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10 Questions for Eugenio Volpe

July 14, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

By the age of eight, I had heard all the horror stories about my father.

I had heard the one about him literally putting his fist through a cop's face. I had heard the one about him sending a badass Irish gangster into convulsions with a single jab. And who hadn't heard the navy tale about Tony Volpe punching his chief petty officer with a bottle of San Miguel in hand, punching him repeatedly, even after the bottle had burst, punching with the jagged end, again and again, disfiguring the man's face and permanently blinding one eye.
─from "Jesus Kicks His Oedipus Complex," from Volume 61, Issue 2 (Summer 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
My grandfather immigrated from Abruzzo, Italy to Quincy,...

10 Questions for Alexandra Kulik & Julian Senn-Raemont

July 6, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

Through the window, the day probably looks less distant that it is, Sebastian decided. Or he himself wasn't ready to interact with it. Ones step into a new day changes the course of time, he read once on a sign at the mall. For today he chose a T-shirt with blue and gray geometric shapes, and loose underpants. He stared into the emptiness of Brighton Street, without having the apocalyptic sentiment that a personless street is an empty street, or any other train of thought. The sunlight strode in and out of the breaks in shade. He watched this with all his mind but no judgment. Sebastian was an innocent boy.
—from "Through the Window," Volume 61, Issue 2 (Summer 2020)

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10 Questions for Diamond Forde

June 29, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

he told me he was glad I wasn't fat yet
but this time, with flesh glutinous on my arms and back,
hips spread like grain, I wax at his bedside and watch
his violeting cheeks, their bruised orchids flutter
with every labored breath and I allow myself
to imagine what he must see:five years and my body
pours like golden-throated honey. We are breatheless.
—from "The Last Time I Saw My Grandfather," from Volume 61, Issue 2 (Summer 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I think early on, writing became one of the places where I could say what I was never confident enough to say in real life. Poetry is a contradiction in that way—it creates a space of vulnerability, but in that...

10 Questions for Patrick Barron

June 24, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

A few days after Italo Calvino's funeral I jotted down the notes that follow, in order to remind myself of the situation and the feelings of the moment. I had just returned from France, and that evening Calvino's wife (Chichita) called to tell me that Italo was dying. I left that night by car toward Siena together with Carlo Ginzburg's wife, Luisa, while Carlo arrived by train from Rome.
—from "Italo's Death" by Gianni Celati, Translated by Patrick Barron, Volume 61, Issue 1 (Spring 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
When I was a little boy in Montana, I think about three or four years old, I used to dictate my memory of...

10 Questions for SeSe Geddes

June 18, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

Shelley washes up once or twice a year
on the beach at the end of my street.
And I still feel lucky to find him—my dear Bysshe,
all tangled in burgundy seaweed on the sloping shore.
And not the real one, mind you, not the one they dragged
rotten from the Italian surf, ten days dead, bloated, faceless
half eaten b sea life, the cartilage of the nose rising
from the sodden flesh, the ragged eye sockets blooming
with tiny crabs and bugs…
—from “Shelley on the Beach,” Volume 61, Issue 1 (Spring 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
One of the first pieces I had published—well, I think it was published—was a poem addressed to a mean girl in...