Near death, sometimes the hands curve into themselves like claws. I held my mother’s open, smoothing the fingers, trimming the wild nails. Once, years before, my husband and I awoke to a fawn caught in the family compost, a hole on its back end festering with worms, and he pinched each one out swiping his […]
Laura McCullough
Laura McCullough: Reclaimed Wood
I confess now I have begun to henna my red hair gone dull in parts and penny bright in others. And I always tried to subdue its wildness. But when the hull of our marriage busted rock and began to leak, we both thought it was a good idea to renovate the kitchen, together, by […]
Laura McCullough: Leafless
In the end, my mother’s shoulders, barely covered and quivering, were like birds. Once, I made a dress for her, the fabric creamy white, the print a single brown tree spanning the width, with stark branches. It was 1974. I was fourteen. Each night, I taught […]
Laura McCullough
Laura McCullough’s book, The Wild Night Dress, was selected by Billy Collins as a winner of the Miller Williams Poetry Prize, and is forthcoming from University of Arkansas Press. Her most recent book of poems is Jersey Mercy (Black Lawrence Press). Her other collections include Rigger Death & Hoist Another (BL), Panic (Alice James Books, […]
Laura McCullough Published in APR
Today we received our copy of Volume 46/ No. 2 of The American Poetry Review and were incredibly excited to see Laura McCullough‘s “I Am Calling You” on the back spread! Our own Wendy Cannella conducted an interview with McCullough and wrote “Finding the Body: on McCullough’s Jercy Mercy,” a review of McCullough’s latest collection […]
Wendy Cannella: This Fierce Life: An Interview with Laura McCullough
WC: In his article “Ode to Joisey” (New York Times: April 27, 2003), Robert Strauss talks about the great many accomplished poets to emerge from the Garden State. I wonder what it is about New Jersey that breeds poetry, or maybe even embodies it. Much of your work seems to try to get at the […]