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The moment one learns English by Peter Jay Shippy
“The moment one learns English, complications set in.” Felipe Alfau (Chromos) Harryette Mullen’s Sleeping with the Dictionary (Univ. of California Press) is one of my favorite books to read, teach, and recommend to children,…
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“Undead, undead, undead” by Peter Jay Shippy
“Undead, undead, undead” (Bauhaus) Recently I’ve been teaching a class that explores fairy takes, new and old. One of our texts is My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New…
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Mother Died Today [by David Lehman]
Mother died today. That's how it began. Or maybe yesterday, I can't be sure. I gave the book to my mother in the hospital. She read the first sentence. Mother died today. She laughed…
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Long pause. (Beckett, “Catastrophe”)
A few weeks ago I finished Geoff Dyer’s Zona—a book about a movie (Tarkovsky’s Stalker) about a room. It’s a book of divine deviations. Toward the middle of the book, Dyer notes that he…
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“Big Tool” (by Allison Contey)
Big Tool Oh the frustration of the big tool.To have, or to have not a big tool,to be equipped to deal with the bigtool, to become a big tool when dealingwith it in a…
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“Letter to Violi from Prospect Heights” [by Amanda Smeltz]
Letter to Violi from Prospect Heights This week the wind picked up something crazy,ripped inside my coat on Sixth Ave. I got so tickedI growled, fuck you wind! Some old womenwhirled around, looked at…
