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Here's a mini Q and A with our poetry editor, Jackie, and Angela to get you excited.  Read the piece here.

 JB: The poem is based on a real event which I heard about from someone, who had heard from someone, who had heard from someone else. Some details, such as the setting, are factual: I knew what the weather was like that day and I was familiar with the creek and the dam. The omniscient speaker, I think, was born of my struggle to imagine what everyone in this unimaginable situation was feeling. Mortality and weakness were both the inevitable conclusion and discovered through the process. I think that’s why that line, “you see where this is going,” got in there—there was no other conclusion, no other way for the story to go. 

Read Andrew's poem over on The Dock and check out an interview between poetry editor, Jackie Balderrama, and Andrew below.

JB: I am very attracted to the parallels this poem draws between physical and mental disease. It calls to mind an awareness that suggests pain can be both visible and hidden to the observer. I think the piece especially resonates with the events of this past year's Ebola outbreaks. How did you decide to describe these diseases with the address of "you"?

AE: Beyond being a type of list, this is also a persona poem, so the second person is reflexive, conversational. I imagine this poem in the voice of someone in captivity.

HAPPY JUNE!  KICKING US OFF IS MATTHEW KILBANE'S POEM "IN THE MANNER OF THE CHURCH."  YOU CAN READ IT OVER AT THE DOCK.

HFR: "In the Manner of the Church” is obviously a narrative poem, and yet the lyricism hiding behind the narrative is what we enjoyed most about this piece. The dual assonance in lines like “hours of arduous practice” and “Seated center in the front row I froze though” imitate the action of "climbing chromatics”. Even the formatting of the line-breaks and indentation makes a reader half-swoon through the language. Was it your intention, given the subject matter, to make the poem as much about the sound as possible?