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Happy Times Indeed

March 13, 2021 - By Jim Hicks

On this day, March 11th (which I predict by this time next year will be recognized as an International Day of Remembrance and Mourning), I’ve decided to write something entirely inappropriate, because frankly, it’s just what the doctor ordered. Those of us still lucky enough to be in the world have realized that much has changed over the last year—and that much more must be changed. Due to the global pandemic, current estimates are that we’ve lost 2.6 million souls in a single year, with over a half million here in the US alone. At some point, no doubt, statisticians will calculate the excess deaths of this year compared to years past, and we’ll likely find that the toll has been much greater than we currently believe.

Faced with this grim reality,...

10 Questions for Tiffany Midge

March 12, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

a: You are chopping onions for yet another pot of lentils, hips pressed up against the kitchen counter, when first you hear it. The sound of mewling. Barely audible. You put down your knife.

b: One year earlier, on fellowship in Kansas, you are returning to your Airbnb from your walk. You see your house and yard down the street within view, but something looks peculiar. As you come closer, you can make it out: a vulture feeding on a possum's corpse
—from "sheltering," Volume 61, Issue 4 (Winter 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I wrote about the sky as if it were a patchwork quilt—“seams and denim skies.” And I workshopped it with William Stafford at a community poetry class, and...

10 Questions for Summer J. Hart

March 8, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

In the end days, eyes
turn around,     softened

mouth like fog on the window.

The first tongue to catch the new language is a rotten egg
—from "Salt for the Stain," Volume 61, Issue 4 (Winter 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
At first, my poems were basically a catalog of thoughts or lists (lists of lists) tapped into the notes app on my phone: 12 vultures, 3 crows, the dog’s impossibly coiled tail. The first piece I wrote for publication was in response to a call from Northern New England Review with the theme of “True North.” The dog’s impossibly coiled tail became “Verses for a Double Murder,” the first in a series...

10 Questions for Khairani Barokka

March 8, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

a friend and i talk rainforest infernos,
how she’d had hope
for that failed carbon scheme
that i’d always known to be
core of ash, not white hope
—from "prayer for baby breath," Volume 62, Issue 4 (Winter 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In the ‘90s (perhaps you, too, are transported by that phrase back through the years, to a specific writing memory!), I wrote an anti-war poem for a children’s poetry competition, held in Indonesia as part of the cultural component of the Asian Pacific Economic Conference. Hilariously, I remember affixing a note that read ‘Dear Bill Clinton, please read my poem’—if only there were such poetic pipelines from...

10 Questions for Shaina A. Nez

March 5, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

‘Ałk áą́’i’, long ago.
Bąą, on account of, before our people emerged to the fourth world, Nihalgai, Glittering world.
Chahałheeł, darkness, happened, and we would adapt to newness, the light, ‘adinídíín.
Ch’ah and the western wear—the urban Indian cowboy, and for some, ranching became routine and we honored the animals since we emerged with them. Now we live to serve the łíí’, beegashii, dibé, tł‘ízí, na’a’ho’he, na’a’ho’hebiyazhi.
—from "Diné Abecedarian," Volume 61, Issue 4 (Winter 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In elementary, I was...