from on . ______________________________________________ Grace Miceli is the author of American Girl Doll, ok cool, Feminist Art Coloring Book, and Teen Angel Sticker Bitch, among others. She holds a B.A. in studio art from Smith College. Her visual art has been widely acclaimed online and IRL, and featured in each just as thoroughly. Please visit [...]
They Used to Dance On Saturday Nights By Gillian Devereux Aforementioned Productions, 2012, 34 p. ISBN 978-0-9823741-4-6 The carnival performers in Gillian Devereux’s They Used to Dance on Saturday Nights (Aforementioned Productions) are always, like Robert Lowell’s prostitutes, “freelancing out along the razor’s edge”, always subject to the fatalities of their trades—knife throwing, tightrope walking, [...]
I became a teacher by accident. In 1995, I was asked to do a one day school visit in Paterson, New Jersey. I was phoned by Susan Amsterdam, one of the co-ordinators of The Passiac Community college Theatre and Poetry project. This is not the official name, I have never remembered the official name, but [...]
Leah Umansky: In your second book, Swoon, you have a sequence of poems around “Women.” Now, in Woman Without Umbrella, you have a similar sequence at work. Did you know when you finished Swoon, that you would have a similar sequence in your next collection? Victoria Redel: The sequence in Swoon I saw in the [...]
This entry is part of a series, Unlocked» , Unlocked» Ralph A dead dog. A deep hole. A piece of rope. I tied one end around the dog’s waist, the other around mine. Ralph (I’ve given him a name) went in first. We didn’t make it as far as China but we did come out [...]
LUPE’S DIAMONDS She had other nieces at least eight but mine was an expensive gift to never lose They were jagged freckles of light My aunts said let her wear her hair down no importa burnt red lipstick and diamond specks How I suffered from feeling blanched in a world inhabited by amber women who [...]
We can enter a poem in an almost limitless number of ways–through its imagery, its social underpinnings, its meaning, its rhythms, its sentence structure, its line breaks, etc, etc. An arbitrary grid works like this: given these different ways of entering a poem, we can choose what we might want to steal from a poem: [...]
Naked Except for the Jewelry “And,” she said, “you must talk no more about ecstasy. It is a loneliness.” The woman wandered about picking up her shoes and silks. “You said you loved me,” the man said. “We tell lies,” she said, brushing her wonderful hair, naked except for the jewelry. “We try to believe.” [...]
This entry is part of a series, Unlocked» The Northern Road 1. I should have known him but I had no prior experience with prophets. Something about the time of day felt still as _______the invisible press of tobacco, the rustle of upturned leaves in a thousand barns. Finality slides deeper. Uncut grasses roll and [...]
MY SOLIDARITY We meet in a reflective trench and you are skeptical but then you begin to feel my solidarity like a short-haired snake between your legs. The snake starts to hustle, overweening the lip of pants. Let’s you and I never be cops to each other. Because we study elephant lore, and in all [...]
, 2011. ISBN: 978-1934200490. 80 p. Today I write; I wait for the form around which I was formed. Laura Wetherington, “My poitrine made of clouds” Is order inherent or created? Does form come first or does the form-giver? Laura Wetherington explores structure – the visual, the functional, and the physical – in A Map [...]
After writing a poem (never during or before the poem), ask yourself these questions: 1. Why is my lineation the way it is and is that the right shape for the poem? 2. Are my images predictable? Do shadows fall? Do I express myself in idioms and cliches rather than in a true voice. Most [...]
This entry is part of a series, Unlocked» Confused Like Horses He sat down and tried to focus but couldn’t truly make out the shapes. Some nights, he sleepwalks into streetlit rooms all over the planet. You dream of your best friend’s house – it’s a collage, but you’d swear blind it was the real [...]
The Hills A wolf whistle sounds. Street level shot of an apartment complex at night, windows lit. “Heidi and Spencer’s Apartment, Hollywood, CA” say white letters at the bottom of the screen. Shot of Heidi’s torso in a room with white walls. She has on a black, low-cut halter dress with russet trim. As she [...]
The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard. Edited by Ron Padgett, with an introduction by Paul Auster. Library of America. 535 pp. $35. In the first volume of her diaries, Susan Sontag, on an off day in 1957, begins listing, in no particular order and with no reason stated, an odd assortment of memories from her [...]
Some smart folks insist Nat King Cole doesn’t get enough credit for his vital and historical role in Jazz trio piano playing. Hell, I’ve often said it. In point of fact, it’s been said so often that it isn’t true. We should qualify as such: Nat King Cole gets plenty of credit as the revolutionary [...]
