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Articles by Michael McGriff
Congratulations to Terrain.org's 14th Annual Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction Contest Winners!
We are pleased to announce the winners and finalists of the Terrain.org 14th Annual Contests in Poetry, Nonfiction, and Fiction. Each winner is awarded a $1,000 prize, while each finalist is awarded $200. Winners and finalists will be published beginning in February in Terrain.org, and the winners will participate in the March 2023 Terrain.org online reading with a contest judge.
Inversion by Michael McGriff - Poems | Academy of American Poets
Nothing wants to suffer. Not the wind as it scrapes itself against the cliff. Not the cliff being eaten, slowly, by the sea. The earth does not want to suffer the rough tread of those who do not notice it. The trees do not want to suffer the axe, nor see their sisters felled by root rot, mildew, rust. The coyote in its den. The puma stalking its prey. These, too, want ease and a tender animal in the mouth to take their hunger. An offering, one hopes, made quickly, and without much suffering.
One Poem by William Wright
To a Minor Chinese Poet of the Kunlun Mountains In your ancient and final hour, when the moon scraped the horizon, no longer a white fire to guide you to the village of willows, the ink had run dry, your blood heavy, your spine curved as the arc of distant lanterns. When you sat, then collapsed into snow, your strange verse fled unperturbed down glacial streams and into the starlit valley, teeming with the glowing red fish that drifted through your dreams.
Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear
Small Plates an excerpt from by Matthew Salesses Editor’s Note We first published Matthew Salesses all the way back in Issue Zero, when he contributed a positively Kafkaesque tale of a music executive who loses his identity the moment he gives away his titular Russian coat. I thought of that story a lot while reading Salesses’s new novel, Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear, published by Little A.
One Poem by Catherine Arra
Thunderstorm Deer in woods circle my broad lawn wait beneath foliage umbrellas where grass offers escape from splintering trees, wind-whipped debris. Some lie bellies pressed to earth, heads bowed ears pinned back. Some stand transfixed, sentinels on stilted legs, spines arched. A still-life of reverence. I, too, will learn to wait storms watching God in watching them.
Three Poems by Hannah Fries
To Take a Pregnancy Test after Miscarriage Remember the place where you hid as child, the pile of rocks that made a room beneath a stand of arcing saplings. Be there. Remember the satisfaction of loneliness, the space you occupy inside the secret of your body. Wherever death has lodged itself, tucked in the crevices of your being, unfold: run your fingers through it, soften it with beeswax and almond oil, feel it loosen.
OUR SECRET LIFE IN THE MOVIES
Inseparable identical twin sisters ditch home together, and then one decides to vanish. The talented Bennett fuels her fiction with secrets—first in her lauded debut, The Mothers (2016), and now in the assured and magnetic story of the Vignes sisters, light-skinned women parked on opposite sides of the color line. Desiree, the “fidgety twin,” and Stella, “a smart, careful girl,” make their break from stultifying rural Mallard, Louisiana, becoming 16-year-old runaways in 1954 New Orleans.
One Poem by Ingrid Wendt
Ode to the Long-Tailed Grackle Rusty Hinge, Old Squeaky Door, Dishes Crashing to the Floor, You call this Song, you Rowdy Castanet? I call it a martial art of the beak, and most days, you win, you stun me awake. But some days I rise even earlier, climb—while the rest of the world sleeps—the steps to my terrace to greet the sun all by myself. And still you streak to your everyday perch on my rooftop peak (you Sleek Bullet with Wings). You notice me not at all.
by Chris L. Terry
Small Plates an excerpt from by Chris L. Terry Editor’s Note The first time I heard Chris L. Terry read from his newest novel, Black Card, I was instantly hooked. It was pre-publication, at a reading in Los Angeles, and Terry spoke to topics near and dear to my heart: mixed-race identity politics and punk music. I bounced in my seat, knowing that one day I would be able to hold this book in my hands, and here we are.
My Grandfather Says
My grandfather says he stepped out of his dream the same day my grandmother did and they taught each other to speak and so they were together, and so entered the world: that his heart is a torn sky, a barn on fire: if you put your ear to his chest as once my grandmother did you would hear something so absolute you would leave for the river enter the salmon run, and disappear through the keyhole at the river bottom: my grandfather tells me I never had a mother: my mother says her mother died...
Men Keep on Dying by Michael McGriff - Poems | Academy of American Poets
Friends making off ahead of time on their own, I call that willful, John, but that's not judgement, only argument such as we've had before. I watch a shaky man climb a cast-iron railing in my head, on a Mississippi bluff, though I had meant to dissuade him. I call out, and he doesn't hear. 'Fantastic! Fantastic! Thank thee, dear Lord' is what you said we were to write on your stone, but you go down without so much as a note.
Excavation: A Memoir
Small Plates an excerpt from by Wendy C. Ortiz Editor’s Note I don’t remember exactly how or when it happened, but at some point last year, I became aware that Wendy C. Ortiz was out there, killing it with her writing. My friend and former co-editor Zoë Ruiz had worked with her on a few interviews, and then subsequently forwarded me some pitches, all of which mentioned that Wendy had directed them towards The Rumpus. Who is this writer sending us all these great people? I began to wonder.
Four Poems by Michael McGriff | Narrative Magazine
Four Poems The Cow I used to think of this creek as a river springing from mineral caverns of moonmilk and slime, but really it’s just a slow thread of water that comes from somewhere up north to trickle its way out near the edge of our property. Want to read more? Please login. New to Narrative? sign up. It's easy and free.
Cosmology for the New Year by Michael McGriff | Narrative Magazine
Cosmology for the New Year The light from dead stars only exists in the minds of the living, Please log in to access the full content. If you are new to Narrative, signing up is FREE and easy.
Cooking underwater
Very interesting. Cooking was an important thing in our evolution. By essentially moving part of our digestive system outside our bodies, we lost chewing muscles and got more nourishment extraction with a smaller digestive system. Experiments show that people trying to live on raw food like chimps will give up, not finish their day's ration and get sore tired jaws.
Why I Am Obsessed with Horses by Michael McGriff - Poems | Academy of American Poets
to the memory of Denis Johnson The stranger bites into an orange and places the rind between us on the park bench. It becomes a small raft of fire. I came here to admire the iron-lit indifference of the geese on the pond. The summers here are a circuit in parallel with everything I cannot say, wrote the inventor before he was hanged from the bridge this park is named after. His entire life devoted to capturing inextinguishable light in a teardrop of enamel.
If You Are Water by Michael McGriff | Narrative Magazine
If You Are Water Tonight, the whiskey fires burning on the moon move through me like a hammer swung in the dark, and if you are water the moon is painting itself across you. Please log in to access the full content. If you are new to Narrative, signing up is FREE and easy.
In the Company of Known Strangers
I pulled into the gravel driveway of my childhood home, parked my ailing Ford Ranger and practiced the mantra I had invented during my two-day drive from Salt Lake City to Coos Bay, Ore.: “Take a deep breath. Don’t argue with your father. Do this for your mother.” The plan was to bring an impromptu harmony to my father’s and my head-butting relationship as know-it-all master carpenter (him) and tool-fetching apprentice (me), roles we fell into long before I could even read a tape measure.
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