Excerpts
BACKORDERED
Each morning she drank her tea and then stamped the used tea bag onto thick creamy paper. She did this day after day, weeks became months, until she had nine tea bags across, thirteen down. When I understood how long I’d be in bed, I took my time with catalogs, thumbing through pages, folding corners. …
ANGER: THE RAPE
No cruelty is like the cruelty one turns against oneself after being raped one feels covered in slime and shit said the old woman grimly This place used to be a park now it is a parking lot ha ha for which I am in the ornamental fringe don’t tell me I should get over …
Anis Shivani. Against the Workshop: Provocations, Polemics, Controversies. Texas Review Press.
Against the Workshop: Provocations, Polemics, Controversies, a book of critical essays by writer Anis Shivani, unabashedly tackles one of the central foundations of contemporary American literature: the creative writing program. Shivani critiques this literary mainstay that has so permeated the life of American writers that at times it seems absolutely unavoidable. Very little criticism exists …
Fatherhood, Beginnings
Sometimes when I’ve been sitting in a different room for a while I forget I have a child. Then I wander into the humidified air, feel the softness of the blue rug between my toes and place my hand upon his rising chest. What will I tell my son when he asks if I am …
Last of the Cowboy Poets
‘‘You ever written any . . . poetry?’’ Doyle Porterhouse asked. The word ‘‘poetry’’ came out sounding like ‘‘poy-tree.’’ Porterhouse’s head was cocked, his bushy eyebrows all askew; it was as if he were a shy girl asking Lenny Halperin to the prom. ‘‘Of course. You bet I have,’’ Lenny said. That was a …
On a Day That Bombs
On a day that bombs were being dropped by drone aircraft in several regions of Libya, blowing apart fragile bodies, many of whom were living their sincere and momentary lives, it was a perfect day here except for the wind and the flies. The flies were too large to ignore. It was 73 degrees. The …
The Wittenberg Backdoor Bar
For my seventieth birthday my daughter transforms our living room into a bar— black sheets over windows, candles on small tables, the family gathered. She has provided a karaoke player to fulfill my old dream to sing love songs into a microphone. I’ve entered through the back to croon “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” while …
Our Lady of the Midnight Kitchen
Beans float like baby Jesuses in the soup. I get a call from a lost one-eyed cousin: he says the world is big enough in one place. I was sleeping in a cold room when the sun came up. My eyes were open, my mouth bloody, full of cat-claws and nettles. Always my life unravels …
Nick Flynn. The Captain Asks for a Show of Hands. Graywolf Press.
If any thing is sacred, the human body is sacred. —Walt Whitman Configurations and reconfigurations of the body permeate Nick Flynn’s newest collection: from the minute components of the individual to the physical circumstances of bodies in conflict, these lyric poems exalt the physicality of our existence in the tradition of Whitman while blurring it …