Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze (1956-2021)
Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze died on August 4, 2021. Her work as a dub poet and great performer is legendary. Less so (though no less deserving) is her turn in her later writing to a number of narrative, lyrical poems that celebrated what she called “the simple things of life.” Unabashedly …
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The Atomic Age
My mother’s old room, mostly emptied of furnishings, has one wall lined with cardboard boxes. A system of organization has arisen first from her sorting, then from mine after she moved into assisted living. Boxes with photos of freckled relatives from Oklahoma on my dad’s side are separated from boxes …
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[SPECULUM] ENVY
I was jealous of my brother’s race car bed and jealous of my neighbor’s swing set. In a memory, a house across the street is knocked down by a yellow construction vehicle and I watch from my uncle’s lap where we sit in the attic. He has a penis and …
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Chemistry
We were side by side in chemistry. Hands touched the same beaker, still, no reaction. I remember your cheeks were warm streaks. We learned about the water cycle. I knew all about it. Rising heat and condensation changed the course of thundering, rainfall. But I didn’t brag much, when we …
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Radicle: An Interview with Fred D’Aguiar
Fred D’Aguiar is a celebrated British-Guyanese poet, prose writer, playwright, and Professor of English at UCLA whose career has spanned 35 years. D’Aguiar’s many accolades include earning a Guyana Prize for Literature and being shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. As a writer, …
Read MoreQ&A with Co-Editor AJ Bermudez
I recently had the chance to catch up with AJ Bermudez, whom we were excited to recently welcome as Co-Editor of The Maine Review. Here’s a bit of our chat. – RG Rosanna Gargiulo: What brought you to The Maine Review? AJ Bermudez: I’d happened upon an exceptional piece early in …
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Seraphic Clowns and Saintly Mourners, an Excerpt
December 24th 1963 11:50 pm EST. Those who are famous, those who are wealthy, those who are elderly, and those with children arrive early and find privilege in the sitting, in their asses growing cold and sore on the hard wooden benches. Austerity now is necessary for fertility eventually; this …
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Basho’s Death Poem, New York City
Sick on a journey my dreams wander the withered fields – Basho In an old notebook were the beginnings of a poem about Basho’s last poem, the one he composed while he died. In the notes, the speaker walks from 31st Street to 17th in Manhattan and remembers Basho’s lines. …
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Faith at A&W
Dear Josh, Today, I pulled my A&W mug down from a cabinet. There was a dead spider in it, a thick coating of dust on the rim. It’s been thirty years this spring since I stole that beveled glass mug, thirty years since I saw you. Do you remember sledding …
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The Devotions
Sneezing and shiner-eyed in an entire landscape ripped by wind and today I wrestle every negative arriving my inbox while finches feast on suet, rubbing round heads to each other, to glued seed. March is and did and has just …
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