Interview with Jill McDonough
Daniel Pieczkolon
Thank you for calling that curiosity “innocent.” I like the sense of “innocent" as “guileless,” rather than “not-guilty,” since the poems sketch both our ignorance and our complicity. I
There are very few places in suburban, quasi-rural Eastern Washington to privately banish a demon when you’re a teen witch still living in your parents’ house.
SUSHI
umami fish in dead cold
sticky rice clings to
gum. take another slab– tell
yourself you are the
ocean, that you... more
After I finished the reading, I waited a couple minutes, browsing books, until I left the bookstore - alone. All the women who’d watched me, who were so supportive, so attractive, were huddled in a group. They were friends, they were a community.
Thank you for calling that curiosity “innocent.” I like the sense of “innocent" as “guileless,” rather than “not-guilty,” since the poems sketch both our ignorance and our complicity. I
Toronto-based writer Sennah Yee’s first collection, How Do I Look?, is quick-witted, lucid, observant and constantly rewarding. Though her book is technically classified as poetry, her pieces feel more like vignettes to me, mini-stories and personal anecdotes that seem to be examining their feelings in real time, tackling in the process a wide range of topics such as mythological figures, the movie Mulan, The Sims, sexual awakenings, microaggressions, Grand Theft Auto 5, being Chinese-Canadian and much more.
Suggestion
new boyfriend says he’s worried. new boyfriend says i should stop saying credit cards are just free money. new... more
Once upon a time there was no sex, but sex was everywhere: in Laura's 6th grade locker with her roll-on deodorant, in Dr. Davidson's walk—slow and tight-calved, in Mr. Robinson's guitar—Cat Steven's "Wild World" each afternoon before the bell, in Mrs. Roger's wavy, knee- length red hair—smelling of Wella Balsam and cigarettes.
The Record
Fear
Label: Slash
Released: May 16, 1982
Length: 14 songs, 27 minutes
This is about a dead guy. But it’s... more
reach inside the incision
up the stomach from the asshole
ribcage gristle light brown mound of heather memory
spill... more
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
~ W.B Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’
One... more
It usually happens after dessert, when my sister is scraping the birthday cake frosting into the garbage or covering the holiday pie... more
Under the cruel glow of inquiry, I want to tell her that the party is over.
By the time I arrived at the Phoenix airport the next summer I was thirty pounds heavier. I’d spent the previous nine months eating vending machine moonpies and packaged cookies in my dorm room.
Hurry, tomorrow’s ashen face is at your door.
Hold out your hands, two tiny suns,
you’re more golden than they ever told you.
The sun is a dwarf star 93 million miles away. The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, a spiky glass appendage that sprouts out of the Royal Ontario Museum’s original brick in downtown Toronto, was unveiled on August 5, 2007.
This was the year Canseco was the first to join the 40/40 club, hitting over 40 homeruns and stealing 40 bases in the same season.
I still remember the hard plastic carrying case I toted around as a preteen in Southern Germany. Bright purple with an aqua-colored latch and handle, it often made the 45-minute car trip from our first-floor apartment on the Army base where my family was stationed to my mother’s hometown when we visited on the weekends.
My grandfather, his English name was Benson. As the houseboys opened the gates, he came out on the balcony and fired off a shotgun, boom, one or two blasts.
I remember seeing Aladdin on Christmas Eve with my friend Kylie when I was seven years old.
I made my mom promise me that she was going to live until she was 100 years old, and I would be 82 and we would die together, peacefully, holding hands.
My siblings and I never liked each other as much as we did on those early mornings; we never made a better team.
It doesn’t make the sound that you think it would make. I mean, I figured it would be loud, or top-heavy. But it sounded like almost... more
You’re from the cornfields, I tease, but not really. Your parents, professors at U of Illinois, both versed in the theories of music,... more