In Conversation

A Series of Replays: Pella Felton reviews Apostasies by Holli Carrell Carrell, Holli (2025) Apostasies (Poetry Collection). Perugia Press. Apostasies reads like a history lesson wrapped in a memory play. Salt Lake City native Holli Carrell’s ambitious collection presents a thorough, personal study of structural gender violence in the Mormon church. Carrell alternates between a dialogic interrogation of …

The Antisocial Libertine Flickering lights, pounding beat, drums and bass, I feel it in my seat, my groin, driving me, lifting me, even as it pins me down. I cannot stay away, drawn to the perfume, the makeup, the liquor, to the place where time doesn’t matter, where tomorrow is theoretical, possibilities endless. Mint-masked cigarette …

Slightly Beyond Immediacy Let there be Slightly beyond my immediacy The intimacy Of a distant train Maritime horns of ships leaving port The dull skyward roar of hourly airline shuttles Let there be in my Indulgences of sanctuary The still continuing urgency for connection The highway hum of Ever turning radial wheels of Dharma, dampened …

Monday Nights in Middle Age My wife covers the brown rice on the stove, grabs her purse from the kitchen table and blows me a kiss on her way out the door. “Dinner is ready for you,” she calls to me over her shoulder. “I’m going to bingo.” I’m sinking into the couch like the …

Three Ways of Being Poor 1. The Moonshine A frosty night, windows covered in patterns that never repeated, right on Christmas Eve. I mean the Orthodox one in January. That day just meant parents at home, guests coming over, bowls of meat jelly, and drinks. Where we lived, Jesus wasn’t part of it anymore. A …

Pella Felton reviews Super Cherry Extra by Misti Rainwater-Lites. Rainwater-Lites, Misti (2025) Super Cherry Extra (Poetry Collection). Swooncake Press. 80p. In her delightfully bitter poem “Most Likely To Recede,” Texas poet and future camp icon Misti Rainwater-Lites expertly and correctly identifies the moral failings of MFA poets as a species. Having been herself rejected from MFA programs earlier in her career, …

There’s This Syndrome Going Around, But It Only Affects Imposters My wife says I’ve been leaning too heavily into the wore down working man persona, lately. Not in my written work, mind you. She doesn’t bother to read that shit. Just in how I comport myself during the natural course of my everyday life, hobbling …

The Last Thing tonight here I am again sitting under the ground getting drunk on sweet tea and bourbon while listening to a Van Halen record one of the earlier ones with lead singer David Lee and the music still sounds good after all of these years and I’m sitting here trying not to think …

Peace-Sign Sweatshirt Upstairs from a Presbyterian church, a third-floor Montessori school opened its doors to children with disabilities, poor kids, delinquents, and misfits like me. We were given complete freedom, while teachers sat in classroom corners, smoking endless cigarettes. Miss Terry puffed on Eves. Her lipstick-smeared cylinders featured rows of dainty flowers, dancing as they …

Just maybe I like the casino because It’s not like other places It’s not like the grocery store It’s not like the offices or mailrooms I worked It’s not like the gas stations Or the strip malls And the fast food places And just maybe it’s the bigness of the place The bright lights and …