MQR Sound – Michigan Quarterly Review

MQR Sound


Some things are better seen and heard. Listen to author-recorded performances of poems from recent MQR issues.

Summer 2024 | Terry Ann Thaxton Reads "Mother of Stone" MQR Sound

A note about the work “Mother of Stone” from Terry Ann Thaxton for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Summer 2024 issue:  I have a photograph of my parents standing next to each other, leaning against our station wagon on one of our numerous and regular camping trips. My father is shirtless, smiling and wearing his bucket hat. My mother is not smiling. I sensed that my parents did not like each other. They did not touch each other. I did not know until years after their deaths many of the reasons their distrust, but my childhood sense was correct. My parents loved their children, but the pretense of their happiness loomed over our lives and haunted me. It seemed to be my father’s mission to take us to every fort in Florida, including Fort Pickens and Castillo de San Marcos. My father stole a brick from Geronimo’s cell at Fort Pickens by putting it on his head under his hat, which he later used when he built the fireplace in our home. Coquina shells were used in the construction of Castillo de San Marcos. Florida sits on limestone. My mother would occasionally smile but only when my father was not present, and her smile seemed, to me, to be behind a wall of stone.
  1. Summer 2024 | Terry Ann Thaxton Reads "Mother of Stone"
  2. Summer 2024 | Patrycja Humienik Reads "Archival"
  3. Summer 2024 | Peter E. Murphy Reads "So Like a Waking"
  4. Summer 2024 | Charlie Sorrenson Reads "Ideal Customers"
  5. Summer 2024 | Jodie Noel Vinson Reads “In Defense of Aunt Léonie"
  6. Summer 2024 | Leila Chatti Reads "Once I Was Beautiful Now I Am Myself"
  7. Summer 2024 | Cortney Lamar Charleston Reads “It's Important I Remember that the Enemy Is Always Within"
  8. Summer 2024 | Steffi Sin Reads “For Girls Who Talk Too Much at Lunch”
  9. Summer 2024 | Jesmyn Ward Prize in Fiction Winner Vince Omni Reads "Diaspora Café"
  10. Summer 2024 | Laurence Goldstein Prize in Poetry Winner Fernando Trujillo Reads "13 Ways of Nepantla”
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