poetry | Page 17 | wisconsinacademy.org
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poetry

First off, congratulations on your collection The Sleeve Waves winning the Felix Pollak poetry prize.

My best friend’s grandmothersurvived the holocaust.Lived in a tiny roomoff of the kitchenate like a birdyet wanted to be near food.Others in the houseslept in huge bedrooms

Your newest collection of prose poems references the classics—classic video games, that is.

Draw a line to five, when Frank Bitsueis hauling water from the well then counthis living grandchildren and divide themby the ones who chased sheep into the rain.Subract the crash. Add summers and sleep of

I guess you didn't get my letter, since youdied before I put it in the mail.But maybe that's OK—I mean, whatwas left to say anyway? Confession (I neverenjoyed hunting, or peeing in public)?

In cold darkness    calling from tree to treeLaughing at    our foolish dreamsCrooning love    in a long lost keyFeathers at once    oil slick and tricksterSwitchblade beaks

In addition to being a poet and a playwright, you are also a Civil Rights activist. How do your ideas from one realm influence another?

Born in an Illinois barn,

that two-headed calf

 

became a coin Frank flipped

through World War Two,

 

judging heaven from 

a foxhole. “God loves evil…

 

Not looking up at 

those lugubrious geese who

knows if they looked

 

Perhaps someone saw

their underglow there riding

in sight of twilight

 

This kind of light holds

By

 

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