For Emmett And if you are a boy, you might imagine the hairline that crawls backward without resistance. The barber was a good barber. Give him a blade and his grandfather emerges from the palm, like a slave that was a good slave, raking the weeds back until all you see is a shaven field of grass, ready for eyes to bear witness to this marvelous thing. The barber might’ve talked to Emmett about his grandfather, the hands that grooms the America black folk always attempt to believe in. I’m sure Emmett would’ve cracked a joke, light- ened the mood for the body to settle in and humor toughens the skin, I am told. I know he could not have bled even if the razor wished to carve more than the patches of wool, resting on the head like a dark field of grass after dusk. And if you are [...]

In the Event of Full Disclosure By Cynthia Atkins CW Books, 2013 REVIEWED BY CHERYL R. HOPSON Cynthia Atkins opens her second collection of poetry, In the Event of Full Disclosure, with a meditation on family love by early twentieth century poet, T.S. Eliot, who writes of such unions as “love that’s lived in, but not looked at, love within the light of which all else is seen, the love within which all other love finds speech.” “This love,” continues Eliot “is silent.” Enter Atkins, the poet/family woman (sibling, daughter, mother, wife), to break said silence and offer something of the same love, by which she herself sees and writes. In “Family Therapy (I)” the first of five poems demarcating the book’s themes of family, mental illness, love, shame, and centering, Atkins writes, I hold the secrets. I am the writer. I am the sister of a schizo- phrenic. My [...]

Jackleg Opera: Collected Poems, 1990 to 2013. BJ Ward. North Atlantic Books, 2014. 272 pages, ISBN: 978-1-58394-677-0 Click image to order on Amazon Jackleg Opera is the fourth collection by BJ Ward and is a collected poems gathering together over twenty years of amazing work. It was published at the end of 2013 by North Atlantic Books and should be on everyone’s bookshelf. Ward’s poetry is an incredible blend of wit, intelligence, playfulness and insight. He is a poet that not only loves language and craft but loves humanity, the adept phrasing that reflects the hidden emotional realities, charting what Emily Dickinson called the “internal difference where the meanings are.” His own words describe the accomplishment of his poetry, for his poems are a net to capture the moment but release the energy –Suzuki Dance This is appropriate for a poet who often writes about poetry, its power and purpose. [...]

Michael T. Young: Thank you, BJ, for agreeing to an interview. Your newest collection, Jackleg Opera, is your fourth, and is a new and collected poems. Could you comment on putting it together: how and if you worked on the new poems to connect thematically in any way to the whole or just worked on the newer poems independently of any overall cohesion? BJ Ward: I worked on the new poems as they came to me, not concerning myself with how or where they connected to the other work. Once I had about sixty poems that were publishable or had already been published somewhere, I chose and arranged the thirty-three new poems that make up the first part of the book. The thirty-fourth new poem I placed after my 2002 book, Gravedigger’s Birthday, as it serves as a coda for that manuscript. One of the best aspects of releasing a [...]

Sarasvati Sarasvati at the river in the gaze of a goose foraging like I am at her banks through gratitude and fear willing that some bridge appear carry me down the middle of this way mapped by blood and memory she sees me wraps me in her veil shows me her name everywhere in river reeds and starlings honey mirror at the bottom of my tea the billboard I see reads: the path is clear I am ready Listen to the audio version of this poem . GROW Me… Mine… My… You will all expire whether your spine is crushed in 9 places or your body just runs out of breath and right after your death some other voice talking through dirt shaped into skin will walk on electric currents to the timer ticking down the days while singing the same damn song you sang a solo called ego composed [...]

Montana Ray is the author of , published this year by Argos Books. Intrigued by the poem she sent me for TheThe’s Infoxicated Corner (also appearing here today), I asked whether she’d be interested in doing a Q&A on the blog as well. Here’s the deeply enjoyable conversation that ensued: Fox Frazier-Foley: Tell me a little bit more about the project of (guns & butter). Did you know from the start that you wanted to write a book of gun-shaped poems? How did that come together? What is your overall vision for the book? And, other than the beautiful sonic resonance between the two words — what’s butter got to do with it? (I mean, I guess butter has to do with everything for some of us. My family is mostly from the American South, and we cook with lots of butter, ha.) Montana Ray: Thanks for your questions, Fox! [...]

Bury the Girls, Then Bury Their Babies The face of a young girl stares out from the cover of Fiddle is Flood (Blood Pudding Press, 2015), Lauren Gordon’s stark and awe-inspiring chapbook. Her hair intermingles with a collage of sky, vines, bare legs. Another girl lies on her back along the bottom, looking up, wistful, white skin gleaming. Though a black-and-white ink drawing, the girls’ lips are plump, pouty even. A bursting red flower, scattered amongst the scrolling detail, is the only color. Gordon created this cover herself; the lush, rouge flower provides readers a visual, introductory cue for her explosive poems that circle sex and death. Through Gordon’s sparse words and lyrical lines such as: I will cut the bluestem grass in the blazing sun I will walk through swarms of white butterflies to lug the big brown jug to lug the wild cool creek Gordon creates her own [...]

Keisha-Gaye Anderson is author of the poetry collection (Jamii Publishing, 2014), which has been described as “a lyrical outpouring of kinship, heritage, and a woman’s transformation within the world that envelops her . . . a rich compendium of heartfelt poetic verse.” As both a writer & reader of mystical poetry, I found her work lovely and compelling, and invited her to the Infoxicated Corner for a conversation about her aesthetic, influences, process, and work overall. Fox Frazier-Foley: I first learned about your work from your book, Gathering the Waters, which I was drawn to read because I thought the cover was so lovely and striking. Can you tell us a little bit about the genesis of that book? What was your process like in creating it? And how did you find this beautiful cover art, or was it created specifically for the book? Keisha-Gaye Anderson: I’m constantly writing. I [...]

Montana Ray is a feminist poet, translator, and scholar. She is the author of five chapbooks and bookworks. Her first full-length poetry collection, (guns & butter), is now available from Argos Books. She’s a PhD student in comparative literature at Columbia University and the mom of budding zoologist, Amadeus.

Phone Booth Parable So much has gone missing where are the words our parents read aloud long storks on the bedroom wall midflight I never got a good look at what they carried all that way to the window why fly when the ground is so good at pulling you down said the scarecrow how’s the reception on your end is it better to persuade or just push your tongue into my mouth a little taste of what wrong numbers can do said the tin man whose speech should be good for another few miles already the moon over bruise over stubble shorts out when so many TVs howl at once said the lion we’ll come back as dogs to bury our own bones but time is a limiting factor I’ve stepped onto platforms only to be told I missed the boat and my beloved whistling out at sea for [...]

Editor’s Note: Marguerite Van Cook and James Romberger are the artists whose collaborative graphic novel, Late Child (Fantagraphics Books, 2014), tells the intimate, autobiographical story of the struggles Van Cook and her mother faced during World War II and after, as Van Cook, a child born out of wedlock, came of age and learned how to seize her own voice and power in an aggressively sexist and classist society. Alex Dueben interviews them here about the stories ehind the book, and their processes and conversations in creating it. Exploring the Personal and Political Landscape of The Late Child and Other Animalsby Alex Dueben The new book The Late Child and Other Animals opens at the height of World War II with the co-author’s mother and aunt on top of Portsdown Hill, watching the city of Portsmouth burn. That haunting and beautiful image sets the tone for the book. The Nazi [...]

Dilemma If I tell my son his mouse is dying I may as well tell him the rest: her shallow breath means her lungs are deflating, causing the rest of her organs to slowly betray her. If he asks me if it’s painful, well. What can hide him from that truth? Her cage is littered with her loss of strength: untouched water bottle, food pellets staling in the pink plastic bowl. If I tell him she’s dying I may as well tell him the worst of it, that his father and I knew exactly what we were doing when we encouraged him to choose her, the fastest mouse of the dozens of albinos in the pet store’s glass aquarium, yes, we brought her home to die and hoped that in his grief he might learn the hard fact of life. We named it mercy. We named it introduction. Better now [...]

is a micro-press of sorts; founded and run by native Brooklynites, it produces small notebooks, crafted by hand from paper, old cassette tapes from your favorite ’80s and ’90s bands, and the album art and liner notes they came packaged in. As part of the mission of TheThe’s Infoxicated Corner is to promote indie art of all kinds (and to emphasize the confluence among literature, creative writing, and other types of art and creativity), I asked Andrew Jung, one of the co-founders of this small arts business to tell us a little bit about the genesis of their press and the creation of their handbound notebooks. This is my Cassetsy notebook, which I love. I told them to surprise me with whatever album they thought best, and they chose Salt N’ Pepa’s Blacks’ Magic, from 1990. Watch Cassetsy co-creator Andrew Jung handcraft one of their Coptic-bound notebooks . (Video credit: [...]

Hear the audio version of this poem . Hear the audio version of this poem . Hear the audio version of this poem . Meg Cowen writes, paints on canvas and builds furniture in her old New Hampshire farmhouse. Some of her recent work appears in PANK, Whiskey Island, Passages North and interrupture. She edits Pith, a journal of experimental writing, and lives online at www.megcowen.com.

True Ugliness: Cate Marvin’s Oracle by KT Billey People are fucked up and funny, and so is the world. This is a fact that Oracle (Norton, 2015), Cate Marvin’s third and most recent collection of poems, bestows upon us, and it’s clear from the get-go that anyone looking for soothsaying better look elsewhere. Or consider what soothsaying means. The very first line throws us into a sharp, observant speaker who sees and understands being seen: As the leering boss poised by a photocopier… There is no false advertising in this book’s truth-promise title, nor are these poems riddles. “On the Ineptitude of Certain Hurricanes,” the introductory poem, sets a scene for many readers—likely the east coast, a couple years ago, but if not in a particular time and place, surely in a post-natural disaster mood. A bit of dread and relief, perhaps, but mostly attitude. This human dares to critique [...]