Every time I finish a new poem, I first go through all the stages of grief (of course) and then, usually, arrive at a deep nostalgia for my native language. Out of all the writing I do, I don’t know why poetry always forces me to acknowledge that I am writing and...
I first met Ruben on Zoom last fall in a class about teaching writing. He consistently said things that made me wish I’d had him as a first-year writing instructor—things like, “I’m a leftist, not a liberal, so I’m not necessarily against the use of force,” and “I’m...
When I moved to Albuquerque, sight unseen, in the Fall of 2019, it may as well have been a foreign country to me. Not knowing which neighborhoods I liked best, I stayed at a former coworker’s mother’s home in the South Valley for a month while she was on vacation in...
As this is my first year reading slush, I don’t know what submissions look like usually, but this time around there was a lot of pandemic content. And I get it – it seems like no matter what it is I set out to write lately, COVID interrupts, pushes others aside, and...
When I started this blog initially, I wanted to have words with people who claimed poets dressed better than fiction writers, only because I felt shaded by it. Some astrologically inclined people might say it is because I’m a Scorpio, and Scorpios are vindictive. But...
Michael Thompson is a multimedia artist from Chicago, Illinois. One of his monoprints, “Nomenclature,” appears in Issue 41 of Blue Mesa Review, but perhaps his most provocative works are his fake postage stamps, which he has successfully mailed around the world. In...
