The summer I turned nineteen I was broke. I had three more years of university to pay for and who knew when the Canadian government would cut student loans? I was living on my own in Ottawa. My parents were having a love-affair with Western Canada and I didn’t receive as much as a postcard.
I
was ill-equipped to compete in the job market in a small city that boasts two
large universities and a big college. The economy was in recession and four empty
summer months stretched out before me like a treacherous road. I was not the
waitress type and the thought of selling ice-cream cones on Ottawa’s only beach held no appeal.
After
weeks of combing through the classifieds, I saw an advertisement for a front desk
clerk at the Downy Woodpecker; a rundown motel, the kind you see in movies
where the main characters have been run-off the road and walk for miles until
they see a light in the distance.…
R32 is hurting again. Without looking at me, a dentist I didn’t know told me R32 moved onto a nerve & I’ll hurt to the touch for a few days.
I couldn’t stop rubbing the side of my jaw & I asked my mother if this is how it felt when her lover broke hers.
I asked to paint her X-rays to see if I could mend her jaw with my strokes & colors. I promised her I wouldn’t paint her teeth in black & white.
But my mother told me to balance gravity in the back of my mouth, the pressure will make R32 fall into my throat, leaving my nerve alone, but I was too afraid to swallow my teeth.
Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, her first poetry chapbook, Objects in Vases, won the 2016 ASPS Award for Poetry Book of the Year. Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Prize and was published in May 2018. Her writing can be found in many diverse journals, and she serves as Poetry Editor for Pidgeonholes. Finally, she’s been a finalist for or recipient of several prizes just this year, and she loves to collaborate across mediums and be the poem she wants to read in the world.
On this episode of ‘Cover to Cover with . . .,’ Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum speaks with Stefanescu about her recent publications, gender roles, pornography, violence in America, progressive metal, and much more!…
You have to know what they look like first: houses spared a tornado, trees listening to the prayer of finches, the deaf beggar clapping for the opera of snow.
Then you wait for it in your most elegant dress and shoes, sitting in the most beautiful chair you own, the one with the flowers, in order that you may greet the miracle like a bride.
Of course, you’ll begin to wonder what the miracle will be– will those who have died send their regards, for example, through a fallen bird feather, will your best friend’s cancer go away, will the homeless dine with fine china and gold spoons?…
The office is small and modest,
with a window behind the mahogany desk and an overflowing bookcase to the
right. There are mountains of manuscripts—some stacked neatly on the surface,
some piling overtop of one another on the floor. Framed book covers line the
walls, most of which, you’ve read at least twice, if not three times. You pause
to stare at them when you walk in. You take a deep breath and exhale.
There are three of them here for
you. An intern sits in a chair to the left. The three execs sit behind the
desk. The window is open, because the room is cramped and it’s mid-summer. You
wish it were cooler. The room cools down. Everyone feels it. They look around,
confused, then look at you, remembering.…
The day was
sweltering. There was a distinct smoky smell of baking skin, of salty sweat
breaking through layers of carefully applied make-up and deodorant and cologne.
It was the first sunny day of summer and by 11AM it had reached peak
temperatures, threatening to break records. On the radio they were calling it
an Irish Heatwave as it neared the mid-twenties, encouraging everyone to get
their sun-cream on and their swim trunks out, and journey to Dun Laoghaire or
The Strand for a day of sea and sand, one not to be missed.
I knew the
scorching temperatures were no accident – that they would come on this day
seemed entirely appropriate, as I drove away from Dublin, early that morning,
overwhelmed by the aroma of sweating leather and the sizzle of metal from my
seat belt.…
