Profiles – Page 5 – Willow Springs Magazine

Issue 82: Bailey Gaylin Moore

About Bailey Gaylin Moore

Bailey Gaylin Moore studied philosophy during her undergrad and English for her MA at Missouri State University, where she also taught classes in fiction and composition rhetoric. She served as an assistant editor for Moon City Review as well as a reader for Boulevard Magazine. Currently, she is working on an MFA in creative nonfiction at Vermont College of Fine Arts. In this moment, Bailey is likely on a drive listening to the same song, losing a game to her son, or working at a lingerie boutique because sometimes that’s just where life takes you. You can find her first publication here: http://haydensferryreview.com/111-a-scattering-of-our-own.

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “Second Molars”

Someone suggested writing about vagina dentata for a journal’s themed issue – “Revenge.” I laughed, recalling the female-empowered plot to the movie, Teeth. When I started researching, however, this contemporary “woo-hoo feminism (!)” perception of vagina dentata dissipated. Unlike media representations, it didn’t advocate disenthrallment; instead, its folklore was and is used as a device to subjugate women further, instilling a fear of women, demonizing them in multiple storylines where “vagina” is paralleled as the inciting incident for MANkind’s mortality. The pervasiveness of this lore isn’t singular to one culture or religion. It isn’t specific to one continent, and it cannot be exclusively designated as Eastern or Western.

A rough transition: I don’t talk about rape with people. My natural instinct is yielding to silence. That inclination is evident in “Second Molars” – my narrative interwoven between the safe haven of detached research, further distanced with the use of second person. The physical and emotional process of writing forced me to push against my initial reaction of silence. Though I still can grasp the scope of depravity in a pandemic rape culture, I did attain some clarity, specifically this: In our history of violence, victims became predisposed to wordlessness through a stacking of shame and fear. My instinct to yield to silence wasn’t natural at all, but so deeply conditioned that my lack of voice, to me, felt innate.

I found fragments of my voice in “Second Molars,” and I continue to re-collect these scattered bits in essays that follow. Still more work to be done, but the resumption so far was enough to make my first collection, Mein(e) C. I guess, then, what was most unexpected of all was, not only had I found courage to speak, there was a resonating certainty my voice wasn’t finished talking.

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.

My ADD-addled brain sometimes prefers songs on repeat. Right now, it’s “Green Room” by my talented bud, Abby Webster. The longest phase was Jeff Buckley’s version of “Hallelujah,” but it faded once I noticed how life wasn’t all that harrowing – perhaps even good and beautiful at times. In between song periods (?) (epochs of repeated songs?), I’ll listen to orchestral renditions of Top 40s hits. My son and I play a game where we’ll try to guess the song. I always lose – even with more obscure ones, like Vitamin String Quartet’s covers from Moon and Antarctica. Embarrassing, considering the Modest Mouse album has remained mostly permanent in every CD player of my past four cars. The trio, Time For Three, covers Buckley’s “Hallelujah.” The first time I heard it, I was alone on a backroad during golden hour. I think I would have won that game had my son been there. Old habit: I put it on repeat, the beginning and end blurring together so it felt as if I was experiencing it for the first time, over and over again. One of those good, beautiful moments.

My dog sometimes goes on drives with me. He’s an Aussie mix I picked up on the side of the road seven years ago. No one ever claimed him, so the dog has followed me around ever since. I even named him – Norm, after my first celebrity crush, Norm Macdonald.

Sideline: In 2010, I was a member of human Norm Macdonald’s book club on Twitter. He started following me after I had made a bad joke during a discussion on Anna Karenina. I can’t remember the joke. One of the less noteworthy times of my life, but a noteworthy time nonetheless. Human Norm no longer follows me on Twitter, but I still have my dog.

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Issue 82: R.M. Cooper

View More: http://laurelcscott.pass.us/ivywedding

About R. M. Cooper

R. M. Cooper’s writing has appeared in dozens of journals including Adroit, Baltimore Review, Best American Experimental Writing, Denver Quarterly, Fugue, Passages North, Redivider, and Wisconsin Review and has received awards and recognition from UC Berkeley and American Short Fiction. Cooper lives in the Colorado Front Range is the managing editor of Sequestrum (www.sequestrum.org)

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “Emergency Instructions”

“Emergency Instructions” was inspired by the wonderful Spoon song, “Mystery Zone.” (I’ve been requesting the band play it live for years, unsuccessfully.) It’s a great song that I won’t begin to try and interpret; it’s about the mystery zone, after all. One of the lines that stuck with me was, “Times that we met, before we met, we’ll go back there [to the mystery zone].” The idea of having met someone before they become integral to our lives is fascinating. So is the possibility of taking future/present knowledge back to those times. But then, time travel has been done to death. My intention was to keep the story from descending into a melodramatic mess or simple plot twist. After realizing that, pairing a character’s emotional drive with the informational layout was a no-brainer.

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.

I’ve been listening to lots of Spoon (obviously), enjoying Colorado breweries (wheats mostly), and spend lots of time with a rescue Maine Coon, Murphy. Maine Coons “trill” a lot, which mostly sounds like a hum. So Murphy hums when he jumps and eats and greets my wife at the door and best of all, when I’m done working at five. He’s a great coworker. Roger from accounting never hums at 5pm. He’s a jerk.

“Emergency Instructions” by R.M. Cooper

Found in Willow Springs 82 Back to Author Profile I. REMEMBER: You will never convince them why you did it. A. Everyone believes hypotheticals about time machines right- ing wrongs. i. … Read more

About Brooke Matson

Brooke Matson is a poet and educator in Spokane, Washington. Eight years of teaching and mentoring at-risk youth deepened her study of physical science and the psychological effects of violence and loss. Her current poems explore the intersection of physical science—particularly chemistry, physics, and astrophysics—with human experiences of loss, violence, and resilience.

Matson’s first full-length collection of poetry, The Moons, was published by Blue Begonia Press in 2012 and was also included in the 2015 Blue Begonia Press boxed set, Tell Tall Women. Her poems have most recently been accepted to Prairie Schooner, Rock & Sling, Poetry Northwest, and Crab Creek Review. The 2016 recipient of the Artist Trust GAP Award with Centrum Residency and the 2016 winner of the Spokane Arts Award for Collaboration, Matson poetry has also been selected for regional anthologies such as Railtown Almanac (Sage Hill Press), and Lilac City Fairy Tales (Scablands Books).

She currently serves as the executive director of Spark Central, a nonprofit dedicated to igniting creativity, innovation, and imagination.

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “Neurosurgery Sonata”

Recent studies tell us that our brain cannot access the sensory details of a traumatic memory and the language to talk about that experience at the same time. Writing about such experiences is therefore challenging for any writer.

The head of someone I loved being sawed open for an unsuccessful surgery was an experience that haunted me—to know what was happening but not being able to be as close as I wanted to the ending of that story. I had tried many times to write about it, and each time, I became stuck on the images in my imagination, which resurfaced again and again. I couldn’t move beyond them. That’s when the idea of a sestina emerged; perhaps the answer was to not overcome what haunted me, but to jump on the carousel of those images.

I have always been fascinated by the brain and the way it is so random and yet so ordered. No two brains are identical, and each has its own organic architecture that arises from experience. Poems can be like that, and I feel this one told me how it wanted to be written.

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.

Neil deGrasse Tyson (the notorious NDT) is the voice I listen to via podcast (#startalkradio). He has not answered the question I emailed on gravity and time, but I’m sure he’s getting around to it.

Trader Joe’s Brandy Beans are the secret of life when I can get my hands on them—typically in December.

In between Decembers, I drink whiskey and listen to Gregory Alan Isakov and alt-J with a little Andrew Bird mixed in. Current solo dance party playlist: “Helena Beat” by Foster the People, “The Great Defector” by Bell X1, “Dissolve Me” by alt-J, and “My Shot” from the Hamilton Soundtrack, which I listened to for a full year straight. Playlist for productive crying and melancholy: “Today” by The National, “Colours” by Grouplove, and “Stable Song” and “Idaho” by Gregory Alan Isakov.

Dear White People should be required viewing for all Americans over 18.

“Neurosurgery Sonata” by Brooke Matson

Found in Willow Springs 82 Back to Author Profile Neurosurgery Sonata I’ve imagined it many times and still, it jars like a fist to the jaw. There will be music … Read more

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About Peter LaBerge

Peter LaBerge is the author of the chapbooks Makeshift Cathedral (YesYes Books, 2017) and Hook (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015). His recent work appears in Best New Poets, Crazyhorse, Harvard Review, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review Online, Pleiades, Tin House, and elsewhere. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of the Adroit Journal and the founder of the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with his B.A. in English last year. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works in content marketing for a startup. For more, click here.

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “Draft/Mouth”

“Usually, when I approach a poem, I write from a place of emotional truth yet narrative fiction, but this wasn’t the case with “Draft/Mouth”. I wrote “Draft/Mouth” shortly after my father registered me for U.S. drafting while I was home from college last year. It’s mandatory, so — of course — I wasn’t mad, but it did trigger a series of internal thoughts about being , such as: Why am I worthy of dying for a country, but not worthy of loving in that country? Am I worthy of being an American elegy, but not an American husband?
It upwelled the feelings of shame and self-consciousness I thought I’d long left in my past. I’m the most artistic (and by that, I mean un-athletic) in my family, and I can’t help feeling like there’s an element of hope among family members that I’d mature to be the kind of strong, patriotic man who would jump at the chance to register for a draft. That’s simply not me, and I think — at its core — this poem speaks to the process of trying to accept that over time.”

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.

“I’d say that music is central to my connection with artistry. Music helps provide an environment for me to explore and interrogate emotions — fear, shame, desire, pride, outrage — and the language we use to express them. I certainly don’t think emotion needs to be generative or productive — I don’t believe that is the purpose of emotion at its core — but oftentimes when I’m open to and understanding of my emotions is when I’m most able to articulate everything I’ve been wanting to say.
Which songs and which musicians? The usual suspects are everyone from Ariana Grande to Sufjan Stevens to classical music to nature sounds. It really depends on the trajectory and potency of my current mood.”

“Draft/Mouth” by Peter LaBerge

Found in Willow Springs 82 Back to Author Profile Draft/Mouth If at our most dangerous / we blink. If winter reveals itself like a soldier’s gibbous mouth. If rows of … Read more

About Leila Chatti

Leila Chatti is a Tunisian-American poet and author of the chapbooks Ebb (Akashic Books, 2018) and Tunsiya/Amrikiya, the 2017 Editors’ Selection from Bull City Press. She is the recipient of scholarships from the Tin House Writers’ Workshop, The Frost Place, and the Key West Literary Seminar, a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and Cleveland State University, where she is the inaugural Anisfield-Wolf Fellow in Publishing and Writing. Her poems have received awards from Ploughshares’ Emerging Writer’s Contest, Narrative’s 30 Below Contest, and the Academy of American Poets, and appear in Ploughshares, Tin House, American Poetry Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere.

Social media: @laypay on Twitter and Instagram

www.leilachatti.com

You can read more of her work at: Kenyon Review Online (essay), VQR (poems), Ploughshares (poem), The Georgia Review (poem)

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “Myomectomy”

I was in a poetry workshop with Blas Falconer last summer at The Frost Place, and he gave us a prompt each day to bring to the next day’s class. One of those was based on Stanley Plumly’s poem “Infidelity,” which we were to imitate in the following ways: the poem is 26 lines long, and the first 13 lines are more or less observation only, and then the second 13 lines allow for commentary, with an “I” that is a little more present—also, the title is something not explicitly stated in the poem, but gives the poem context. I was intimidated by the idea of having to describe something for 13 lines before I was allowed to enter the poem with all my thoughts and opinions, and spent the evening completely stumped. Though I didn’t know how to start, I did know what I wanted to write about—I had come to the workshop to generate poems for my full-length manuscript, which was (is!) nearing completion, a manuscript focusing on a health scare seen through the lens of faith. I had already written many poems about the illness, and a handful about recovery, and was trying to determine what I had yet to address. I woke early the next morning to again attempt the prompt, and perhaps my half-dream state made it easier, because it came quickly; I wrote about the surgery, the most visually striking “scene” of my experience, yet the one I did not get to see. I had only one glimpse of it; the doctor showed me after the surgery a photograph of my uterus in his hands, with my body open beneath it, and the tumor protruding from the incision. It was an image I will never forget.

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.

I’m currently in Ireland, so I’ve been eating a lot of scones! As for animals, there are gigantic pigeons here, and magpies, which I find wonderful. I have yet to encounter a sheep, but I anticipate that will happen shortly. Listening—I’ve been turning to classical music lately, as I’ve been running around a lot and my nerves are shot, and Enya (don’t laugh!), which now feels appropriate. Tea is my perennial beverage of choice; as for specifics, this month I’ve been drinking jasmine green, kava, and turmeric.

“Myomectomy” by Leila Chatti

Found in Willow Springs 82 Back to Author Profile Myomectomy At the center of the dark room an aureole: there, pricked at the wrists by IV cords, robed except for … Read more

About Robert Long Foreman

Robert Long Foreman’s first book, Among Other Things, was published last year by Pleiades Press after winning the inaugural Robert C. Jones Prize for Short Prose. His work has appeared recently in Copper Nickel and Crazyhorse, among other places. He is on Instagram and Twitter @RobertLong4man and his website is http://robertlongforeman.com/. He lives in Kansas City.

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “The Vinyl Canal”

“The Vinyl Canal” is the first short story I wrote the first draft of, start to finish, on a typewriter. Every writer who is as easily distracted as I am should have one, because they’re only made for one thing, and that thing is writing. My work suffers when I do it on a machine that does four million things, just one of which is writing.

The unspecified setting for the short story is Athens, Ohio, where I lived for a few years and got to know a bunch of people who were from there and had known each other all their lives. Some of them had a public access TV show, at a station that in the early 2000s was still run using a Commodore 64. The radio show in the story is based on that, but is probably more like The Best Show with Tom Scharpling, which I often listen to.

What surprised me most as I wrote the story was that it didn’t end where I meant it to, at first. I thought the narrator’s exit from the radio station, about 2/3 of the way into the story, would be the right place to leave her. I realized, when I extended the story to where it ultimately went, that it wasn’t until later that the story’s animating tension was resolved, or its anxiety soothed (I don’t like the word “conflict”). It seemed to me that the right place to leave the narrator was at the mouth of the canal her weird acquaintance had dug. And so I learned a lot from continuing to work on this story, even after I saw I could have decided it was finished and moved on. I used to be less patient than that. The typewriter helps with this, somehow.

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.

I recently got, at the age of thirty-six, my first two tattoos. Not in a sad or pathetic way, though. One tattoo is of a butterfly, and the other is of a bird I wanted to have on my arm. I’ve been listening to Julie Byrne, ever since her latest album came out. I recently discovered Tyler, the Creator. I eat a lot of tofu. I watch much more television than I ever thought I would. You asked me not to mention books, but I read The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester, and it is good enough to mention how good it is even when I’ve been asked not to.

“The Vinyl Canal” by Robert Long Foreman

Found in Willow Springs 81 Back to Author Profile The Vinyl Canal IT STARTED WITH 1999. Ben scratched his copywhen he dropped it on his bathroom floor. I don’t know … Read more

“The Man with The Nightmare Gun” by Robert Long Foreman

Found in Willow Springs 72 Back to Author Profile I AM NOT A SERIOUS MAN. I thought Carol understood this about me by our fifth date. I thought it was something … Read more

Issue 72: Robert Long Foreman

About Robert Long Foreman Robert Long Foreman grew up in Wheeling, West Virginia and earned a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Missouri. His fiction and nonfiction have … Read more

About Allison Seay

Allison Seay is the recipient of fellowships from the Ruth Lilly Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the author of a book of poems, To See the Queen, and has placed work in such journals as Gettysburg Review, Field, and Poetry. She is the Associate for Religion and the Arts at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church and lives in Richmond, Virginia.

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “Mother of Memory” and “Mother of Anxiety”

I wrote these poems late into my pregnancy, as I was living in a fog—equal parts exhaustion and awe—and attempting to make sense of what felt like an endless season of waiting. Ideas about birth, creation, origin, what it means to make something and make meaning of something felt—still feels—like rich and dense territory to explore. The equation I’m trying to work out has to do with motherhood and poetry, human beings as embodiments of ars poetica—the muse and the maker. These are strange poems to me, written during a strange time.

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.

Now, I have a son. He’s the greatest poem I could have imagined. And every single cliche about babies is true after all. It is so hard—the body gets wrecked, and then, in my case at least, so does the mind. It is a love so intense that it is only barely bearable and I think I will explode like a star. I do very little these days except stare at him, commit him to memory, hour by hour. He is the poem; I am living on the inside of it.

Two Poems by Allison Seay

Found in Willow Springs 81 Back to Author Profile Mother of Memory In the dark, when it is silent as underwater, I can hear bells ringing, knowing it is impossible. … Read more

About Canese Jarboe

Canese Jarboe is the author of the chapbook dark acre (Willow Springs Books, 2018). Their poems appear recently in Muzzle, TYPO, Indiana Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and elsewhere. Canese earned an MFA in Creative Writing from University of Idaho. Originally from rural southeastern Kansas, they currently live and teach in coastal Louisiana. Twitter: @canesejarboe Website: www.canesejarboe.com

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “Rapunzel w/ Head Half-Shaved”

This poem is a string of distractions from the speaker’s obsessing and I think that each particular clawed, feathered, deafening intrusion heightens and draws acute attention to an unacknowledged space. C.D. Wright’s cadence and form in “Re: Happiness, in pursuit thereof” is a strong influence and helped me create an overwhelming blitz and ultimately dissolve it. This world is intensely familiar to me: the fridge so full of glass vials of medicine for cattle that the door rattles, booming air compressors and nail guns, tornado warnings buzzing over the TV and radio. It’s one poem in a series that uses Rapunzel as a vehicle to examine my interior and all of these small sharpnesses seemed like the only way authentic to me to explore (or elude) a fragile state of mind.

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.

I truly, honestly tasted tofu for the first time last week and I immediately booked it to the grocery store and bought as many blocks as would fit in my arms. I loved it that much. I think it’s strange that my father was a soybean farmer, but it took me nearly three decades to eat any soy-based food. I used to watch him test the germ by putting 100 beans in a warm, wet towel on the counter. I don’t think I knew they were edible as a child, only that the pods felt like velvet. The crop made its way back to our community in the form of feed for livestock and industrial use, but not for us.

I’ve been revisiting outlaw country lately. I grew up in a low-literacy household and this was my first exposure to poetic language. Emmylou Harris. Tanya Tucker. Townes Van Zandt. Waylon Jennings. My partner randomly bursts into bits and pieces of “Highwayman” around the house. I’ll join in from another room for a lopsided duet. “I fly a starship/Across the Universe divide/And when I reach the other side/I’ll find a place to rest my spirit if I can…” It’s rather soothing.

“Rapunzel w/ Head Half-Shaved” by Canese Jarboe

Found in Willow Springs 81 Back to Author Profile Rapunzel w/ Head Half-Shaved This peony too heavy to hold itself. up. This great blue heron in slow-mo, opportunistic feeder. This rash. … Read more

About Carolyn Williams-Noren

Carolyn Williams-Noren’s poems have appeared in AGNI, Salamander, Gigantic Sequins, Sugar House Review, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Small Like a Tooth, was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2015. She is the recipient of a McKnight Artist Fellowship (2014), Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grants (2013 and 2016), and a Loft Mentor Award (2010). She founded and takes care of a little poetry library in the Minneapolis neighborhood where she lives with her family.

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “Comfort on the Death of an Ancient Oak”

This piece started 5 or more years ago as a poem of about 15 lines. It had the image of the ruined ship and the story of a note on paper (I don’t know how to raise my daughter) becoming part of an ancient tree. I kept showing the poem to writer friends, and every response was along the lines of, “Huh? Something’s missing.” I was so sure the poem pointed to everything about my first years of motherhood, I’d tweak a few words and then ask another person to read it … and get the same puzzled or unmoved reaction.

I did what I usually do when a poem “needs more”: write loosely from what’s already on the page until I reach an image or idea that, condensed, belongs in the poem. In this case, though, nothing would condense—I had pages and pages of true statements that couldn’t be subsumed. And the stuff was hard to look at. Hard to admit, and hard to relive. Some years had to go by before I could make it seem whole, and some more years before I felt brave enough to send it out.

The beginning of motherhood had a hold on me for a long time, and making this essay was completely connected to the loosening of that hold.

The piece is also about envy and distance in a friendship–treacherous territory. When the essay was well on its way to publication, I shared it with the friend I wrote about–someone I care about very much. It’s probably no surprise to anyone that her story of that time is different from any of mine, and that my tiny view of the sweetness she experienced with her newborn was just that–a tiny view, a distorted sketch of a scene more complicated than I could portray or even see, flawed friend that I am. As the piece goes out into the world I’m mindful of the ways it fails this friend, even though it’s still the truest piece of writing I could make about those years.

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.

You said you’re tired of hearing about books, but this is different: I listen to a lot of audiobooks while I’m running, gardening, driving, etc. It’s rare that the audio medium adds much to the book—usually it’s just a convenient way of taking in the words. But last month I listened to George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo, and it was such a beautiful experience; it’s read by dozens of voices—one for each of the many voices of the book—a scheme that seems so right for the story, I can hardly imagine it would be as pleasurable to read it on paper. I hope it inspires many more interesting marriages of audio and literature in the future.

Comfort on the Death of an Ancient Oak by Carolyn Williams-Noren

Found in Willow Springs 80 Back to Author Profile EVERY TIME I SEE A WOMAN with a baby I wonder if she wants to throw down one drinking glass after another … Read more

About Laura Read

Laura Read’s chapbook, The Chewbacca on Hollywood Boulevard Reminds Me of You, was the 2010 winner of the Floating Bridge Chapbook Award, and her collection, Instructions for My Mother’s Funeral, was the 2011 winner of the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and was published in 2012 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Her second collection, Dresses from the Old Country, will be published by BOA in fall of 2018. She teaches English at Spokane Falls Community College and currently serves as the poet laureate of Spokane.

A Profile of the Author

Notes on “Six Poems”

The six poems published in Willow Springs can be read in pairs. The most obvious duo is “Self-Portrait with Seaweed and Mica” and “Self-Portrait as Fresco,” which are two poems from a series I worked on last summer. I think these two are the most successful and I want to use those and maybe any others I may still write as a motif of sorts in my new manuscript. I like the idea of pairing images together and then using them as a way to examine the self, like seaweed and mica, and I am also fascinated with how visual art can influence writing.

Another pairing is “Girlie Girl” and “Proof for My Side,” two poems about experiences I’ve had as a parent.

And the final pairing, “The Spell We Cast” and “Neither Bride Nor Daughter,” is perhaps the most significant in terms of the manuscript I’m working on now. I have a book coming out in the fall of 2018 called Dresses from the Old Country, whose title implies that it is about how the past is always with us, and I guess that is my theme, because these poems in my newer manuscript, The Hundred Other Things, are also about the past returning. This pair is specifically about reconnecting with someone I hadn’t seen in thirty years and the kind of time travel that made possible. Actually, I think time travel is why I write poetry! I also think these six poems are about feminism and the body; topics, like time, that I am always writing about.

Music, Food, Booze, Tattoos, Kittens, etc.

Well, I have to be honest: this question made me feel boring! I listen to old music from the 70s and 80s (time travel again!), I eat the same spinach salad every day for lunch (for which I am constantly mocked!), I can only drink half a beer before I get too tired, I have no tattoos, and I’m frightened of cats! I do have a dog named Henry who is very good-looking but poorly behaved, which we are hoping is a product of his youth (he’s only two) and not his personality! And I can offer this as a defense for my dull response: Gustave Flaubert (not boring!) commanded us to “be regular and orderly in [our] lives so that [we] may be violent and original in [our] work.” While it could be argued that I am actually just boring and only accidentally following Flaubert’s advice, let’s go with that I’m doing it for his noble reason. I do have a student who got a tattoo of this line from Kate Chopin’s The Awakening: “the exterior life that conforms, the interior life that questions.” That is the tattoo I would get, but she already took it!

“Six Poems” by Laura Read

Found in Willow Springs 80 Back to Author Profile THE SPELL WE CAST She wore white flats and her feet always looked cold. I invited her to my house and … Read more

Issue 70: Laura Read

About Laura Read Laura Read has published poems in a variety of journals, most recently in Rattle, the Cincinnati readReview, and the Bellingham Review. Her chapbook, The Chewbacca on Hollywood … Read more