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10 Questions for Amanda Hawkins

July 26, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

At first the men thought it was a store of foggy white cum.
I can forgive this mistake-desire can interrupt logic.
—from "Spermaceti", Vol. 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In fifth grade I wrote what I now call a feminist version of Pete’s Dragon in verse: A character called Rose befriends a little girl who is going through challenging times and needs a friend. The girl is the narrator and tells of how Rose had to leave to help someone else. I still have the paper.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
I believe where we are and how we write—at any point—is a layering effect of the past, but recently? I...

10 Questions for Adrian Matejka

July 21, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

Slowest-footed day of the week,
wrong noted & creaking on
the credenza while the other

influencers gossip in the kitchen's
linoleum.
—from "Tuesday Feeling", Vol. 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first time I wrote a poem was in March 1994. I remember it so vividly because I was in Bloomington, Indiana walking across a field near campus. I was listening to Miles Davis’s version of “Footprints” and for just a moment, I thought I understood his language of trumpets. I got my notebook out and wrote a draft of a poem called “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down” that ended up in my first book 9 years later. That’s one of the...

10 Questions for Bettina Judd

July 19, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

you are falling for someone in hell. which may mean that you are
trying to love in america in there is no guarantee. there is never a guarantee
& yet here is your foot, willfully arched over the edge.
—from "you are falling for someone in hell." Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
Ever? I think it was a poem about the moon. I was maybe 5 or 6 years old.  

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Lucille Clifton, absolutely. The body of my grandmother’s unpublished poetry. Toni Morrison’s exacting and mythical language in Beloved for example.

What other professions have you...

10 Questions for Mike White

July 16, 2021 - By Marissa Perez

God sees me
as a bird
sees an airplane

moving at a great
distance.
—from "God Sees Me", Volume 62, Issue 2 (Summer 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
When I was in tenth grade I had an English teacher who asked the class on a regular basis to write short stories that would be graded by our classmates (he was getting very close to retirement). Given that an A was guaranteed, there was no academic or creative pressure, and so I’d write outrageous, mock-serious tales designed to amuse my friends. I can’t recall any of the narrative details now, but I’m sure it was the best writing I’d done to that point, and for at least a decade thereafter.

...

10 Questions for Katie Berta

July 12, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

The biggest snake
is an albino so huge his scales, when they lift from his body
as he curves around a rock or rodent, look like big, dry, flakes of oatmeal.
—from “The Rattlesnakes They Keep in the Life Sciences Building Remind Me of My Dog”

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
When I was a kid, I was flagged for a pull-out program in my elementary school. They’d take us into the library and, as far as I remember, let us work on whatever we wanted. That’s where I first remember writing a lot, and many of those childhood attempts were imitations of Ray Bradbury stories, written from the perspective of an alien kid. When I transferred to a private, Catholic school after 5^th...