“Let’s see” is walking toward me at dawn, behind my childhood cat. I don’t even look at my souvenirs anymore. My hair fell into the dirt, sticking up & waving in the wind. Who is it waving to? Your hair falls off of you & onto a heart-shaped plant. It’s fragrant, but I want absence. …
He ran into Cheryl in the bar at the airport Hyatt in Pittsburgh. She was having drinks with two other women—probably flight attendants, Paul thought, by the looks of them. They were across the room, at a table, under the TV with the basketball game he was following. He stopped watching the game and let …
Why I Chose It: Michigan Quarterly Review reader A. Shaikh on why they recommended “Alternative Facts” by Susan Azar Porterfield for our Winter 2023 issue. You can purchase the issue here. It’s an incredible gift to find a poem aware of its own multitudes, such as “Alternative Facts” by Susan Azar Porterfield. The poem begins by stating its …
Dementia Your visitors are curious about the sound of the windchimes out your window, coming from your neighbor’s yard. They ask about the sounds from downstairs, where dementia has taken over the old woman’s throat. Her sounds have the inflection of real speech and she says the same thing over and over: Da da da …
Carla Medina de Sánchez August 8, 1899* Thank you, hurricane, for trout soaring over the orchard. Thank you, whizzing bits of insects, for your sting. Thank you, crippled mule, paddling hooves-over-head into a tumult you cannot comprehend. Thank you, uprooted ceiba, for this hole that holds me in its odor of decay. Thank you, roots, …
