards include a 2012 and 2014 Cave Canem fellowship, the 2013 Kingsbury Award, two nominations from FSU for Best New Poets (2013 & 2014). She is the recipient of several writing retreat scholarships, including a summer at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Squaw Valley Community of Writer’s, Postgraduate Writer’s Conference Manuscript Conference at VCFA, the Callaloo Poetry Workshop in Barbados and Colrain’s Poetry Manuscript Workshop. Her collection of poems, Ruined Nylons, was a finalist for the 2013 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Award. She is also a graduate of Lesley University’s MFA Writing Program and is a third-year PhD student at Florida State University.

During 2016, the Spotlight Series focuses on two poets per month whose work and consciousness move us, challenge us, inspire us. This month’s second poet is Yolanda J. Franklin. Fox Frazier-Foley: Talk to me about the core of your creative drive and the expression it finds through poetry. There are lots of ways to be creative in this world—what motivates you to write poems, specifically? Additionally, what motivates you to navigate the poebiz landscape? Yolanda J. Franklin: I am not motivated to write poems. It’s more of a luring, calling, or purpose. I live poems and life is unwritten poetry. Being a working poet, for me, is more about establishing and cultivating friendships with other poets, celebrating their successes and cultivating with a community of writers who are dedicated to developing a craft of poetry as a vehicle for social change. FFF: What are your influences—creatively (esp in terms of [...]

Saba Syed Razvi is the author of (Agape Editions, 2016). She is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Houston in Victoria, TX. Her poems have appeared journals and such as The Offending Adam, Diner, Poetry Blog, The Homestead Review, NonBinary Review, 10×3 plus, 13th Warrior Review, The Arbor Vitae Review, and Arsenic Lobster, among others, as well as in anthologies such as Voices of Resistance: Muslim Women on War Faith and Sexuality, The Loudest Voice Anthology: Volume 1, The Liddell Book of Poetry, and is forthcoming in Political Punch: The Poetics of Identity. She has been honored by James A. Michener, Fania Kruger, and Virginia C Middleton Fellowships. She earned a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing in 2012 at the University of Southern California. Her chapbook Of Divining and the Dead was published by Finishing Line Press in 2012, and her chapbook Limerence & Lux was published by Chax Press in 2016.

During 2016, the Spotlight Series focuses on two poets per month whose work and consciousness move us, challenge us, inspire us. This month’s first poet is Saba Syed Razvi. Fox Frazier-Foley: Talk to me about the core of your creative drive and the expression it finds through poetry. There are lots of ways to be creative in this world—what motivates you to write poems, specifically? Additionally, what motivates you to navigate the poebiz landscape? Saba Syed Razvi: Every person alive experiences the world according to his or her own unique circumstances, resources, inherent dispositions, and choices—and, yet, our societies and our media often paint what is seen as successful in narrow and limited terms. Measuring life’s experiences by its successes can be misleading, especially when so much of life’s appeal comes from its broader and more nebulous approaches. What I am most interested in is the liminal, the spaces that [...]

Jen Fitzgerald is a poet, essayist, and native New Yorker whose work has been featured on PBS Newshour and Harriet, as well as in Tin House, Salon, PEN Anthology, and Cosmonauts Avenue, among other places, and is forthcoming at Colorado Review and Public Pool. She is the host of New Books in Poetry Podcast as part of the New Books Network, and a member of the New York Writers Workshop. Her first collection of poetry, The Art of Work, is forthcoming with Noemi Press in September 2016.

During 2016, the Spotlight Series (usually) focuses on two poets per month whose work and consciousness move us, challenge us, inspire us. This month’s surprise!-special-feature third poet is Jen Fitzgerald. Fox Frazier-Foley: Talk to me about the core of your creative drive and the expression it finds through poetry. There are lots of ways to be creative in this world—what motivates you to write poems, specifically? Additionally, what motivates you to navigate the poebiz landscape? Jen Fitzgerald: My creativity makes me feel as though I am functioning at my highest level of “human.” It comes, entirely from within me (I of course recognize inspiration and stimuli), it forms inside of me, and then I am the means by which it finds its form outside of me. It is something that I have denied others access to as a kind of self-preservation. Very little was mine throughout my childhood and adolescence. [...]

My Wife Says That If You Live 20 Years Without having to go to a funeral, you are really lucky. The girl on TV is no older than I was when everyone in my quivering home learned to hustle one more ghost into our already overflowing pockets & even though it is not real, she is being swallowed by a carnivorous grief that is howling & escaping through the screen on all fours, pacing around at our feet & begging us to move. Pissing on the blanket sewed by a grandmother’s hands. Hands that were once a salve for every wound, hands that once clapped along with the good gospel in a church shack & once cupped a child’s crying face & once broke bread & then one day just broke. Outside, another sky undresses itself to its blood red flesh & what kind of world is this to bring [...]

During 2016, the Spotlight Series focuses on two poets per month whose work and consciousness move us, challenge us, inspire us. This month’s second poet is Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib. Fox Frazier-Foley: Talk to me about the core of your creative drive and the expression it finds through poetry. There are lots of ways to be creative in this world—what motivates you to write poems, specifically? Additionally, what motivates you to navigate the poebiz landscape? Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib: So, at the core, I believe myself to be a storyteller. I think of myself as someone who sits in the tradition of black storytelling, and I think poetry is the best way that I can get those stories outside of myself and into the world where they can (ideally) meet other people who see themselves in them, or live them in a different space. I think that is my motivation on both fronts. I’m [...]

kiss the sound i make with my feet. i am far from everything but i try. i can’t read what people say about trans women anymore or i stop feeling for months. such is life. soon i will turn 28. i am approaching the sky. every birthday after 30 will feel like a statistical anomaly because it will be. it’s okay to feel what is true in your hands and in your teeth. it doesn’t have to heal you or set you free. it just has to remind you that you exist. i hardly exist and it’s fine. i’ve climbed out of too many windows to care but i care. i do. i care so much i can’t get out of bed some days. crying helps, but not enough. why should i have to cry? you cry. you show me something. tell me how much it hurts to exist. bookend [...]

During 2016, the Spotlight Series focuses on two poets per month whose work and consciousness move us, challenge us, inspire us. This month’s second poet is Cam Awkward-Rich. Fox Frazier-Foley: Talk to me about the core of your creative drive and the expression it finds through poetry. There are lots of ways to be creative in this world—what motivates you to write poems, specifically? Additionally, what motivates you to navigate the poebiz landscape? Cameron Awkward-Rich: Well, I’ll answer in reverse: I don’t know if I do navigate the “poebiz landscape.” Obviously I must, but it feels pretty unintentional, almost exactly like standing in the corner of a party full of people who are unbearably too brilliant and too beautiful (or just unbearable), but this party is where all of your friends are so you’re there too, standing in the corner hoping no one will notice you though of course they [...]