Q&A with Co-Editor Chelsea Jackson
I was recently delighted to catch up with Chelsea Jackson, author of All Things Holy and Heathen, whom we’re thrilled to welcome as Co-Editor of The Maine Review. Here’s a bit of our chat. – A.J.B. AJ Bermudez: So, Chelsea, what books are on your nightstand right now? Chelsea …
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The Half-Life of Human Memory
Some health problems attack methodically — cancer, heart disease, the slow drain of the body’s vigor as it ages. But more worrisome are the unpredictable things that happen without warning, when hard luck and outside forces coauthor narratives of tragedy. There’s a reason I often walk the same route home. …
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Achromatopsia
Colors hiding in the fields. Having fled my eyes in a sudden mutiny. A revolution rare among visual glitches. City rendered sad, a cold faded etching. Egg yolks the color of cream. Blood stains uncarnadined. Startled birds white on a gray laurel hedge. Went to sleep with the reds and …
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Elegy with Steam
When I was sick with a head cold, my head full of pressure, my father would soak a washcloth in hot water, then ball it up, ring it out. He would open it above my head, then place it against my face like a second skin, the light around me …
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We Are the Ghosts in the Rafters, Murmuring like Doves
The child is below us, but we dare to whisper, knowing the rain drowns us out; it slaps the window, smearing the moonlight to a buttery bridge across the slick black asphalt of the street below. She’s heard us before, easing doors open with a coy, feline nudge to check …
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Tell Me the Secret of Your Great Strength
The morning after a man was elected who had, arguably, the worst head of hair in American presidential history, I began pulling out my own. I would watch the news or read the paper, and my hands would wander, fitfully, until they found my hairline, twirling a few strands experimentally …
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because horse is the closest i can get to it
after Jack Gilbert the horse in my mind knows the moon well enough to not need to speak to it when i try to talk to horses i watch their feet aware of their weight i try to feel my own a horse knows when …
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Best Wishes for a Speedy Recovery
I. When Donny was a boy, his aunt caught him taking a five-dollar bill from her purse. She grabbed his wrist and told him he had two choices: she could tell his mother, or she could take him to the church to confess to the priest. Donny chose the priest. …
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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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