New Poems by Our Contributors NICOLE COOLEY, DUY ĐOÀN, and JOHN KINSELLA.
Table of Contents:
- Nicole Cooley, “Covanta, A Detail”
- Duy Đoàn, “Norepinephrine — “Suicides in Fiction Say Goodbye”
- John Kinsella, “Before Eurydice Was Bitten”
Covanta, A Detail
By Nicole Cooley
The incinerator smoke an incision in the sky.
My daughter no longer small yet still I want to swallow her back into my body.
Sky a scalding.
My daughter asks me to stop saying, I wish this wasn’t the world you have to live in.
In my dream my girl is the size of a thumb I catch between my teeth.
Sky all smoke.
In the morning, men wearing masks drag our cans out to their truck.
In the morning, out the kitchen window, I wish the wide street rivered.
Norepinephrine — Suicides in Fiction Say Goodbye
By Duy Đoàn
I don’t mean this room, Frank.
I mean this world.
(American Horror Story 2:7)
Give 11 dollars to the next person who asks.
And then 7, or 10, or 9: all of your siblings’
jersey numbers until you honor them all. . .
Adam kicks a votive candle clean off the stoop
and wishes he could obliterate the candle before
he completes his follow-through. He resents
the street because it can. Thu Vân sells her
owl collection, in one go—leaves not one
behind. Jinny keeps her best shoes, buys
new laces, and relaces them. She learns the
lattice method. Dee starts signing their emails
different, turning every “Best,” into “<3,”
turning every “<3,” into “Love,.” Quasimodo
stops being pretentious. Daisy stops caring
when she stutters. She stops that stupid
post-mortem-loop-for-days-after. Miles
masters the double-under and then teaches
someone how to start learning it. Violet
lets someone teach her the two-step. Lux
abstains from being charismatic for three
days and then apologizes to all their loved
ones for at least one thing. For Mike, it’s
listen to Getter/Joji, dream about moving
to Los Angeles, listen to Angeles. For Anna,
it’s Listen to Anna Karenina on tape. Leo
bounces up and down, dances all night,
writes all morning, sleeps an hour. Cecilia
loves big, still—and refuses to stop. Neil
sees an onion ring in a shopping cart and
remembers eating a giant plate late one
night with a friend. He gets two large
orders from Sonic and feeds them to his
dog all day. Damien prays that God will
bless his neighbors and his devils. Jason
touches thirteen mailboxes. Lane rewatches
the Subway Series on VHS. He makes cracker
jacks from popcorn with butter and sugar.
Jen Yu pours herself a celebratory drink and
makes everyone think it’s a courage drink.
Before Eurydice Was Bitten (Metamorphosis)
By John Kinsella
A friendship without celebration
might have meant the snake
never found her ankle?
Singing our awkward moments,
singing trees into formation,
line dancing just for the sake of it.
I’ve tried to tell a-tonal stories
since I was a kid; I am bothered
by rhyme, I am bothered by refrains.
The sky has suddenly more hawks,
but that doesn’t mean they’re all
transformations — some were
always hawks. It’s a mix of origins.
Same for the small birds and rodents
they scan for. She was more
social than me. My fingers
are like strings. I am far
from where snakes reside
but I will return soon.
To a land where I cannot
form allegories. Where
I squawk at tangents.
Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans and is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Mother Water Ash. She has received a “Discovery”/The Nation Award, The Walt Whitman Award and a grant from the American Antiquarian Society. She teaches in the MFA program in creative writing and literary translation at Queens College, The City University of New York and lives outside of NYC with her family.
Duy Đoàn (pronounced zwē dwän / zwee dwahn) is the author of We Play a Game, winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and a Lambda Literary Award. Duy’s work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, Kenyon Review, The Margins, Poetry, and elsewhere. He has been featured in PBS’s Poetry in America and Poetry magazine’s Editors’ Blog. He received an MFA in poetry from Boston University, where he later served as director of the Favorite Poem Project. His second collection, Zombie Vomit Mad Libs, is forthcoming from Alice James Books, November 2024.
John Kinsella‘s forthcoming poetry books are a new selected, The Darkest Pastoral and the collection Aporia.
