Like many writers, I feel centered when I write, or it might be better to say, when I don’t write, when I can’t write for whatever reason, I feel, frankly, de-stabilized. It’s dangerous for me not to write.
—
Sigrid Nunez
Two Poems by Susan Wheeler
- Frances McDormand by Willem Dafoe
- A.M. Homes by Gregory Crewdson
- Jafar Panahi by Liza Béar
- Padgett Powell by V. Hunt
- Butch Morris by David Henderson
- William Pope.L by Martha Wilson
- John Elderfield by David Carrier
- Malcolm Morley by Richard Francis
Interviews
- Thomas Nozkowski by Saul Ostrow
Artists on Artists
- Sold Out by Vess Quinlan
- Dogleg by Janet Kieffer
- Two Poems by Jayne Cortez
- Shrinking Away by Jim Northrup
- A Fling with a Demon Lover by Kelvin Christopher James
- Six Works by Alexis Rockman
- Solitude Ain’t Loneliness by Michelle T. Clinton
- Appointment in Wipe-ola by Archie Rand
- Considering the Void by President Jimmy Carter
- Hey, Joe by Ben Neihart
- From a Sealed Room by Rachel Kadish
- Tell Our Daughters by Besmilr Brigham
- Untitled by Sawyer Shefts
- The United States of Poetry by Bob Holman
- Two Poems by Susan Wheeler
- My Best Friend by Dirk Standen
First Proof
snow, washington square park
I found the toilet igloos; inside, wood.
Semblance of the forest upending
the frost when you fell on me—
two kite satyrs in the tree.
The workers were gathered like kinder,
bottles in the glow of the glass
as it fell.
smoke, sex, smoke, sex, smoke, sex:
the girls’ version by the sawhorses I thought I knew.
Frisk, the stunned white quiet,
tires bellying up to the curbside so.
The wrinkles come, the wrinkles go—
white tracings sift
Mr. Bones and me.
(And they all looked out
on the snow descending,
struck by the soft
light of its rending.)
white girl’s exiles
Pittsburgh
“No, it’s fop. Not sap, fop.” “Yeah?—
what century you be blazing in?”
He wanked it twice, for effect.
The bugeyes flared and rolled.
Westport
It was that beverage service!
It even provided the wrong
condiments
and a truckload of calories.
Rochester
Uwanga, uwangalayma
uwanga. The red locust,
from the palm of her hand,
spun out over checkerboard turf.
Wilton
There might be a festoon with which to salve—
perhaps ministrations and some unfolding things—
that will expiate the wrecks you wrought.
What sanguine heads the tufts adorn.
Sudbury
Unguent. A nail flies softly on a cheek,
the candle sputters and then carries on.
He steered the International Carryall
through the wooded, winding roads.
Bennington
Mrs. Ainsworth clicks across the
gallery floor as the Buick pulls up
and three smelly kids run into the minimart
for all-beef sticks.
Woodstock
She was wearing the shiny gold baseball
jacket with the word Trésor like
handwriting across the back and leopard
spots across the lapels.
Chicago
The clutch had stuck on the Outer Drive. “Oh,
Perseph—oh dear, you do me so like shaking.”
The left turn light had shorted twice. “Your
lap is where I’m pricking. Doll.”
New York
So? Whine and be pissy. The abrupt
bud in the Hawaiian grove, the cheap chiseler
in the monkey suit, the filaments beneath the sill:
What made me, what I will.
Susan Wheeler’s first collection of poetry, Bag ‘o’ Diamonds, published by the University of Georgia Press (1993), was chosen by James Tate to receive the Norma Farber First Book Award of the Poetry Society of America (1994), and was short-listed for the LA Times Book Award in poetry. Her work has appeared in The Best American Poetry anthology and in the 1994 Pushcart Prize. She teaches creative writing at Rutgers University and at The New School for Social Research in New York City.
Originally published in
BOMB 55,
Spring 1996
Featuring interviews with Frances McDormand, A.M. Homes, Padgett Powell, Tina Girouard, William Pope. L, Butch Morris, Malcolm Morley, Jafar Panahi, and John Elderfield.
