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Triin Paja
a fox jumps from the twig-sinewed forest.
winter gnaws on the ruins of stags, bone rags,
hoarse birdsong. a child says winter, meaning
father. mother was a river, and below the ice,
the children were swimming. it was easier
for father to love the earth than another,
to adore shadows who do not have mouths.
in January, I send him a letter to say
a grey heron was locked in a frozen river
and consumed by foxes. he mumbles
how even saints were fed to bears,
or he is only snowing gently,
only a boy brave enough
to drink from a cow's udders
in a field feathered in dandelion seeds.
grandfather shepherded cows in that field,
and if the dead may choose one field,
then this is my father's field.
my life is the distance from that field.
I love only rivers, rivers, rivers.
from the journal BLACK WARRIOR REVIEW
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One of Terrance Hayes' black-and-white illustrations for his forthcoming book, Watch Your Language
"A Sacred, Unusual Space: A Conversation with Terrance Hayes"

"I think the workshop is a very special place. When you’re around that table, it’s a really sacred, unusual space. Very rarely in your life are you gonna have this kind of intimacy. On a weekly basis people are exposing their vulnerabilities in content as well as composition. They are giving you a lot. It’s not a typical classroom dynamic—the ideal workshop is inherently anti-academic, anti-capitalistic. It’s about aesthetic and personal values manifesting in language."

via TEACHERS AND WRITERS MAGAZINE
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Cover image of Charles Simic's book, The World Doesn't End
What Sparks Poetry:
Lloyd Wallace on Charles Simic's The World Doesn’t End


"It’s days like this that I get most upset that I will one day die. It’s also days like this I feel most fortunate to have a book like Charles Simic’s The World Doesn’t End to carry with me through my days—a book which, for all the violence it contains, all the liquid strangeness, all the pain, has always seemed to me to look at death with a steady, if somewhat smoky, optimism."
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