We do not have to believe the things we say, though we may well. The things we say are objects, and we place them in front of us in order to consider them. There may be some repetition in this.
My Toy Interior: A Video Essay
There is a curious way in which writing becomes idealized form. A mysterious process through which the lines become transformed into boundaries which beg to be transgressed, reformulated, upon which we make our attempts at their erasure (or to mark
The Great Correction
Marva and Jones liked to go swimming in the late afternoon. They would walk down the steps built into the steep hill that delivered the college from the town. Both college and town were compelling in their ways, but they
The Anatomy Lesson: An Explication
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.