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10 Questions for Mag Gabbert

September 15, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

annunciation is what we call the day when Mary conceived a son

blue has been known to belong to the gods even though it bespangles both men and death and

cloaked in it Mary was told she'd be blessed at least among women
—from "Blue," Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Anyone who’s encountered other interviews with me or kept up with my posts on social media might be somewhat familiar with this story already, but when I think of my earliest “work,” I always go back to a little poem-essay I wrote while visiting my grandparents in North Carolina for Christmas one year. At the time, a small herd of deer lived near their house, and they often grazed in...

10 Questions for Emily Vizzo

September 13, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

Trust your move, Galileo, in the warring
starry fields.

The bone I own.
—from "Galileo Stumbles Once & a Planet Suddenly Skews," Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I wrote a poem about mud in fifth grade that I was really proud of; it was a pretty good poem and my teacher asked me to read it at our spring festival, this auditorium filled with kids and parents. And I got nervous and decided to read it in this ironic, self-mocking way, I really sold myself out. And I felt terrible afterward about myself, because I knew I had dishonored the poem, and somehow I knew that this was a serious thing, a big deal, to pretend that I had this lightweight and cynical...

10 Questions for Jessica Jacobs

September 10, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

In the original, Adam has my back—
is my back—our bodies one
body. We take turns
walking forward. With each seeing
half the world, we see it
—from "Creation Stories," Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
As a kid who camped out in front of Teen Wolf whenever it came on TV, convinced I was secretly a werewolf, I wrote a short story about—what else?—a young werewolf so distraught at being separated from her true clan she became catatonic, a word I stole from Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. Poetry it was not.

What other professions have you worked in?
Deep breath; let’s begin at 14...

10 Questions for Laura Newbern

September 8, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

. . .She was upright, lodged

at one of the bigger brighter spas in the country,
under her husband's lover's name. She was not

in the pit, not in the silent, bottomless pool.
And yet she was. Of course that was where she was.
—from “Of the Mind,” Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I wrote a poem in 3^rd or 4^th grade called “The Nervous Child,” about walking out of a piano recital because the terror of waiting to perform was just too much. It rhymed, and it ended with a death-wish. I can still recite it.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Honestly I think...

10 Questions for Alex Chertok

September 7, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

for Judy Garland's name
and your son's birthdays
to hourglass out
—from "Ever since Alzheimer's cut a hole in your pocket", Vol. 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I wrote a poem in middle school I called "My Dearest Dear," until recently still featured on what looked to be the first website ever made, in the voice of a mother watching her child grow up and out of his need for her. (I still remember these lines: "Your youth has faded to a speck so mere / In some distant land which is not clear / Within my heart, my dearest dear.") This was the only time I carried out Frost's dictum "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader....