Empire is “a shattered sequence” that dismantles settler logic and the ideological underpinnings of manifest destiny on the American landscape. Acknowledging the destruction of pre- and post-colonial American land as a consequence of whiteness, this collection employs inherited form—most notably the sonnet—to demonstrate this perpetual haunting as cultural and environmental erasure. The poems in Tracy […]
There is an artistic paradox here: wherever a scar forms, nothing else can grow.
Proximity is often a necessary discussion tool for intimacy. Not that there is a prerequisite distance prescribed to intimacy, but that distance and closeness can both be influencing factors in burgeoning relationships. The direct and possible results like becoming fonder of someone are so tangible and tantalizing, yet we always seem to be in discussion […]
Poetry is engaged to dreams or a dream-state, and the surprising word-choices shift us into a world where clocks drip
The twist of the shortest word in a line of the longest poem acts as a flicker of light brightening the most minute detail in the frame
Through imperial violence we are made alien in our own land. “This belongs to you. / It does not belong to me.”
Grieving violence creates a kind of horrific palimpsest of how the public choruses events.
Awash with wandering loneliness, Phan’s lines vacillate from contemplative to biting, economical to allegorical
Photo by Phil Roeder when you lift your toe, the fabric falls, folds. the ropes dance. your hair drags along the forest floor and my comb follows. tonight, we’re lost at sea, hidden in plain sight. let’s not worry our wishes into birds or close off a corner of the room. let’s have a thicker […]
Photo by John Morton Outside, a tree, dried out & skeletal, moans. Dead in spring. The roots can’t find water. It’s May, the city isn’t greening anymore, & trees are sick of the sun. Say the sky’s the sickblue of hospital walls. Say her name as she coughs & gags in predawn heat. She tried […]