CHARACTERS: DIRECTOR MAN WOMAN (An almost barren stage. The lights come up on the DIRECTOR at his lectern, stage right, getting ready for his lecture. He checks his watch, his microphone, takes a sip from a glass of water, checks
Sundogs East
The sun dogs will root me out of my burrow to freeze in a Midwest snow, without haystack or bookstall to hide inside and huddle out the plummeting white. Delighted, the sun dogs will dress themselves in my skin and,
The Sundogs
They tear up my poems when I come too near. The biggest ones kill everything as though everything is meat. They run in packs, they are unduckable. The little ones in training use dewclaws. They are practicing rudeness, boos. Last
Dahuangling
The orchestra swells like an afternoon. End-summer. Mid-heat. Cages swinging over the stage, in the back corners of the amphitheatre. From behind the orchard: a bird museum. Closer and you realize the bars of the cages cuddle like toothpicks twice
The Opposite of Disappearing
For a long while, I was certain my liver had divorced my body. Days spent tracking the mass like a snowstorm: a strange knot in my thigh, a lump in my chest, twice there was a bulge on my shoulder
Poem for Dorothea Lasky
Joshua Marie Wilkinson is the author of four books, most recently The Book of Whispering in the Projection Booth, just out from Tupelo Press. An anthology of poetry, conversation, and poetics–called 12×12–was just published by University of Iowa Press. New
Comprehension Questions
Christine Hume is the author of Musca Domestica, Alaskaphrenia, Lullaby: Speculations on the First Active Sense, and the forthcoming Shot (Counterpath). She teaches in and directs the interdisciplinary Creative Writing Program at Eastern Michigan University.
Disaster Taxa
When the disaster comes upon us, it does not come. Maurice Blanchot (I) Far outside of my warren, gray covered subjects sleep uncomfortably strapped to faux coach lights in front of each foreclosed home. They loll their heads from side
Satellite Love
10. A small capsule entered orbit on November 3, 1957. As it circled above, the sound of a heartbeat was transmitted back to Earth. Millions of people crowded around radios to hear the Soviets’ achievement, and for several hours a
Test Drive
She came for a marriage, but the salesman said that the model she wanted was no longer available. Down a labyrinthine hallway they walked, past rows of closed doors, rusty water fountains, a long expanse of plastic grass. “When I