History of Desire

I.

In the photograph
my mother is ten;
she poses in a ruffled dress
and hand-me-down coat
that swallows her arms
the way shame swallows
people whole.

Lost in the oversize. Standing
near a clapboard porch.
She knows she is poor,
one of the poorest; her shoes
are too tight. Other children
tease her about the key
around her neck.

My mother makes drawings
of what she can’t buy;
it will take years, and
thousands of dollars,
for her to learn that money
does not make her happy.

In the photo, my mother smiles
upward like the glamorous people
in magazines. She tapes sketches
of stars to her wall, studies them
before she falls asleep.

Poemas de William Archila, estos poemas forman parte del libro “The Gravedigger’s Archaeology” (Red Hen Press, 2015), ahora traducidos al español por el poeta Mario Zetino en exclusiva para Revista Álastor

CANÍCULA

Para Lory

A los cuarenta, vivimos en un bungalow de dos cuartos

sin aire acondicionado. Mi esposa y yo

dormimos con el ventilador zumbando toda la noche

y una botella de spray al lado de la cama.

Tengo un sueño recurrente: un gato durmiendo la siesta

en una casa estilo Tudor —sé que esa tiene cuatro cuartos—

con un sistema de ventilación de línea completa,

mientras su dueño trabaja en la oficina.

Siempre me despierto aturdido, de mal humor, para

trabajar en un edificio de ladrillos rojizos, enseñando gramática

a niños, con las ventanas abiertas de par en par

y la ola de calor golpeándonos la cara.

Apagamos las luces y nos quedamos sentados

en la penumbra, a pesar de lo que dice el director.

Recorremos las páginas del norte, Jack London

en las cumbres nevadas, y seguimos bebiendo

el agua tibia de nuestras botellas plásticas.

En el salón de profesores, los adultos toman a grandes tragos

café helado. El día es largo y húmedo.

Cada pensamiento, una gota de sudor.

Cuando llego a casa, mi esposa y yo nos damos un beso.

Hace demasiado calor para abrazar. Puedo oler

las horas frustrantes de andar buscando trabajo

en su pelo negro y largo. Nos duchamos;

leemos Una habitación con vistas

para recordar nuestros días de cortejo, en invierno.

El ventilador tira aire caliente.

A ratos veo un brillo en su mejilla

y quisiera atraparlo como una luciérnaga

en un frasco. Cuando se lo digo a ella,

la tapa es la noche, y la luciérnaga —su vuelo torpe—,

nosotros perdidos en un campo de cebada.

Cuando abro el frasco, la tapa se mueve

como la bisagra de la puerta a nuestra casa Tudor.

Estamos en un jardín inglés, con libros abiertos

en el regazo. Y ya va a llover.

I’m Jason Schneiderman, and this is The Slowdown. 

My little brother was a very cute and very happy baby. In all the baby pictures of him, he has an enormous and infectious smile. My baby pictures are mostly of me looking very worried. My infant expression was one of extreme caution, and my body language indicated a strong desire to get away from wherever I was, ideally in favor of somewhere safer. Babies are strangers, little humans born into a world that has been going on without them for a long time, and they are completely dependent on the giants around them to help them find their way. Every baby was once part of another person, and then they are on their own, cared for, we hope, but newly whole in a radical way.

Last week, I met the newest member of my family, my cousin’s newborn baby. It was at a funeral for my aunt, my cousin’s mother, and as keenly as I was feeling this loss, I was grateful for that little child, keeping up a steady babble through the entire service, reminding us 1) babies have no sense of decorum and 2) that life does end, but it also begins. 

Dive into the next issue filled with a collection of author interviews and excerpts of new stories that bring out the true voice of writers who are pushing boundaries and challenging conventional norms. Our Voices issue is not only a platform for discovery but also a celebration of inclusivity and diversity. In this issue, we feature a range of emerging talent from across the globe. From a debut novel exploring unique perspectives and experiences to non-fiction written by emerging Indigenous voices, we are proud to showcase the diverse and thought-provoking works of these new voices. We hope that “Voices” will serve as a source of inspiration and discovery for readers and writers alike. Enjoy the issue!

#AuthorInterview | Ask debut novelist Jade Shyback a question

“…Novelist Jade Shyback has had many lives that I find just completely fascinating. And now is your chance to join the conversation and ask her a question. I’m going to start us out, but please feel free to join in at any time. Jade, I am so excited to talk with you about your debut novel. You moved through many different realms after having a career in financial services, where you traveled the world, raised daughters.…”

#askswell #newbooks #amreading #books

By Maurya Simon | Contributing Columnist

During National Poetry Month in April 2013, I taught poetry to students at Mt. Baldy School. It was a great experience, and, ultimately, their hard work and inspiration coalesced into a lovely chapbook that several students compiled as keepsakes for the class.

This past April and in May, I’m back at the school working with some eager middle school students, as well as with the first-, second-, fifth- and sixth-graders. Each class is markedly different: The youngest students are as energized as hummingbirds. They’re still learning how to comport themselves in class, but their excellent teacher, “Mr. D.,” keeps them attentive, even if they’re ready to break out into giggling fits.

Since Mr. D. ‘s reading them poems during regular classes, I’ve asked them to read and recite some favorite nursery rhymes: “Hickory Dickory Dock” and “Humpty Dumpty.” This activity’s been successful, although after I asked if they enjoyed reciting nursery rhymes, one boy vehemently shook his head “no,” while the others eagerly nodded “yes!” “Why not,”  I asked him, and he replied, “I just don’t like them.” I said, “That’s fine,” admiring his forthrightness.

In her ninth collection of poems, Ghost Apples, Katharine Coles interrogates and celebrates her relationship with the natural world and the various creatures who inhabit it, and in doing so asks what it means to be sentient and mortal on a fragile planet. From her own pet parrot, Henri, to the birds her husband attracts to their feeders, to the wildlife who live just outside—and regularly cross—her property on the wild edge of Salt Lake City, she uses her capacity for intense observation and meditation to think her way into other lives and possible shared futures, both good and bad.

Katharine Coles is the author of two novels, nine collections of poems, the essay collection The Stranger I Become, and the memoir Look Both Ways. The recipient of grants from the NEA, the NEH, and the Guggenheim Foundation, she has served as Poet Laureate of Utah and was inaugural director of the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute. She is a distinguished professor of English at the University of Utah.

Katharine Coles will headline an event at The King’s English Bookshop in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, May 31, from 6:00pm to 7:00pm. You must reserve your seat by making a donation in any amount to TKE’s non-profit, Brain Food Books. Please reserve your seat on Eventbrite here.

A PLUCKED ZITHER BY PHUONG T. VUONG (JUNE 6TH)

This poetry collection explores migration, memory, language, and the experience of being a refugee. The poems travel through time and space, between Vietnam and the U.S., as the speaker looks for belonging and connection. Many of the poems directly address the ways that war, imperialism, and forced migration shape families and communities. But Vuong also makes space for joy and healing, with poems that pay homage to legacies of creative resistance, antiwar activism, and the power of cultural and intergenerational memory.

‘‘We interrupted the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather; three of us got onto Dan Rather’s set, chanting, ‘AIDS Is News, Fight AIDS, not Arabs,’ we were hauled off the set and arrested.’’ 

This was just one of the many examples of protest English Professor John Weir participated in the late 1980’s. This was the time when the AIDS epidemic was beginning to reach its peak as the government was turning a blind eye toward those who were infected, the majority of whom were gay men. 

Professor Weir spent many years combating the government/medical indifference toward the global AIDS crisis alongside his advocacy on behalf of the LGBTQ+ community more generally. ‘‘I volunteered for a couple of years for Gay Men’s Health Crisis. For a year I ran a writers group for about a dozen guys, all but one of whom died of AIDS over the course of that year; and I wrote a piece about the writers group,’’ Professor Weir said. ‘‘ My professor showed it to the Editor-in-Chief of Harper’s Magazine, and it was published there in 1986. There had been not much writing about AIDS in mainstream publications at that point.’’

Toward the end of the decade, Professor Weir had gotten involved with a group called ACT UP New York. The group’s main objectives were to not only find a cure for AIDS, but to call for action from the government and the medical/pharmaceutical industries. From 1989 to 1991, ACT UP confronted various legislators and pharmaceutical companies about the ongoing AIDS crisis, demanding a response. 

I often talk about the ‘golden threads’ that connect me to my guests. Kim is certainly one of them. She has enriched my life with her poetry. It was a JOY to talk to her for Mother’s Day about her book: I WORE THIS DRESS TODAY FOR YOU, MOM, a celebration of motherhood and being a daughter. You will enjoy listening to Kim reading a few of her lovely poems in her soft and gentle voice. 

She writes poems that will make you laugh and make you stop and remember something from your own life. You will marvel at how simple ordinary event can become an exquisite poem in the hands of someone who has found the joy of writing..

It’s funny how Kim entered my life. I walked in the studio and there was a pile of envelopes with books waiting for me. A dozen brown envelopes and in between a shiny white one with red lettering. KIM FROM LA. 

I opened first. Inside was a book and a note. Not a standard PR sheet. This was a personal note. Kim from LA explaining why I should interview the author. She was so enthusiastic that the book went to the top of my to-be-read pile. 

Later I discovered that Kim is an award winning poet. So perfect. A publicist who loves the writers she promotes and also writes poems. It was beshert. We were meant to meet. 

I Wore This Dress Today for You, Mom is more than a book of poems., it’s like a mini-novel that tells the story of her life—from being a child, to taking care of a mother with dementia, to raising a child and surrounding him with love.  A perfect gift to anyone in your life—and one you will treasure.

Cynthia Hogue’s new poetry collection is instead, it is dark (Red Hen Press, 2023). Her ekphrastic Covid chapbook is entitled Contain (Tram Editions 2022), and her new collaborative translation from the French of Nicole Brossard is Distantly (Omnidawn 2022). She served as Guest Editor for Poem-a-Day for September (2022), sponsored by the Academy of American Poets. Hogue was the inaugural Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University. She lives in Tucson.

In this conversation, H. L. Hix asks after poet Cynthia Hogue’s most recent collections, Contain (Tram Editions, 2022) and instead, it is dark (Red Hen, 2023).

KATE GALE has authored seven poetry collections, including “The Loneliest Girl” (Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2022), “The Goldilocks Zone” (Univ. of New Mexico Press, 2014), “Echo Light” (Red Mountain Press, 2014). She has written six librettos including “Rio de Sangre,” an opera composed by Don Davis, which premiered at the Florentine Opera in Milwaukee in 2010, and “Paradises Lost,” co-authored with Ursula K. LeGuin, composed by Stephen Andrew Taylor, and performed at the New York City Opera in 2006. Gale is managing editor of Red Hen Press which she co-founded with Mark E. Cull In 1994. She is editor of the Los Angeles Review, an annual print and online literary journal established in 2003. She teaches in the Low Residency MFA program in poetry at the University of Nebraska and speaks on independent publishing at schools around the US, including Columbia and the University of Southern California; and in England at Oxford University.

Interview host DOUGLAS MANUEL is the author of two collections, “Trouble Funk” (Red Hen Press, 2023) and “Testify” (Red Hen Press, 2017). His poems and essays can be found in numerous literary journals, magazines, and websites. He received a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California and is a recipient of the Dana Gioia Poetry Award and a fellowship from the Borchard Foundation Center on Literary Arts. Manuel is an assistant professor of English at Whittier College and teaches at the Spalding University’s low-res MFA program.

“Family stories fill gaps in my sense of history,” writes David Mas Masumoto in Secret Harvests: A Hidden Story of Separation and the Resilience of a Family Farm (Red Hen Press, April 18), the story of a Japanese American farm family in California, beautifully illustrated with linoleum block prints by Patricia Wakida. The author knows that his immigrant story—first- and second-generation farmworkers rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II; an uncle who served in the all–Japanese American 442^nd U.S. Army Infantry Regiment—complicates the traditional narrative of American history.

My Chinese-Taiwanese grandma used to say that our Asian community comes from a long line of spoken words. From the ancient deities in our fairy tales about world creation, to the heroes whose achievements are in our epic poems, we are the descendants of storytelling.

Stories help us form our voice, discover our place in both old and new worlds, and define our identity in the continuum of time. Generation after generation, we connect and pass along information through the bonds of oral history. I hope some of these titles will resonate with you, move you, inspire you, and bring you (back) into the uniquely fascinating universe of Asian storytelling, just like my grandma’s vivid nursery rhyme narrations did for me. —Hsin Chao, Audible Editor