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![National Poetry Month: “WHEN PRAYER DIDN’T AWAY THE GAY, MY DAD TAUGHT ME HOW TO PLAY DOOM ON THE FAMILY COMPUTER [Golden Shovel]”](https://therumpus.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/pic-Ty-Raso.jpeg)
National Poetry Month: “WHEN PRAYER DIDN’T AWAY THE GAY, MY DAD TAUGHT ME HOW TO PLAY DOOM ON THE FAMILY COMPUTER [Golden Shovel]”
I have this dream where I am the last person alive on a two- dimensional earth, my body 3D like a fruit, and start- ing to inside-out itself, until my gut is a skirt and my DOOM- sense is like…
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Poetry that Bears Tension: A Conversation with Jonah Mixon-Webster
“It often feels like if you’re not on tour or have a current project out that you are out of the conversation. It’s been 5 years since my last book and that’s starting to feel like a long time. I…
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The Stereo Speakers of Fandom: A Conversation with Emma Straub
“I love building myself a box. I love giving myself a tight space because my plots are, let’s say, quiet and internal. American Fantasy has a bit more of the razzle dazzle, but the plot itself is always personal transformation…
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National Poetry Month: Two Poems
which was not unlike your beating heart. A city in which I was a stranger, and thought long afternoons on the beating hearts of strangers.
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The First Book: Janan Alexandra
“There wasn’t a single defining moment when the idea for the book was conceived. I think of it more like clay: shaping and reshaping, or waves washing up on shore, bringing little bits of detritus and glass and seashell to…
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National Poetry Month: Two Poems
Tightened, cut repetitions, activated passive voice, considered where we might be locked in the wheel Put some things down there
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Born on a Dying Planet
The glittering sphere lives in the top drawer of Lela’s dresser. Sometimes she takes the ball and rolls it between her palms, and when she does her parents’ voices float forth. She rations these messages carefully, knowing there will never…
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On Sacrifice, Siblings, and Familial Scripts: A Conversation with Jane Park
“When I first wrote this, it was very stream-of-consciousness. My story had no plot. It was just dysfunctional people. There were also many multi-year stalls where I stopped working on it, but each time I returned, I could read it…
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National Poetry Month: Two Poems
TVs, SCANNERs, as advertised in the window, & another said SHOES: SOLES & REPAIRS & another said Passport photos & DrEAM REPAIR & another said MisC. so when it was my turn
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Pita
“When I visit my home, which is not very often, the local billboards I will pass are either for online sports gambling, car accident litigation, or mile counters to the nearest funeral home (which way, South Jersey man?). The current…
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National Poetry Month: “Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma”
A body can waste away quietly, carrying an enemy in its blood. It doesn’t want to fight; it wants to toil skin-deep in the blood.
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The First Book: Leigh Lucas
“This isn’t advice but it’s helpful. I’d heard from so many poets I admire that it was hard, sometimes really hard, to get their first collection published. Some poets I know even published their second books before their first books…