First Proof
A Memoir of Witness and Resistance.
Painted on Yupo paper with water-soluble crayon, watercolor pencil, water brush, paper towel, and Q-tip.
A CAST of eight: ACTOR, CHEF, COMPOSER, DANCER, FILMMAKER, PAINTER, and siblings: SISTER and BROTHER. If necessary, ACTOR may be played by a PHOTOGRAPHER.
A recording plays from somewhere high, / or low, through the falling dust-light: / I can’t tell you anything new about the river— / you can’t tell a river to itself.
coffee cups / stirrer sticks / napkins and cookies / on the tray top / satellite tv / an office in the air
As we entered Arezzo, the guide pointed out the prostitutes lining the road. The women looked like awkward, flashy birds, teetering in bright spandex and spiked heels, cheap gold jewelry flashing in the summer sun.
Anja skidded down the slope, which was becoming muddy from overuse by feet. It still hadn’t been paved or even scattered with gravel, since Finster didn’t want to admit that the state of the pathway could no longer reasonably be called temporary.
From 1975 to 1979 I grew up in a temporary company town made up of trailers in the boreal forests of northern Manitoba. My father was one of the hydroelectric engineers working on a joint project between the Canadian and Soviet governments to dam the Nelson River at a place called Jenpeg.
Icelandic artist Ragna Róbertsdóttir mines the land and seascapes of her country to create sparse and delicate works.
The ocean’s iron lungs.
Sick and smelly / I dip my finger into my belly button / and it seems to go forever // Not a shallow cup this is just / AttemptS just attempts to remember / what it was like to be pastel
From Return to the Yakne Chitto: Houma Migrations (Neighborhood Story Project, University of New Orleans Press, 2019), a collaborative ethnography of Houma lifeways at the ends of the Louisiana bayou.
What was the earth like?
My sister asks this every night, leaning back on her pillow. The question is part of our routine, along with brushing our teeth, peeing, pushing our legs into the soft holes of our pajamas.
In English the burning city / Hecuba dreams in my hand // Come man with cup / and hard-luck pitch // Upstream the brunch rush / shines upon our heads
Out, like fireflies, from the inter-dimensional, / silver disks at edge of picture hover over Hillary / with swaddled child, John Podesta counterpose beside her, / in a painting I’d like to paint, had I been a painter, / trading in detail from the too-smooth desert
a surgeon takes / a shirt off. / a struggle. / a shrug. / a shrinking / blinking quiet. / give him his bottle / so he can suck on it.
The internet does a better job of documenting / the way we feel when something soft, especially / a mammal, is very cute, than poetry does.
yours in torchlight / we audit our equipment / note how few genuine distractions / present as distraction first
Winner of BOMB’s 2018 Poetry Contest, selected by Dawn Lundy Martin.
Yavush dressed like a girl who didn’t really love herself—in short, strappy dresses that flashed meaty upper thigh, with a clip-on swoop bang and acrylic fingernails that curved into the future, dripping rhinestones, gold hearts, and glitter.