Sorry to sound like the windmill always yapping about that same wind, but gracious, Sixth Finch sure blows some major energy our way, no? Yes! Issue upon issue has me going GOTTA VOUCH THIS. And THIS turns up to be that and that and that. So here I am again, spinning for the new issue of Sixth Finch.
Here are my tip-top wahoo favorites:
Allison Corporation by Julia Bloch: I love how it writes and rewrites itself, twists and turns itself, the poem, I mean, but also the speaker and the situation and the purpose. Mid-poem, it says, “I’m rewriting the plan,” says it twice even, and this, I feel, is key. This poem is that plan, The Act of rewriting the plan. Then, the end, the admitted emotion of it all: “This is a love poem/and I did not do any research.”
The Grip of All We Cannot Grasp by Sean Patrick Hill:
The moon comes on like a cloud of dead whales.
I lie in snow at the curb, and doves build nests in my sleeves.
Baby Toss by Julie Blackmon: This is one of those photographs one returns to, at first enjoyable in its common connection, it’s field and sky, baby being tossed and caught, as is infancy, but why do I keep returning (as the baby might wonder)? It’s the sky doing its magical bluing, it’s my own wonder what happened to the baby as gravity yanked it, or wait, did the baby drop from above in the first place (the magical red shoes and striped leggings), it’s the I’ve-been-here-before-ness of the kid in the green hat. I’m in love with the space this photo provides.
[...]Wherever you are awake
I want you to know the barn is falling down
slow enough we can sleep on it. It will be
raining, then it will be snowing, then
we will be wet, soaked, swollen, shore
in a way our bodies deserve. I mean
our mouths, our state shapes, our hair
in the morning. The dirt changes color
the closer I get to you. Like I said,
it’s snowing. It’s snowing just enough
it holds together.
We Claim To Be The Only Species Aware Of Our Own Mortality by Amorak Huey: Wow at the power of these “We” statements, how they jut into, press holes in, strip apart, shine clear our understanding of our limited time here. Second wow at the power of the He coming to do his thing at the end, though we all should have known it was coming, maybe even hoped it so.
Smoke Bomb by Alex Roulette: WOW YES WOW
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Thanks so much for the attention to everyone on this list. I’m grateful for all the positive feedback that’s been generated, and I’m glad as hell; to have been included in Sixth Finch, a space that seems to emote a high level of energy–and gets it back in spades.