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(Almost) 10 Questions for Chip Livingston

February 1, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

They drink like frat boys on spring break, like frat boys on game day. They drink like frat boys in the movies. But they are not frat boys, not yet, and it's a Monday night three weeks into their first semester. Each drink builds unity, helps them forget the hazing at dinner. They drink to think of something daring to shock the brotherhood—a pledge class raid to show they will do anything to be Theta Mus, that they are united as a pledge class, committed and crazy.
—from "The Raid," Volume 61, Issue 4 (Winter 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first intentional poem I wrote, for a dramatic monologue workshop with the poet Ai, was a 53-part series imitating...

10 Questions for Abigail Chabitnoy

January 29, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

A child walks the familiar road.
A body is found at the mile mark.
Still
      they do not suspect foul play.
Still
      they say she was Not Afraid.
—from "Girls Are Coming Out of the Water," Volume 61, Issue 4 (Winter 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
The first poem I remember writing was titled “Swimming Underwater”, and it was a concrete poem in the shape of a whirlpool. I must have been no older than 10 or so, and can’t remember anything else about it, nor did I really begin to seriously engage with poetry until perhaps 10 years later, aside from some awful melodramatic pieces in high school I believe my husband is...

10 Questions for Jon Hickey

January 25, 2021 - By Edward Clifford

This all happened in one of those good stretches of years, a time I like to call Pax Smiley. It wasn't as bad as the Navy, or the six years I spent at Lino Lakes and various country lockups across the state of Wisconsin. I had that house at the end of Sugar Bush Lane, three big dogs, dish satellite TV, two DVD players, a newish truck of foreign import, and the time to drive far and wide around the state, visiting my people.
—from "Earth Shaker," Volume 61, Issue 4 (Winter 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
When I was eleven, I wrote a play using my grandfather’s Olympic typewriter in the clamshell case. I wrote the play to make money—my brother and I charged a dime from the neighborhood kids...

Wounded in Hatred, Part One

January 21, 2021 - By Joseph Keady

Following Fascism from Charlottesville to the Capitol

(Screenshots of Facebook posts, taken 12 August 2017. William Fears is currently serving a five-year prison sentence for choking his girlfriend. Alex McNabb is co-host of the neo-Nazi podcast The Daily Shoah.)
 

If you’ve never experienced it firsthand, let me assure you: the sight and sound of hundreds of men moving as a unit while loudly chanting the...

Flying Home

January 19, 2021 - By Marya Zilberberg

I remember flying over the Atlantic Ocean in a plane full of Russian speech and tentative hope, with children craning their necks to catch glimpses of the clouds below. I remember landing at JFK International, after winter had already dropped its early drape of darkness. While we waited for our luggage, massive cars crawled by outside, their lights splashing behind the scratched glass of sliding doors. I remember spending the night at some airport hotel, having a forgettable dinner at the hotel restaurant. What I remember most is darkness, oily and dense, and the airport lights twinkling like tiny distant stars.

This happened mid-January 1977, a week before Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. Almost a half year earlier, we had left our home in Odessa, Ukraine and then spent five...