Excerpts
Cartography
It seemed the problem of my adolescence was the yellow line. The Nubian God slapped the switch on the wall and peeled the quasi-converted space in half by light. Toward the end of the driveway, my skateboard lay on its side like a capsized tanker. Beyond that, the solid yellow line. Like the stripe down …
Marco Polo
George can hold his breath underwater for a very long time. Take for instance now, as he reaches his one hundred and fiftieth Mississippi here in Nicole Petr’s dad’s mansion’s pool. He’s been submerged long enough that he can almost pretend there’s no water at all. But he’s got his eyes open, and he can …
Swimming in the Rain by Chana Bloch
Chana Bloch. Swimming in the Rain: New and Selected Poems, 1980–2015. Autumn House Press. If the current American poetry world divides into “barrelers” and “lingerers,” as poet and critic Dan Chiasson has put it, then Chana Bloch’s Swimming in the Rain: New and Selected Poems, 1980–2015, places her among the fine lingerers. She continues after …
Limber by Angela Pelster
Angela Pelster. Limber. Sarabande Books. Trees are the subject of Angela Pelster’s debut essay collection, Limber. Pine trees and poplar trees, sycamores and saskatoons, fig trees, maple trees, trees outside the essayist’s window and trees as far off, theoretically, as the moon. While the title Limber seems to conflate the words, “lumber” and “timber,” it …
Prelude to Bruise by Saeed Jones
Saeed Jones. Prelude to Bruise. Coffee House Press. Saeed Jones’s first full-length book, Prelude to Bruise, is a necessary piece of contemporary poetry that bravely tackles issues such as abuse, promiscuity, homosexuality, and racism. Though the title hints at an agonizing inevitability, the collection implies that a bruise may, in fact, denote healthy progress. Jones’s …
The Night We’re Not Sleeping In by Sean Bishop
Sean Bishop. The Night We’re Not Sleeping In. Sarabande Books. Sean Bishop’s debut collection, The Night We’re Not Sleeping In, begins as a musical contract: “The signed agrees to breath, to the lungs’ soggy bellows” (“Terms of Service”). It quickly becomes clear that, for the speaker, the bargain we’ve struck is about waking to the …
It Will End with Us by Sam Savage
Sam Savage. It Will End with Us. Coffee House Press. Sam Savage’s latest novel, It Will End with Us, reads as part narrative and part philosophical meditation on memory and language. The novel’s first-person narrator, Eve, is haunted by the singular childhood event of her mother’s disintegrating sanity. Eve is an elderly woman, living with …
Dove
bichwa ke mare ordhniya ke torde,tohar najariya jaherile jaherile. A scorpion stings me, its toxins swim my veins,one ill prick from you and I writhe in your fever. I dream I cough up a songbird I release to the sky,you board a plane to take you across the desert. I will tie messages to the …
Prayer Book for Vanishing
Anything black nuh good.Jamaican Patois Maxim White mirror of morning,the body is yours. Yours the faceto anoint with Epsom salts, clean teaspoon of bleachaside in the decanter.What holy water. Approach the angelsto efface this blackness,another tar baby, self I am scorching. In the nightfind nothing but a dagger of teeth.Pitch-black marrow, vile pigment unwanted,set fire …