Blackbird ArchiveReal Bananas and MoonPie
Real Bananas and MoonPie
I am drawn to the holy, the scientific, and the wildly grotesque landscapes of the American psyche, and I am most interested in where these three converge. So naturally I write everything down in iPhone notes. I like to keep a list buried there of random facts I’ve heard. Sometimes I prefer if they’re untrue.
My favorite is when my partner said, “Did you know, the closest thing to the taste of real banana these days is MoonPie?” I refuse to fact-check that statement. I believe it.
A lot of my poems come from the voices I hold close to me in everyday life.
The poem “End Times” is largely an attempt at conversation with my mother, a devout Christian. I am not religious, but I am interested in the idea of prayer and how it has changed over time. If prayer is a call for help, based on the faith of being answered, how is that ritual complicated by something like telephones or the Golden Record or an SOS? I am as interested in the methods by which people pray as I am by the situation that can drive a person to staple “Lost Dog” to a telephone pole, and how this, too, is a prayer.
For me, poetry ultimately exists between what science cannot reconcile and what religion often refuses to look toward.
Ciera Burch’s fiction has appeared in American Literary Magazine and Underground . She is an MFA candidate in creative writing at Emerson College and an intern at Hachette Book Group. Photo by Melanie Fu
Zach Hester’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bennington Review , Colorado Review , and Nashville Review , among others. He is the recipient of Ninth Letter’s 2018 Literary Award in poetry and holds an MFA in creative writing and translation from the University of Arkansas. He teaches at the University of New Orleans. Photo by Alexandra Davidson
Amy O’Reilly’s poetry has appeared in The Cimarron Review , New Ohio Review , Southern Indiana Review , and Sugar House Review , among others. She is an instructor at Creighton University, where she also completed her MFA. Photo by Kyle O’Reilly
Emily Chiles’s fiction has appeared in Copper Nickel . She is also a recipient of the Sonora Review Short Short Fiction Award. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Maryland. Chiles teaches writing and literature at Northern Virginia Community College.
Gwen E. Kirby’s work has appeared in Guernica , Mississippi Review , Ninth Letter , One Story , and The Best Small Fictions 2018 . She is the winner of the 2017 DISQUIET Literary Prize for Fiction and holds a PhD from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA from Johns Hopkins University. She is the Writer in Residence and George Bennett Fellow at Phillips Exeter Academy.
Joey Kingsley’s poetry has appeared in The Adirondack Review , Mead: A Journal of Literature and Libations , Salamander , and Unsplendid . Kingsley earned a BA in English from the College of the Holy Cross and an MFA in poetry from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Rochester and a staff member for the William Blake Archive. Photo by Scott Kingsley
Sarah Golin’s work has appeared in The Chicago Tribune , Inside Jersey , In These Times , Outdoor Life , and The Star-Ledger , among others. She holds an MA in journalism from New York University and an MFA in creative writing from Manhattanville College. Golin is at work on her first novel and is a writer, editor, and working journalist with over twenty years of experience. Photo by Tommy Gerger
Holli Carrell’s poetry has appeared in Bennington Review , Quarterly West , The Florida Review , Fugue , and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the Colie Hoffman Poetry Prize and a Norma Lubetsky Friedman Scholarship from Hunter College, where she received her MFA. She works at Bloomsbury Publishing in New York. Photo by Fernando Ramos