“Viral” by Evelyn Somers was published in the January issue.

1. How is a baby like a virus?

To be literal, one person gives it to another; it can live inside you for quite a long time, too. My son bit me when he was 18 months old, and I developed an infection that turned septic, and I was hospitalized—so that baby was like a virus in that he almost killed me, as some viruses can.

2. Would you go back in time to tell your younger self to wait a while to have babies in order to somehow have your own reality television show?

I couldn’t have waited because I was already a case of “advanced maternal age,” as they call it (over 35).  The kids are teens now, and all three are gifted.  Two of them have ADHD.  Impulse control does not exist in our home, and we are our own extreme, hysterical reality show. We video the day-to-day things sometimes for our own entertainment, and to startle others.

3. What would you name your vessel?

The vessel is one’s self; I would have had a boring answer for this, but last night my fourteen-year-old son was searching for a fresh way to say, “George Patton was born on November 11, 1885.”  I told him there was nothing wrong with saying it straight.  He countered with, “George Patton was forcibly ejected from the womb on November 11, 1885. That’s an amusing, and accurate, way to say it. The ejection is eventual and inevitable, after gestation. So, you could name the vessel “Eventual Forcible Ejector.” Continue reading →

It would do your week justice to start out by reading or re-reading “At The Off Ramp” by Sheila Macavoy, published in January. Then follow that up by reading this interview.

1. Why did you start it?

Seemed like a good idea at the time.

2. How does a seedy motel always inspire raunchy activities?

This question is like the Willie Sutton interview: Why do you rob banks? ‘Cause that’s where the money is.

3. What’s your drink of choice?

These days, Sprite and TJs Italian Roast Decaf. Continue reading →

These Two Poems by Gary McDowell were in the January Issue. Read the wonderful poems and read this wonderful interview.

1. Why are poets so fascinated with autumn?

Fall.  The Fall.  Falling.  In love.  Out of love.  Darkness.  Leaves.  Leaving.  Squirrels burying nuts—I’ve always wondered, how do they find them later?  I mean, how do they find the ones they themselves buried?  Surely they could find someone’s buried acorn (maybe it’s olfactory?), but how do they know it’s one of their own?  It gets darker earlier in autumn, and so there’s time to research questions like this, and so we, poets, like the autumnal shift in light.  It’s harder to procrastinate when we can’t be out showing off our amazing athletic abilities like we do all summer.

For me it was this: “Their sons grow suicidally beautiful / At the beginning of October, / And gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.”  Or maybe it was Wright’s other poem where at the end of summer, “in a field of sunlight between two pines,” as the butterfly slows down, the hammock swings softly, and the poet whispers, “I have wasted my life.”  Maybe James Wright is autumn like Plath is winter like Roethke is summer like Whitman is spring.  There’s the leaving, the already left feeling of autumn.  It’s the coming of cold that makes us cold, and poets like cold, vast, dark places.  I think.

2. How is loneliness solitude with a problem?

There’s a far too logical explanation for this.  It may be the least poetic thing in the whole poem, but in its ineptitude is its brilliant complexity (for what it’s worth, this is not my creation; it’s a line from a Matthew Zapruder poem).  So we turn to the dictionary.  Solitude: “The state or quality of being alone or remote from others.”  Loneliness: “Without companions; unfrequented by people.”  And so it seems to me that being alone or remote from others is a state brought upon by oneself, but being “without companions” or “unfrequented by people” feels more problematic or unintentional, as if the person without companionship didn’t make a conscious choice to be that way.  Like I said, simple.  Too simple.  But it felt like a brilliant distinction when I first came across it.

3. If you could deal something, what would it be?

Cards.  At a Blackjack table or a Poker table.  Somewhere without cameras and pit bosses.  I studied sleight-of-hand for years, paid my way through college working as a magician, and so I could clean up with bottom deals and phantom deals and other malassociated deviances. Continue reading →

Sherri H. Hoffman’s work of fiction, “Blue”, was published in the January Issue. Sherri answers these intriguing questions.

1. What animal would you like to be crossed with?

A Hawksbill sea turtle. Cool facial tattoos and full sleeves. Plus they’ve got great longevity, a sexy protective shell, and flippers like wings that make swimming in the open sea like flying. What other animal can regularly order a Portuguese Man o’ War off the menu? I love sushi, and I never need an excuse to lay around on the black sand beaches of Hawaii, so I’m sure it would work out.

“First Time/Four Times” by Danez Smith was published in our December Issue. All the sexual questions we could think of for Danez are answered here.

1. How did you come up with hula hooping in a woman’s valley?

I was trying to think about all that happened that summer, and I remembered playing all kinds of kid games.

2. Is it better to lose your virginity to someone you love or just throw it away on someone you are ok with?

As long as your comfortable and safe and aware of how it might affect you, go for it!

3. Should the loss of virginity be traumatic so it sets the bar of sex low in general so we can work to raise that bar with future partners?

Nobody deserves a sucky first time. That’s why I never really got into Madonna. She seemed too happy to be touched like a virgin. My first time sucked, as did the second and the forth (3rd time was awesome). Don’t touch me like a virgin! Touch me like a grown ass man! Touch me like we’re trying to avoid a shitty sweat fest. Touch me like at least like a very respectable whore. I’ve spent my whole like trying to be that. Continue reading →

“Jerking Off” by Fiona Chamness was included in the December Issue. Fiona responds to our queries.

1. What are the dangers in getting it on with yourself in a moving Greyhound bus?

The bathrooms are tiny and feature many objects protruding from the walls. Some of these, such as the accessibility rail, are good for hanging onto or being thrown against. Others, such as the soap dispenser, are not. I can think of few more mortifying things than the prospect of having to explain to a bus attendant that yes, you were having some one-on-one time, and yes, you’re covered in goo, but no, it’s not what you think.

2. What monster are you?

What’s the one whose need for love is a vaccuum cleaner lodged in its third lung? The one that can’t cook a sunnyside-up egg to save its life? I think it makes this kind of panicked-duck sound? You know, the ugly one.

3. Has slam poetry ruined your ability to write short poems? How are you working on your short game?

My short game was abysmal long before I started doing slam poetry. Slam poems are limited to 3 minutes; an unconscionable number of my poems clock in at around 4 or 5. I like to have room to walk through a lot of doors. I would love to write shorter poems; one method I’m using for practice is to pick something off my mental list of Smart Remarks I Could Make To People I Like (don’t pretend you don’t have one) and give it line breaks instead of using it out loud. I could also eat orange peels. To be pithier. Continue reading →

In December, “Four Pieces from Wake” by AT Grant. Grant will now take our questions.

1. How would you stop your dead sister from leaking?

Words live and die in the holes and through the words her blood leaks. Sometimes Dead Brother wants Dead Sister to stop leaking, but sometimes he wants the wrong thing. This is when Dead Sister teaches Dead Brother and me (writer, hand moving over their faces) that we must also leak. That he and I must die further into our death / further into Dead Sister / further into text. That leaking enacts a transformation. Or at least the beginning of a transformation (which is death / life, which is word, which is text). To live / die simultaneously and perpetually is to leak, she says, dancing between the boat and river bank.

2. What else does your blood darken?

My blood darkens my face darkens my mouth darkens my word. Which darkens the text. Which returns those transformed pieces of word / mouth / face / blood back to my body and they are metabolized again. Light shines hard in blood. Deep color saturation on the film strip. On the skinsuit. Which is a screensuit. Blood is darkened by a space created between / around / within writer, reader, and text.

3. Who would you use like a boat?

I keep thinking of William Howard Taft stuck in his bathtub. And in that moment, his body melds with the tub and they become boat. I climb on board and drift down the river until Mr. Taft’s aides come and dislodge the Taftboat from the river. At which point the river stops working and Dead Sister, Dead Brother, and I have to throw some fishing line into the water and pull the river back into motion again.

I wish my own body was a boat I could ride up and down the Mississippi. Ferry tourists. Tote some cargo. Cruise the locks and dams. All the way–headwaters to the gulf. Begin in the ice and eventually work down to the steam. A vacation through all the states of water. Wouldn’t that make for a good year? Continue reading →

Nathan Tavares’s “Interior Spaces” was in the December Issue. Nathan answers questions about dressing slutty, cheating lovers and hidden rooms.

1. How would you dress slutty as a guy?

For me, it would be wearing anything other than my usual parka. Exposed forearms are really slutty.

2. Do you think I drive people away?

No. You’re awesome. But in a completely unrelated note, I have to cancel lunch with you tomorrow. I have, uh, plans.

3. Who would you lock in a room with no way to get out?

Katy Perry. She must be stopped. Continue reading →