My Mother Tries to Teach Me about the Body
By Poetry Issue 104
It wasn’t long before I began
pinching myself for fat, for acne, learned
to hate my body in a swimsuit, in clothes.
A Conversation with Kirstin Valdez Quade
By Interview Issue 103
I’m lucky to know a lot of really good, generous people, but they don’t fall into any of those standard narratives of saintly lives. They’re people who just keep on trucking and being good in the face of a lot of injustice and ingratitude.
Read MoreConfession
By Poetry Issue 103
Countershine
By Essay Issue 103
Of course complicating considerations can occur with the immaterial, too, as you might be into time and gravity but not augury or angels—or you might be into some angels, like the six-winged amber ones, but not the messenger of death.
Read MoreSomething like a Prayer
By Poetry Issue 103
We’re the seeds our mothers have been planting. If
X marks the spot, let’s dig up the whole alphabet.
Strategies for Dealing with Impermanence
By Poetry Issue 103
The boy inside me is watching, frowning.
But something else is watching him,
saying, sweetheart, saying, it is so hard.
Read MoreOde to the Back
By Poetry Issue 103
Come up behind me. See through my eyes.
Read MoreThe Trick
By Poetry Issue 91
I’ve always loved that scene in The Seventh Seal where Jof, poor broke Jof the juggler, rushes back to tell his wife Mia that he’s just seen the virgin & child, so close to me that I could have touched her, but Mia is skeptical, wants to know what they’ll eat this winter, wants to…
Read MoreAtheist Bodies
By Book Review Issue 90
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Spiegel & Grau, 2015) The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (Graywolf Press, 2015) A Body, Undone: Living on after Great Pain by Christina Crosby (New York University Press, 2016) SON,” HE BEGINS. “LAST SUNDAY the host of a popular news show asked me what it meant to…
Read MoreRoman Charity
By Essay Issue 90
THE LAST TIME YOU SAW your mother alive, she helped you heal from your C-section. It wasn’t what you planned, with your careful study of the benefits of natural childbirth, your doula, your pelvic carriage the midwife called beautiful. Your own mother’s births had been natural, her milk abundant. She always said that being a mother…
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