Articles

a canoe no I am on a canoe paddling in water so deep I lose my reflection I am paddling no I quit paddling I lay my paddle in the water watch it float like a flat canoe I am surprised not everything sinks I stand up and the canoe shakes it would be easy …

Every dead child comes back. The cities crowd out from north to south. Blink and they’re fine, blink again and they look exactly how we left them under the water, under the earth, bound and destroyed. The ones burned look fine, except when you squint and they resemble walking ash in the form of a …

On a bus in Chile, I lose my grandmother’s bursztyn ring, its amber from the Bałtyk shores. In memory’s temporal house a woman walks her cows out to where the river meets the sea. The river acquires density. Saltwater lets itself be pressed down. Wind blows directly into our kissing. Spares us sand but not …

i Learn to inhabit your body, try—tai chi, yoga, meditation—anything that trains you to move beyond fear, to stitch together mind-body connections. ii Begin with small items: drum stick, wooden spoon, candle. With these you must dismantle the gag reflex, learn to tuck in your chin, align your mouth and esophagus with your spine. iii …

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, …