Articles

Before I go to bed I wash my face in the basin called Los Angeles County, upside-down jellyfish, lotus, splash of luminescence. Jupiter smudges the telescope lens with a greasy thumb. A satellite flares out over San Gabriel’s mountains. I weigh 35lbs. on the moon. When I wake up January has swung shut like an …

Imagine your hand. Imagine your hand is a horse. A coal black Friesian drinking sunlight from a stream beginning mountain leaps alongside fiddleneck ferns and boggy rush seeps. Imagine the mountains held in place by the hands of glaciers. Imagine the horse drinking from the glacier melting. Imagine the glacier drinking from the sun. The …

I am out here searching for a something that rhymes with knife. I am sucking her pronoun like a lozenge, turning it in my mouth, gilding my throat, sheathing myself, rife with viscous possibility. Have I said too much already? People are donning ballgowns to vaccinations. After nearly a month, I’ve only ever touched her …

Epistolary Experiment Conducted August 2018 GB: In the summer of 2018, I invited Jennifer S. Cheng to engage in a hybrid, epistolary experiment: During the span of two weeks—while I was in Vermont for a conference and she was at her home in the Bay Area—we would create something every day, with each other as …

When your live-in boyfriend asks you to move to New York with him but suggests that you get separate apartments, it is a sign that things are not going well. A hint you do not heed. You insist. Demand. Wear him down. And then, the most convincing argument of all: you have a job and …

Even though my time as Managing Editor is coming to a close, I can’t help but choose gratefulness over sadness. I’m thankful for so many things, including everyone who submitted to our 2023 awards (for which we had a record number of submissions!) and anyone who came to our lovely AWP reading back in March, …

A murder of five echoed the muddy rush refusing my skinny oak arms, pop cans and cardboard scarves scolding my hand. A barge chewed the center current, a brown rat piloting an empty gallon jug in its wake. I asked the crows, Why am I here? Five eyes rolled north as the rat tacked the …

Side Notes from the Archivist by Anastacia-Renée (HarperCollins, 2023) This most recent collection of poetry from Anastacia-Reneé, Side Notes from the Archivist, is rich with beauty and nostalgia, a vivid plumage of detail and unflinching intimacy. The author invites us to experience an archive through the voice of the archivist and their side notes. In …

“You need money?” her mother said, and her voice sounded faint, as though she’d called from a million miles away. Sasi picked at one of the loose threads on her quilt. She knew her mother expected her to say no.  “No, I took out the maximum student loan, and my meal card is good for …

The day is clear with light, cool winds blowing from the west.  I launch my kayak from a sandy beach on the edge of Crane Prairie Reservoir. It is a large lake, blue and diamond-studded when the wind blows, a glass mirror when it doesn’t. Its shore is twenty-two miles in length, most of which …