Articles

There is the Scratch. The Scratch, what is it? 

I am honored and humbled to introduce the following poems written in response to my poem “I’ve Been Known.” First published almost twenty years ago in a wonderful (but now defunct) magazine called Margie, my poem was picked up by Billy Collins for his project Poetry 180: A Poem a Day for American High Schools,

Right now, our country faces a crisis of mass incarceration. With five percent of the world’s population, we have twenty-five percent of the world’s incarcerated people.  The majority of these are held not in the federal prison system but in local facilities—jails.

Welcome to Bellingham Review’s Issue 79, our ninth annual online issue! Inside you’ll find the well-woven work of twenty-four different artists including writers of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry.

ashy spider
                     letting yourself fall
with impatient strands upon a chest
if dream turned over
you wouldn’t be memory

We were traveling in Melbourne Australia back in January of 2018. The location was at the entrance to the Melbourne Museum of Art. The image was made looking through a window that had water running down on the outside.

It’s a myth our nails keep growing after we die. I remember my mother’s final manicure, a hot pink gel that didn’t even chip when she fell on her concrete porch, still looked perfect a week later when we laid her in her coffin.  At the hospital, nobody told us she was dying.

It has been some months since Grace and I had dinner out. Our infant has been at our throats. Yesterday a shower of objects flew our way from the spare room. The day before that, we were unceremoniously thrown out trying to put it to sleep.

FADE IN:

On a SHED, painted black. We move inside to find a pail of green blood
and a SNAPPING TURTLE, twisting on a hook.

in the morning after

Lady Horikawa wrote about her tangled hair

later the poet ordained as a nun