“I mean / when I see something dull and uneven, / barnacled and ruined, / I know how to get to its iridescent everything.” – Eve L. Ewing, “what I mean when I say I’m sharpening my oyster knife”

“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.” – Santiago, ‘The Old Man And The Sea’

“Whoever does not avert their eyes from this false eclipse listens to a bloodstream in reverse.” – Eric Baus, “A Distant Address”

“The airport is already beginning to get to me…I can even smell the seeping odor of the word search books…the extended feel of transition in every item.” – Francie, ‘The Butterfly Lampshade’

“…too frightened…to watch would be to understand the play isn’t being staged for us. To learn we simply do not matter to the players at all.” – Mr. Suydam, ‘The Ballad of Black Tom’

“why not / the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won / and in a sense we’re all winning / we’re alive” – Frank O’Hara, “Steps”

“I was recently denied a writing prize because, they said, I was lazy. What they meant by lazy was that I used too many contractions:” – Lydia Davis, “Can’t and Won’t”

“Scottie, you made it look easy, / the way your legs ate air, / found every escalator up. // i was watching your game. / working my own factory” – José Olivarez, “Ode to Scottie Pippen”

“However Bush came to have won, he would still be winning ten days later and we would still be in the throes of our American optimism.” – Claudia Rankine, ‘Don’t Let Me Be Lonely’

“In the beginning everyone looked like Larry Bird / but everyone did not have the name Larry Bird / & this was confusing. Everyone had a headache” – Mathias Svalina, “Creation Myth”