This last episode before summer has us dreaming of the beach, Slushies—watching moonlight on the waves, reading novels in the sand. But not before we share this packed episode with you. Today we welcome special guest, Daniel Kuriakose, to hear about “The Common Well,” the literary journal he’s relaunching alongside K Hank Jost. Daniel sticks around for our discussion of two poems by Mara Lee Grayson.  

We admire the duality on display in the first poem’s back and forth-ness which has us pondering the undulation of its syntax. The late reveal of whom the lyric speaker addresses is satisfying surprise. A clever turn of phrase sends the more seasoned members of the team straight to this 90’s Divinyls’ song. The way enjambment revises meaning after a line break in both of these poems reminds Jason of Heather McHugh’s poetry. And ultimately Kathy bring us back to the two questions we ask of every submission: do you want to stay with the poem and do you want to share it? Join us in sharing our deep thanks for two members of our staff who are with us for the final time: Reese, our co-op, and Lillie, our sound engineer. Best of luck to your both in the future. Thank you, Reese! Thank you, Lillie! Over the summer, keep tuning in for a retrospective with deep cuts from our archive. Thanks, as always, for listening! 

At the table: Dagne Forrest, Tobi Kassim, Daniel Kuriakose (special guest from “A Common Well”), Reese Pfunder, Jason Schneiderman, Kathleen Volk Miller, Lisa Zerkle, Lillie Volpe (sound engineer), Derek Grebis (sound engineer) 

Author Bio: Mara Lee Grayson’s poetry has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Tampa Review, and Nimrod, among other literary journals, and has been nominated multiple times for the Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes. Grayson is the author or editor of five books of nonfiction. She holds an MFA from The City College of New York and a PhD from Columbia University and was previously a tenured professor in the California State University system. Originally from Brooklyn, New York, she currently resides in New Jersey.  

Social media: @maraleegrayson 

Website: maragrayson.com 

She Winds Her Stems through Fire for Burning Leaves Fend Off the Grief of Being Mowed

On the trampoline, young boys next door

             bounce while inside, their mothers

debate wine or coffee. Another weekend

             when the county’s on emergency alert. 

For now, bees land on dogwood flowers, 

             robins nest in tall trees 

planted by the prior owners,

             and my husband’s on his knees out back

for hours, pulling branches from hydrangeas

             I have neither time nor thumb 

to nurture back to life. He’s learned a lot

             in efforts to identify the colony of ants 

that sent a scout across our deck, through 

             the side door to a cat food bowl, 

like what distinguishes Bumblebee 

             from Carpenter (they look the same, 

the bumble fuzzier). A million years 

             of evolution, the male bee 

still hovers in one place, waiting 

             for a female to fly by. I fold laundry

then look up which buds bloomed 

             in 17th Century Versailles. (You’d guess 

invasive species but, unironically,

             it’s narcissus and orange blossoms.) 

For years, I worshipped palms 

             on the other side of the Continental Divide, 

like I was replanted, like new soil 

             could change the nature of the seed.

I looked for lightning and caught language

             in my mouth. I dreamed of blooms, 

then woke up in the desert, 

             staring at a mountain, believed to be 

an imprint of ancient gods whose voices 

             echoed off the surface of the earth. 

The nervous system replicates in utero,

             its fight or flight part predetermined, 

part piano keys the brain may tap. Healing,

             says the therapist, happens in the pendulation.

Insects bounce along the glass as children, 

             mothers sip merlot in coffee mugs, 

and the man I married after you 

             tans wrist to elbow, scratching up his forearms 

rending dead wood stems. It’s sticky business,

             caught between my lush, infertile soil and flirting 

with the bees, he knows that when I think about you, 

             I touch my self-concept on the page. 

What the Fortune Teller Tells Me on the Night I Leave California

The Channel Islands will one day rise up

in the distance like a resurrected poet 

high on mescaline and memories

of pretty women. You will or won’t 

learn how to tunnel through a prison 

of the mind. When the wind picks up, she says 

she was awoken by the rumble of a saw 

told so many times it must be true. 

You might as well 

drive six years backward, park beside a pool 

in west New Jersey. 

                                   I think she means 

beginnings are like endings: eyelid work, 

a neuron matter, not ontology or god. 

To transit is to navigate the synapses, 

trade one water for another, 

every body’s chemistry the same 

except for how the furniture’s arranged, 

which pieces we keep secret from ourselves. 

She eschews the label hypocrite, 

calls herself a hippopotamus instead.

Oh, she’s drinking like a river now, 

but can you honestly say you’ve never felt 

a kinship for a living being who could crush you

and the glass of bourbon in your hand?

Maybe when you were a child, your father 

chalked equations on a dusty blackboard.

Your height in centimeters 

is your adolescent telephone number 

divided by the times your mother screamed 

bringing you into this world.