“The world is often not what it seems, and so a poem that indexes the seeming world is bound to be mistaken. That’s great. Our perceptual limitations are, I think, fascinating and moving. Moving in both senses: they stir up emotion, and also are in the process of changing.”
Thinking Big: An Interview with Heather Christle Read More »
Andrew H. Miller on Virginia Woolf, Adam Regn Arvidson on the nineteenth-century surveying of the prairie and what remains, Amy Boesky on a middle-school girl’s summer (it’s a jungle out there)
Poetry by H. L. Hix, Jack Ridl, Dennis Schmitz, Bern Mulvey, Dan Gerber, Melissa Stein, Kirun Kapur
Fiction by Gerald Shapiro, Jane Gillette, Jane E. Martin, Michael B. Yang, Elizabeth Kadetsky
MQR 51:2 | Spring 2012 Read More »
“Diversion and masking is a part of who we are. The thing I like about poetry is that it stares. In general, fiction or prose pans the room. Poetry is a still shot. I like that, staying with a moment until it makes sense. I can’t do that any other way.”
An Interview with francine j. harris Read More »
by Monique Daviau
Back in August, before the beginning of the school year, I was sitting on the red sofa at Mighty Good Coffee in Ann Arbor, sipping a latte and reading one of the thirty-one books that MFA students are required to read for their reading exam. An older woman with a massive expanse of gray curls sat down beside me and began munching a cookie, and after evaluating whether or not I was willing to have a conversation with her, explained to me why she was so happy:
“I’ve just gotten a massage and I know that my massage therapist loves me because after he finished, he folded my socks a certain way. Look! That means ‘I Love You.’ If he folds them this way, see, (the lady rearranged the top of her sock) that means ‘I only want to be your friend,’ but he didn’t, and so he loves me.” She returned her sock to its previous “he loves me” configuration, and smiled some more.
by Gina Balibrera
The summer between high school and college I worked at a clothing boutique in San Francisco, taking polyester tube tops out of boxes, steaming them on hangers, and carrying them across the earthquake-dinted floorboards, which glowed golden in the midday-light, to the rounders for the shop’s wealthy patrons to admire. My boss, K-, lived in a studio above a flower shop and frequently aired her romantic woes.
Congratulations to G. C. Waldrep–whose “Internal Monument,” which appeared in the Spring 2011 issue of MQR, has been selected for inclusion in Puchcart Prize XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses.
“Internal Monument” Wins a Pushcart Read More »
It was the third dry year. There had been a stream once, made of snowmelt from the mountains to the north, but even the snow had been sparse the winter our coyote mother met our dad, a dog who had his own concerns. When he stopped showing up, it wasn’t because he didn’t want to, Mam said. His obligations conflicted.
“Cloud Food,” by Julia Gibson Read More »
As opposed to wit, which is often just pedantic cruelty, more ingenious than funny, rarely instructive or heartening, aphorism is, historically, a manly form, laconic, from the Spartan polis of Laconia.
The Ego Is So OVERRATED Read More »
by Gina Balibrera
In 1928, Hollywood film studio artists drew “the ideal screen type.” An amalgamation of the famous disembodied parts of Hollywood stars, the ideal screen type was doe-eyed and fair, holding her willowy arms at a coy akimbo. Beside the artists’ illustration of the composite ideal appeared the remarkable photographic image of the composite ideal’s real-life double: silent film star Anita Page. Born Anita Pomares, in Flushing, Queens, Salvadoran-American silent film star Anita Page possessed a beauty that was uncannily familiar: the eyes of Mary Pickford, the smooth white arms of Clara Bow, and the wasp waist of Bebe Daniels. Had the camera trained its lens more closely upon Anita’s exquisite nose, this shot would have recorded her beautifully-full Latina nose as well.
The Ideal Screen Type Read More »
by Virginia Konchan
“A blank sheet is full of paths. It must each time be discovered.”
Discovering Edmond Jabès Read More »
