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 […]
Prose
Wendy Cannella: Finding the Body: on Laura McCullough’s Jersey Mercy
Part empathy, part ferocity in subject and voice, a living, breathing language bobs along like an electric jellyfish —fearless, vital, often urban in the poems in McCullough’s new collection Jersey Mercy. Immersed in various tensions—the sort that McCullough has been teasing out for a decade— these poems seem to be uttered aloud as they unfold. […]
Pat Willard: Swans
Clare turns seventeen, three months before me, and when she said all she wanted was an adventure, I thought of the creek that runs through the woods behind my house. Swimming the length of it is the one thing I’ve done that she hasn’t. I couldn’t think of anything more adventurous to give her. We’ll […]
Anastacia Renee: The City
(1) the city sits on itself like a tired woman after a long day of being black. it never excuses itself for crushing us with her weight and we don’t complain…after all, we are alive, we are drinking, we are beautiful in the rain because rain makes us blurry and we don’t have to talk […]
Zaccaria Fulton: Dramaticule
[ Mother lies in bed, center stage, under a spotlight.] Director [to twelve-year-old son]: Remember, you’ve been brought in here by your elementary school Guidance Counselor. This woman is also a friend of your mother’s, and she wants you to tell your mother that it’s okay to let go. Your mother’s body is wracked […]
Caitlin Jackson: Swell
I know it is broken as soon as I fall. I know because when I stand there is a lump right away. It is round and heavy like a new laid egg. I remember reading somewhere that that is what happens when you break a bone. The pain is clear. Not complicated like the pain […]