Divinations VI: Bolts, Friendly Ghosts, & the Opportunity to Tilt

“It’s the Vari-View all over again.”

Welcome back to our sixth (and penultimate!) episode of the Divinations miniseries, featuring an ongoing conversation in poems with poet Sandra Yannone.

In this episode, Sandy shares her poem-in-progress, "By Years the Obstacles, at Night the Scars," inspired by my "Articles of Incorporation" from Episode 5: Pockets, Tooth Fairies, & the Surreal Real, as well as by the Little Oracles lexical fragment “bolt.”

We talk about vintage toys as metaphor, learning to love line breaks, the “I–you" matrix, and more. And as a special treat, Sandy gifts us with a reading of “The Next Open Space,” which will appear in her forthcoming collection, The Glass Studio, published by Salmon Poetry in early 2024. Plus, I offer an excerpt from my response poem to her featured reading — the very last one of the series, dropping on December 19. You can find the full transcript here.

xx, aa