Chris Shipman explains how he became his own murderer and airplanes. Check out his poetry/killer in the August issue.

1. Are you now or have you ever been murdered? If yes, explain. If no, justify.

At the moment I am safe and sound, because my dagger loves me, but there are 15 knives hanging from precarious clotheslines in the darkness of my walk-in closet. When I flip on the switch they vanish. I have been murdered many murders of crows. I explain this away with birds that fly beak first into your question. I explain this away by murdering my face with your question.

2. What drew you to the murder ballad genre?

My murderer drew me to the murder ballad. He goaded me with 1,000 acorns falling from trees to enter the alleyway of my aging heart. It was dark and foggy, like something out of a movie. Somewhere a dog scratched at a white fence. And then came the music, rising.

3. Do you more often revise your poems or rewrite them until they feel right?

I revise my memory then write the memory then write the poem then repeat the process.

4. Are these poems from a larger series and do you use the same title for every poem?

Yes, there is a larger series at work. And yes, every poem has the same title. And yes, now that you ask, these are two condemnable facts of life.

5. To me, these poems cross innocence and experience. I don’t know exactly why I think that or what I mean. Tell me, what do I mean?

I can’t even tell you what I mean. What do you mean by asking what do you mean that I mean? See what I mean? A plane just flew over my head in this little park by the school where teach, where I sit writing this, where my students are describing things I’ll never see, where I am thinking about this plane, and how I like the noise, like being a kid and describing things without writing, and I am thinking that I am feeling pretty happy, but I really hate flying, and I also think about this, and how now the next plane will sound like it’s going down, you know, in the way you don’t want it to, so now I am fearing death again, maybe a little more than before, and now I am thinking about making my murderer sit next to me on a plane. See what I mean?

6. What’s the last dream you remember? 

My murderer enters the archetypical house in the archetypical dream. He’s dressed in my grandfather’s skin, the same un-tucked flannel, baggy khakis, and that thin grin. I let him in. I don’t know he’s my murderer until the end of the dream. But that comes later. Sarah is there. Maybe Adam Atkinson? Anyway, my murderer/grandfather reads my tarot cards, says I’ll die this year. Or maybe he just says the number 30 and frowns in that you’re-going-to-die- this-year kind of way. No one else seems to mind. I pretend I don’t mind that no one minds. Sarah is smiling. Maybe Adam, if he is there, is smiling. They see the strange pictures on the strange cards and they are alive and they smile. I see my murderer/grandfather to the door. He says, “I would be your husband to this life if you would be my wife to this death.” This is when I know for sure he’s my murderer, because my murderer always says shit like that.