Articles

first fire took hold
of my right hand later I learned
how to dry the tears of the blisters
without screaming then I began to say
thank you to the raw glove each morning

If it were,
though I much doubt it,
wouldn’t it be less leaf
than breeze, more winter
than summer, and nothing to
weigh it down—

No need of light,
he knows the subject well enough
for years has shaved
without a mirror, his fingers practicing
the planes and contours—

Monday and the kind of cold outside
that darkens needles
on the evergreens,
makes blood sluggish in its veins.

It is best not to talk about this
which is why I am scribbling it
on the sole of my Manolo.
I met one of them in Plaidtown.

One way to tell if you are, in fact, Donna Haraway, is to consider whether you
use the phrase, “We are all ________________.”

Beyond the pane: dark suspends and a forlorn look
crosses the day’s face. Beyond the pane: two Blue Jays
pop from the belly of the lilac bush. Backs cerulean
flowing cobalt, flowing aquamarine—
limitless colors

David Scherrer’s photograph titled Shawneetown is featured on the cover of this edition of the Bellingham Review. David Scherrer: This photo was taken in southern Illinois a year ago, near the Ohio river, where it’s often misty in the morning during the summer. Eventually, the sky opens up to a bright blue with intense heat. Good …

I’ve been writing forever, but didn’t start thinking of myself as a writer until I was in my thirties. I went to art school and graphic design is how I earn a living. I never got an M.F.A., but I still take writing workshops. I feel like an eternal apprentice.

Her poems spread from the taproot of mental illness and the female psyche, generating a surrealist space of glass teeth, pink crinoline, and bus tickets to nowhere, in which the manic is constantly in conversation with the muse. This relationship changes shape throughout the collection, shifting from the complexities of the mother-daughter dynamic, to the brutality of abuser to abused, to the gentle reflections of lover to beloved.