I’ll tell you the best Bible story. My version is Best but you can check the original if you want. So Jesus is getting pretty big at this point; he’s really blowing up. Folks are following him and he’s marching on, disciples are striding and streaking next to him; you know Jesus always rides twelve people deep. This woman sees… Read more →
I worked at the Speedway in Orlando, a race car themed restaurant. Blue Sunoco leaded gasoline pumps on either side of the entrance. A Red Lion Gilmore pump by the restrooms. Motor oil drums transformed into gleaming seats in the cocktail lounge. Sheet metal walls with wavy images of a Bluebird V, a Stanley Steamer. Race car drivers in caps,… Read more →
I preach labor exploitation in the name of Christto my mom as I tell her about the youth group service trip I just finishedand she says, try being a stay at home motheras I sit next to herlike an uncashed check. I’m driving through smokefrom fires three time zones away and,if a tree falls in the forest and you find… Read more →
In the nonhuman future, particles of plastic pulverized by the North Pacific Garbage Gyre work their way through scales of fish. Stars flare through their life cycles without faces. How badly I want them to have faces. My tombstone could be a horse’s heart as it beats, quilt of blood, swift to the furthest reaches, warming the nostrils, the tender… Read more →
PAIGE RIEHL: Thank you, Claire, for speaking with me about your fourth book of poetry, Meltwater, a Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award Finalist and a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award in poetry. Congratulations! I am so drawn to this collection for numerous reasons, one of which is the way you illustrate the complexities of existing as a person amid an ongoing… Read more →
Yellow leaves clung to the branches of bony trees. In the back of the police cruiser, my wrists werered from handcuffs. Raw red like roses, strawberries. The cops found me hanging upside downfrom the apartment building’s balcony by my ankles, caught in the railing. Had to use the cherrypicker to get me down. I was naked, warm. They made me… Read more →
I believe in it like I believe in the soul of the mouse who died in my driveway or was carried there by some stray. What happens to the pleasures of a half-rotted body? The pleasure given by recognizing a shape still enough to sketch on graphed paper? I took a picture to make my phone’s home screen while the… Read more →
how do you explain bloodto a man, the blood it takesto make a person, that you spenda life stomaching as it leaksout of you in dark hot stains untilone day it begins to clotand make a face, a faceyou will feed, a mouth that willbite you and say your nameback to you, an organoutside of you walkingaway from you, an… Read more →