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between behemoth granite shafts, shove my body by their force, leave me roadside and wandering fields. Little is funny when you’re Chicana and walking a Civil War site not meant for walking. Regardless, I ask park rangers and guides for stories on Mexican soldiers, receive shrugs. No evidence in statues or statistics. In the cemetery, not one Spanish name. I’m alone in the wine shop. It’s the same in the post office, the market, the antique shop with KKK books on display. In the peach orchard, I prepare a séance, sit cross-legged in grass, and hold

Transcript Pádraig Ó Tuama: My name is Pádraig Ó Tuama. And when I was a teenager, late one evening I saw my father come into the kitchen, grab a slice of bread, and eat it. I think his blood sugar had dropped. And there was so much about that moment that struck me. I was a teenager with angst about myself and everybody around me, and noticing a moment of vulnerability in somebody else struck me. And I think that was telling me I needed to be a poet, because I had to do something with what I’d seen. And over and over again, the more I’ve written poetry and read poetry, the more I real...

jouissance, chipotles in the chocolate. Consider the uvular awakenings Your name spun through the reel, wound up from the bass of me. How I want to say it, and hear my own, again. for Matthew” music: “Ashed to Air” by Gautam Srikishan] I read this poem because it so immediately appealed to me with gorgeous words. I mean, I love the word “delicious.” I love the word “gorgeous.” I love the word “knuckle.” But I think this poem is a poem — perhaps — where the poet, Vievee Francis, was thinking, “What are my favorite words?” And she might have made a list. I’m just gu...

Drogheda knowing as I do that my attention has no agency, none at all. Nor my rage.” [ music: “What Did You Not Hear” by Gautam Srikishan] So this poem is a study and a story of Eavan Boland’s grandmother. In 1904, the grandmother had gone on a trip to Dublin from Drogheda. That’s a journey of about 50 miles. Drogheda is a large town about 50 miles north of Dublin. And when the grandmother had got home to Drogheda after having been in Dublin, she found an eviction notice on her door. And evictions carry a long history in Ireland, being used as a tool of oppression, as a tool of empi...

Half of this poem is about feeling torn between two cultures. The other half heals the tear, seeing that a life can be a living bridge between the tensions of the poet’s identities.