Author: Constance Brewer

  • Origin Stories – Laurie Kuntz

    Origin Stories – Laurie Kuntz

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    Constance Brewer
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    “The Way You Talk Me Off the Roof” On My Husband learning the song If We Were Vampires by Jason Isbell by Laurie Kuntz I asked you to learn a love song with a sad chorus: This can’t go on forever Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone… and you spent…

  • Origin Stories – Susan Barry-Schulz

    Origin Stories – Susan Barry-Schulz

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    Constance Brewer
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    Jones —on reading Alex D. at Jones Beach State Park, Field 2 by Susan Barry-Schulz I took your book, Love, to the windswept beach. Grains of sand hurled themselves deep into its spine. Pages fluttered— feathers and pages, papery wings inked in fire. A single cloud slid across the bluest of skies, darkening the seawater,…

  • Origin Stories – Sarah Snyder

    Origin Stories – Sarah Snyder

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    Constance Brewer
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    When God Listens To Eve by Sarah Snyder It’s hard to be the beginning the one pulled from a cage of ribs without the sweet smell of milk or symbiosis of skin, that’s probably why he and I began our cleaving, arriving already long-limbed and flat bellied. The only sanity would be to sleep next…

  • Origin Stories – Cathy Thwing

    Origin Stories – Cathy Thwing

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    Constance Brewer
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    Glosa: On Seeing Your Poem Beside the Words of Others by Cathy Thwing I stay quiet until the sun flattens on the landscape, and the map of the day unfolds its long dream of innocence. — ELEGY BY MARTIN WILLITTS JR. (from Gyroscope, Spring 2022) “Who will read?” Five hands shoot up. Not yours. Decades…

  • Origin Stories – Claudia Reder

    Origin Stories – Claudia Reder

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    Constance Brewer
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    My Mother’s Superstitions (Bleigiessen) by Claudia Reder We were educated and superstitious, adoring black cats, uneasy about walking under ladders, yet climbing the rickety flight of steps to hear our tea leaves read. On New Year’s Eve platters adorned with marzipan pigs and Linzer torte, we’d spoon small amounts of melted lead into a bowl…

  • Origin Stories – Shaheen Dil

    Origin Stories – Shaheen Dil

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    Constance Brewer
    in

    The Boat-maker’s Art by Shaheen Dil I. I watched the boat as it was built— the shine of wood, the decadent lines of it, hand-polished surfaces gleaming, sleek, tempting, half-done and up on trestles, looking for all the world as if it wanted to leap into the water, sails unfurled, bow springing above the waves,…