Your fiction piece, “Fungirl,” takes the idea of mycelium network and puts it in a child-shaped body, telling the story of a chef who uses those mushrooms from this creature to create dishes. This work is both beautifully written and disconcerting to read. What inspired this piece? 

I used to live in Sleepy Hollow, New York, which was very close to Dan Barber’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns, an upscale farm-to-table restaurant with its own farm and greenhouses. This was when I was working as a freelance food writer, covering new restaurants for a local magazine. I never dined at Blue Hill (I couldn’t afford to), but the thought of a chef with complete control over the produce made me think about the power dynamics of food, cooking, and eating, and how that was reflected in hierarchical professional kitchens, especially given the potential for gender- and race- based abuse. This also coincided with a lot of news that was breaking about this type of abuse happening “back of house.” 

A few years before that, I volunteered as an assistant zookeeper at a pretty well known zoo in another state (I won’t mention the name, because I had to sign an NDA). The thing about zoos is that there is the display exhibit, but also a similar “back of house” exhibit, where the animals are actually kept and cared for during the zoo’s off hours. This second exhibit tends to resemble a prison rather than a habitat, and I think this experience, of feeding and caring for animals behind the scenes, melded with my interest in the problematic, “unseen” elements of fine dining. 

Fungirl, the character, grew organically from these inspirations. From there, it was just a matter of figuring out the form this story would take and writing it. 

Your story weaves so many different types of writing; a menu, an article, an interview… How did you decide on this unique format?

I love form. I’m a bit obsessed with it. I think this is because I write both fiction and nonfiction (and some hybrid!). I conducted a lot of interviews with chefs and restaurateurs when I was a food writer, so those forms came naturally to me. I also had to read a lot of menus and find the “story” in them, so that made sense for this piece, too. In 2020, I went straight from freelance food writing into the fiction PhD program at Georgia State University. No MFA, but with a graduate journalism degree. I still can’t believe I was accepted. 

When I wrote “Fungirl,” I was still very nervous and unsure of myself as a fiction writer. I’d been writing fiction as a hobby, but it was only during the pandemic that I figured, well, why not pursue it properly. Perhaps this was my way to prove to myself that I could write fiction, even if it involved leaning on nonfiction forms. At any rate, it was very fun (almost naughty) to be able to take these very specific, nonfiction forms and just go wild with fabulist, fantastical additions. It was very freeing. 

What sort of research did you do for “Fungirl”?

I highly recommend North Spore for anyone interested in growing their own mushrooms. That taught me a lot of the basics, such as the vocabulary, the process, and the novice-level science. Plus, you get a few good meals out of it, too. 

A lot of the research around the food industry came from food media and writing within that form. I watched a lot of Chef’s Table. This helped me understand how celebrity chefs speak, both to the media and to their staff (when the cameras are on, at least). For the menu, I was really inspired by the work of Chef Jenny Dorsey, who exhibited her pop-up show Asian in America at the USC Pacific Asia Museum, which brought a tasting menu together with poetry and virtual reality. I never got to see the exhibition, which I think was shown in 2019, but I read a lot about it. Jenny Dorsey also founded Studio ATAO, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to justice in the food and dining industry. The work of Soleil Ho and Sohla El-Waylly was also hugely influential, especially in regards to the microaggressions and overt racism and sexism taking place in the food industry. 

This piece is full of commentary on the elite, on dining—“People don’t want to know where their food really comes from,”—and on trends. Can you talk about that?

Oh man. Have y’all seen the news? Obviously, Vitaly is a compilation of several celebrity chefs, but one of the biggest inspirations for that character (and I’m sure foodies can guess who it is) has just come under fire for some pretty horrific abuse allegations.

But it’s true: people don’t want to know where their food really comes from. Other than Michael Pollan, we don’t want to meet the cow that will become our steak. We don’t want to know about the terrible things that happened behind the scenes for us to enjoy the spectacle of a beautiful, orchestrated meal at a fine dining establishment. But that’s the reality: to consume something is to end its existence and extend yours. To engage with an industry, in our capitalistic society, is to participate in some form of exploitation. A lot of the food industry, especially its trends, is about distracting from the cognitive dissonance required to enjoy–in fact, indulge–in something that is entangled with violence and oppression. 

Don’t get me wrong. I love food; I love cooking and eating and finding community and connection through meals. I think it’s the closest thing we have to magic. But I guess, just like in the context of fantasy, magic rarely comes free. There’s always a cost. 

Did you always intend for the main character to meet Fungirl?

No, actually! This was a great example of good workshop feedback. I was being weirdly coy in earlier drafts. I think at first, the food reporter just thinks about breaking into Fungirl’s greenhouse. But one of my professors, Sheri Joseph, has this great piece of advice she always gives to students, which basically boils down to making your characters “just do the thing.” I don’t remember if that was the advice she gave to this piece, or if I ever brought this piece to her workshop, but that craft trick helped me switch thinking about meeting Fungirl into actually doing it. Thank goodness, because that provided the entire last arc of the story. 

You implicate the reader in Fungirl’s fate. As we learn about her, we aren’t able to help her. Was this universal culpability something you thought about as you worked on this piece?

Oh yes. I love shame. I think it’s an excellent literary device. When The Menu came out, a couple workshop mates messaged me about it, not just because they know I write about food, but because of this story in particular. Like in Mark Mylod’s film, I hope that readers are enjoying the Fungirl tasting menu through its “nonfiction” forms, “eating” alongside the elite diners, even as something terrible unfolds. You realize you’ve enjoyed something at the expense of suffering, and there’s nothing you can do about it. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s wild. It’s about a chef with a cult-like following who crafts a tasting menu to die for. Literally.  

What themes do you find that you write about?

Food. Fabulism. Form! For my dissertation, I was really inspired by my professor Josh Russell to think about form in fiction, and my dissertation adviser John Holman helped me hone in on craft, specifically the craft particular to folklore and fairytales. I also took an ecocriticism class with Randy Malamud, which helped me understand the complicated feelings I have about the environmental impact of our food industry, as well as our anthropocentric approach to eating and cooking. I am also a mixed-race Asian woman, someone who grew up aboard in Taiwan, a country and home that I miss to near-psychosis. So I also write a lot about that identity.

What authors or books do you find you return to?

For voice and form, Toni Morrison’s Sula and Beloved, Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go. Kelly Link and Karen Russell for fabulism and magical realism, especially Link’s novella “The Faery Handbag” and Russell’s short story collection Orange World. I also love Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “The Handsomest Drowned Man in The World,” which I think about all the time. Helen Oyeyemi’s what is not yours is not yours is another huge contemporary inspiration. I also just read Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa, which I already know I will read again. 

What are you working on currently?

A poison-friendly mommy blog. I’ve been revising this story for years, and I can’t place it anywhere. Maybe I should just publish it as a “regular” blog and see if anyone notices that it’s fiction–or will everyone just skip to the sub-par chicken recipe at the end? In all seriousness, I’m preparing to query a collection of short stories themed around food, which draws on literary forms such as folklore, myth, and food writing. I also have a couple stories on the backburner that I’m still working on, but I’ll keep quiet on those so I don’t jinx myself! 

Thank you so much for interviewing me. It’s been a huge honor working with Water~Stone Review. I can’t imagine a better home for “Fungirl.” 

Suqi Karen Sims received her PhD in English with a concentration in creative writing from Georgia State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Greensboro Review, Weekly Humorist, and elsewhere. She has received the CALYX Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose and the Steven R. Guthrie Memorial Prize in fiction and was a finalist for The Pinch Literary Awards and the Fractured Lit Elsewhere Prize. She was born and raised in Taichung, Taiwan, and lives in Atlanta.

Your poem “The Mushers’ Daughter” speaks of a running girl in a picture. What sparked the creation of this poem? Is there an actual picture it was based on?

Yes! I saw the picture on Facebook. I’m friends with the daughter’s parents, Iditarod veterans Jennifer and Blake Freking, who have a racing kennel in Finland, Minnesota, where they raise leggy, beautiful pure-bred Siberian Huskies. The Frekings’ two daughters (Elena and Nicole) began interacting with the dogs as babies. All their lives, they’ve been holding new puppies, feeding huskies, observing play, doing chores in the dog yard, teaching “sit,” and, eventually, running their own teams. The Frekings have an enclosed free-run area where the dogs can race around, wrestle, sniff, dash about, jump on humans, and have a blast. It was a picture of Elena running with the dogs in the enclosure that inspired the poem. I was so taken by her childhood, all that exposure to pure boreal forest and the freedom to run wild with the dogs. She was 12, a time in a girl’s life so full of possibility and choices. I can’t think of a better way to rear daughters than how Elena has grown up. Frankly, I’m envious!

The title of the poem flows into the poem itself. At what point in the writing process did that happen?

Thanks for asking that question. Originally, the poem was titled “Elena Runs with the Wild Dogs.” I was so focused on working out the pacing, rhythm, and form of the poem, I didn’t try to tackle the title ‘til around the tenth version. I’ve had the good fortune of studying with the brilliant narrative poet Jude Nutter, who wrote I Wish I Had A Heart Like Yours, Walt Whitman, winner of the 2010 Minnesota Book Award in poetry and voted Poetry Book of the Year by ForeWord Review. Jude completely understands my obsession with dogs, cold, and wilderness and she pushes me toward compression in service of the lyric. Her comments on the poem helped me shape the final draft. And when I considered submitting the poem to Water~Stone, I realized I had an opportunity to showcase the beauty of mushing and the radiant example of raising a daughter in a wilderness environment. I wanted the title to have some mystery but relatable feel. I’m attracted to books with “daughter” in the title. I also love the whimsical art of Kenspeckle Letter Press in Duluth, Minnesota. I have two prints from a series called “The Trapper’s Daughter,” which features a young woman in intriguing natural settings. (And now that I think about it, the daughter reminds me of Elena!) These influences came together in my head, and there you have it, the final title of the poem. I chose to let it flow into the poem as a way to engage the reader quickly and to be a kind of “run-on” line (that I hope isn’t as annoying as a “run-on” sentence).

There are breaks within the stanzas, and in those moments, it almost feels like the leaps of jumping over a fallen branch as someone races through the woods. What was the impetus for you to put breaks where you did?

Oh, wow. I love that interpretation! I wish I could say I’d been crafty enough to intentionally evoke that image. But you’re right. A human running would make that leap over a fallen branch. However, If you’re running a sled-dog team and come upon such an obstacle, most likely you’ll stop, set the snow hook, jump off, move the branch or grab a saw from your sled bag and cut it off. The breaks within the stanzas work for either scenario. There are times, too, during mushing where the trail has “moguls” and moments of feeling briefly airborne, then landing hard. I love that sensation; it’s a bit jarring but exhilarating, too. My thinking during revision was that I wanted to emphasize “she runs” while also providing a breather to reflect on the images in the stanza. The pacing is brisk (which was so fun to write), but I’ve found in writing dog-sledding poems (as in dog-sledding itself), a full-out fast read (or run) isn’t sustainable. I don’t want to wear out the kind people who take the time to read my mushing poems. I want them to feel the thrilland have the opportunity to enjoy the scenery!

I love the lines “as if / the woods want her / to own them as if owning // is a real thing” and “as if people / ought to know a girl / can be fluent in wild.” Can you talk about these lines?

I’m so glad those lines stood out to you.

I’ll start with the “as if owning // is a real thing . . .” More and more I find myself obsessed with the concept of ownership. I don’t think of myself as a dog “owner,” which feels like a slippery slope toward enslaving. Some research suggests humans and a proto-dog that emerged from wolves saw complementary hunting strengths and began cooperating to take down prey and protect it from scavengers. As humans and dogs have co-evolved over millennia, like it or not, the balance of power shifted to humans. I prefer to see our role as companions and stewards responsible for dogs’ wellbeing.

I also recognize that individuals among wild creatures (foxes, raccoons, deer, crows, even fish) sometimes choose to be in a relationship with us, which feels more primal. What does it take for that to happen? Curiosity, familiarity, integrity, deep trust, and mutual agency. The concept of “as if the woods want her to own them” is a nod to such interspecies relationships. I believe Elena, because of her exposure to and understanding of the wilderness, is the kind of human the world needs if we are to survive as a species.

As for “as if people / ought to know a girl / can be fluent in wild,” let me say that I am a huge fan of adolescents, and spending time with them helps me see the world in startling ways. I have great respect for their knowledge, energy, vision, passion, and role as a resource to their communities, But I’m not sure that feeling is widely shared in the US, so I tend to call out the splendidness of teens whenever possible. Elena is so comfortable in the wilderness and working with dogs, it felt important to point out such fluency, especially in a 12-year-old girl. If more girls could spend time in the wilderness, just imagine the kind of leaders who might emerge, women who are so deeply connected to the more-than-human world that protecting and conserving it would be, well, second-nature (no pun intended).

We don’t realize the poem is speaking about a picture until halfway through. What was your intention behind this?

Because rhythm and pacing are important elements in the poem I wanted to establish that feel early on. But I also wanted the inspiration for the poem (the photo) to help ground it in real experience. 

What does your editing process for poetry look like? For this piece?

Editing begins when I type the handwritten poem into my computer. Reading it aloud always leads to changes. No matter how happy I am with it at any stage, I put it away for a week or so, then come back with a fresh eye. Patience isn’t innate for me, but poetry is a greater teacher.

More and more I’m interested in meter and its influence on tone and tension. When struggling, I’ll scan my poem to figure out if meter is the problem. I’ve learned so much from Jude about meter, line breaks, and about openings and closings. I’ve read every craft book, article, and blog post I can get my hands on about closings. Sometimes, I consult a nerdy deck of index cards I made with ideas and approaches I’ve gleaned. It’s rare that I feel a poem is ready before five versions (though my record is 32 versions over 7 years). I bring the poem to a workshop or to two poet-friends and use their comments to guide further revisions.

But does editing ever stop? I play with syntax, line breaks, then compress and compress and compress until I’m satisfied every word and every line break has earned its place. My final stage is making sure the title engages and offers just the right amount of context, perhaps a bit of mystery. I’ve heard many poets say revising is their favorite part of working on poems. I’m inclined to agree. For me, editing is when surprise enters. If I push too hard to what I think should be the exit, the poem tanks. Like most things in my life, letting go of a certain outcome allows something far better and surprising to emerge. 

Do you find you return to different themes in your writing?

Yes! I recently tried to order a group of poems into a manuscript (my third effort in seven years). Two larger themes emerged, dog-sledding and my relationship and experiences with the more-than-human world.

I jump at every opportunity that comes my way to spend time in wilderness settings. I’ve played tag with juvenile seal lions (their idea) in the Midriff Islands in the chilly February waters of the Sea of Cortez; been in a fishing boat off the coast of Dingle, Ireland, surrounded by a pod of gigantic basking sharks filter feeding, their toothless mouths wide open and reflecting the craziest light; been pelted with acorns by squirrels in my front yard; had a standoff with a lynx who wouldn’t budge to let me continue driving down the Arrowhead Trail in northeast Minnesota; and been raced in my car on a remote gravel road by a gorgeous young moose that at first I thought was a horse. While training my sled dogs north of the Twin Cities, a huge crane lifted up from a mucky pond and flew right over my team, so low I could hear its wings moving.

All of these magical times inspire and eventually enter my poems. I love the term that Wisconsin poet Thomas R. Smith (another wonderful teacher I’ve had) uses for such experiences: “peak emotional moments.” 

Who inspires you? What authors or creatives are your favorites?

I came to poetry rather late, so I’ve had so much to learn in a short time. In 2020, I worked for a year with Gretchen Marquette (May Day) to fast-track my knowledge. She’s been a never-ending source of  generosity and inspiration–and we share a devotion to dogs and other creatures. 

Among poets I return to often who model for me qualities I highly respect–honesty, humanity, humility, and mastery of craft–are Jim Moore (Prognosis), Marie Howe (Magdalene), Ross Gay (Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude), Mark Doty (Fire to Fire), Maurice Manning (Bucolic), Michael Kleber-Diggs (Worldly Things), and Connie Wanek (On Speaking Terms).

I love the inventiveness and originality of Deborah Keenan (Saint of Everything), Patricia Smith (Blood Dazzler), Devon Walker-Figueroa (Philomath), Kamiko Hahn (The Narrow Road to the Interior), Jericho Brown (The Tradition), Emily Dickinson, Aracelis Girmay (The Black Maria), and Felicia Zamora (Body of Render).

Ilya Kaminsky’s book, Deaf Republic, should be taught in civics classes in every high school in the US. The book seemed prescient in Minneapolis when federal agents occupied the city to carry out indiscriminate rounding-up of immigrants. In fact, I suggested it many times when people around the country checked in to see how I was doing as the best example of what occupation and resistance feels like.

What are you currently working on?

Little by little, I’m compiling a manuscript of poems and essays about being a biracial Latina dog sledder obsessed with wilderness, and extreme cold. (I feel euphoric at -30F! ) As our blue planet heats up, I feel a responsibility to preserve through literature the beauty of the boreal forest in winter, the awe it inspires, and how even a native Texan with absolutely no Nordic genes can be transformed to feel most alive and connected to the wild during extremes of winter in frozen landscapes. With luck, the manuscript may become a book before the season of winter disappears altogether.

Thanks so much for your curiosity about my poem. It’s been such an honor to have “The Mushers’ Daughter” in Water~Stone!

Kathleen Kimball-Baker is a Minneapolis poet and dog-sledding enthusiast. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Water~Stone, Nimrod International, Poet Lore, The Hopper, Magma (UK), The Avenue, The Nature of Our Times (poetsforsciene.org), and other journals and anthologies. She is a Pushcart nominee and is compiling a hybrid chapbook about being a biracial Latina dogsledder (originally from Texas) obsessed with extreme cold and boreal wilderness.

When was the moment you realized you needed to write “Wars and Small Wars,” your nonfiction piece in V. 28 of Water~Stone highlights the violence that women face on a daily basis? When did the war comparison develop?

Honestly, the essay sneaked up on me. Old incidents niggled. Conversations played and replayed. If I had considered writing about the violence women face, I would have expected to do it in fiction or to allude to it in poetry, not to write about personal experiences in creative nonfiction. When putting the essay together, I began with just the scene of conversation with the car full of boys. But it came tangled with other details and made sense only in the context of the era and my small-town culture. 

The war comparison grew out of the weight of the emotional struggle I realized we had lived in. Tensions and the strategies we devised for dealing with them, the making and breaking of alliances, together with the violence itself, felt like an ongoing battle. Perhaps it existed as a subterranean battle whose hidden nature intensified as we tried to keep it secret. 

There’s such a focus on interpersonal relationships and the unsaid: the community has an unspoken rule of rarely locking its doors; R.B. covertly warns the narrator that she shouldn’t get in the car. How do you think this subtle communication plays into the themes of the piece?

Amongst the unacknowledged and unsayable in small towns, people develop other ways of communicating. This is especially true for teenagers who already feel disenfranchised from the adult language of status quo. 

Adolescence equals befuddlement. Teenagers constantly try to puzzle out relationships, to find where they fit in school, friend groups, their family, the community. Amid the rules and the pressure of other people’s sometimes unstated expectations, they harbor their own longings and dreams. They send and receive all kinds of nonverbal signals from dress to body language to rebellious behaviours. Sometimes the signals misfire; sometimes they become a beacon. 

Most inhabitants of small towns develop an awareness of the unsaid. Social skills (for better or worse) require the unraveling of each muted meaning. Taboos create tension in the piece and the various characters’ responses to them come more often through action than language.

What did you think about when crafting the setting of a teenager’s world in a small town in the 70s? How did you bring it back to life?

First I tried to reinhabit the place and time myself and then to select details that might help the reader feel that reality. To characterize the remoteness, I describe the boarded-up train station. I introduced landmarks but also perimeters like the three-block main street. I employed sense-laden details such as the smell of sweat and liquor in the car, and the fringed leather jacket of the era. To place the reader in time, I mention pooling change to buy gas for an entire evening’s driving around. I include the beginning of girls’ athletics as another time marker, but also to signal the layers of struggle women faced in that era. I relied on accumulating details—the pies spinning in the pie carousel, the long phone cord, cars left running and unlocked—to create an alive sense of place. 

The idea of losing trust in one’s own judgement runs deep through this story. How did you emphasize this as you wrote this piece?

One important way I underscore this loss of trust in one’s judgement is by letting the essay invalidate its own statements. For example, the narrator first declares “Cars with people we knew were safe.” But in the next paragraph, she contradicts herself: “Except when they weren’t.” The “rule” she had absorbed didn’t hold.

But, in order for this idea of self-doubt to come across as more generally “true” in the story, it had to be the experience of more than just the narrator. So the essay literally names the “we” group as also having their “confidence” in their judgement shattered: “They were just having fun. We should have known better.”

What is your editing process?

After drafting, I let the piece sit. When I return to a short piece like this, I read the whole thing out loud as I revise. The distance from which I evaluate varies. Sometimes I get stuck for days tinkering with one sentence or phrase. Other times I focus on the larger story arc. When it feels finished, I like to again let it sit and return to it, reading as if it were someone else’s work. This latter step works best if I have been writing something else in the meantime. 

Of course, I love to have someone else read and comment, but that is a luxury not often available. 

What genres and themes do you write in?

I have published six books of poetry, so I am known primarily as a poet, but I have published in many genres—from drama to scholarship to journalism. My debut collection of short fiction, Red Ants, is forthcoming in October 2026. 

The preoccupations of my writing remain similar across genres. I explore our connections to place, culture, and history. I’m interested in justice issues. As an Anishinaabe writer, Indigenous values and ways of beings remain my lens. As someone who grew up in northwestern Minnesota, many of my works have a connection to that watery landscape. Ideas of reciprocity with and responsibility to the natural world remain a backbeat, and I love tracing intergenerational stories. I also remain interested in the ferocity of our human search and our frailties, especially in the way this sometimes creates comical outcomes. 

What are you working on now?

Just a week ago, I turned in my short fiction collection. In the next months, I will be seeing that through the publication process. I am in the early stages of expanding one of the stories from that collection into a novel or novella. I am also beginning to assemble poems for another poetry collection. I have more than enough poems, but I see gaps in the arrangement. I’m dreaming up those poems.  

Kimberly Blaeser, founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets and past Wisconsin poet laureate, is the author of works in several genres. Her six poetry collections include Ancient Light, Copper Yearning, and Résister en dansant/Ikweniimi: Dancing Resistance. Blaeser’s honors include the Poets & Writers Writer for Writers Award, Zona Gale Award for Short Fiction, and Lifetime Achievement Award from Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas. An enrolled member of the White Earth Nation, Blaeser is an Anishinaabe activist and environmentalist, a professor emerita at UW–Milwaukee, and an MFA faculty member at Institute of American Indian Arts. For more information, visit kblaeser.org.

Your poem, “On the Eucalyptus Trail” starts off with the powerful sentences, “I tell my friend the city is a whitewashed tomb.” What was the inspiration for this piece?

The inspiration behind this piece is based on my hometown. I have a love/hate relationship with the city I grew up in. The phrase, “whitewashed tomb,” is a Biblical allusion that Jesus used to call the religious hypocrites as being beautiful and clean on the outside, but inwardly they were dead, which is sometimes how I feel about the city. 

In the middle of the poem, the phrases carry this shh sound, kind of like a hushing, when speaking about the absence of language. What was your intention with these syllables?

While writing this, it happened organically, which is one of those beautiful moments in writing where it flows naturally together. Though I did focus on the word “whitewashed” and how I felt suburbia whitewashes and assimilates people into a certain mold as my springboard for the words that had the shh sound. 

You use enjambed rhymes so well throughout. How do you find the rhythm when you’re writing or editing?

I love to read it out loud many times till it sounds right for all my poems. If it doesn’t sound right, I’ll keep repeating the line or word and play around with it until I feel that it is right for the poem. It’s funny too because I normally don’t rhyme in my work either, at least not that I’ve noticed, but for this poem it just worked to flow in that vein. 

There’s the whitewashed city with “Light colored houses” and then shades of green, in nature. How does the green/olive emphasize the whitewashing in the poem?

The shades of green to me speak to how nature cannot be controlled. In the poem my parents painted our house an olive green, and HOA got upset because it didn’t fit their light color scheme, which is so silly to me. And my mom stood by the color she chose, and they never bothered about it again. So I do see the green as a color of resistance. 

Though I did learn too from my workshop class that eucalyptus trees are symbols of colonialism, since they are invasive and were planted by colonial powers to alter landscapes to their advantage, which I thought was interesting and added another layer of meaning to the poem in the way that nature can be manipulated. 

What themes do you find that your work circles back to?

Sometimes it’s about the place. Other times, it’s family and relationships. For me, I see my poems as small moments that I’m trying to capture on the page, so that I understand the moment better or see a memory differently in a new way.  

What authors and texts have helped shape your work, or are your favorites?

Juan Felipe Herrera and Natalie Diaz are my favorites and inspire how I write today.

What are you working on now?

Right now, I’m working on poems that are in conversation to art, whether that’s a painting, a movie, or another poem. I love how art can be in conversation with each other through poetry. 

Michaela Chairez is a Latina writer from the Inland Empire. She holds an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University. Her work can be found in Quiet Lightning, Exposition Review, California Quarterly, Transfer Magazine, The Ana, and The Acentos Review.

Where were you when you first had the idea for “Li Po took a driving test?” What inspired this poem? Where did the impetus to use the title as part of the piece come in?

It was the last day of a generative workshop with Jose Hernandez Diaz. I’d had a poor night of sleep and didn’t feel up to the final exercise. But I wrote down a single title. And then the first line immediately followed: “and all he saw was the moon.” The next morning the poem wrote itself.

I often find it awkward when a poet uses the first line of a poem as its title. The repetition is awkward, and perhaps a little archaic, or formal. But sometimes the first line is the right title, so why not have the title bleed into the piece? As an editor I see more and more poets putting this into practice. I think there is something about the prose poem as a form that lends itself to it. Perhaps it’s the conversational quality of a prose poem? A lot of my prose poems use the title as part of the piece.

There are a lot of opposing forces within this poem; wanting to have the freedom to drive, but being constricted by the rules; the bustle of the city versus the space on a “lonely country road.” How did these images help build this poem?

I think placing Li Po, the quintessential poet of antiquity, in a modern setting sets up endless juxtapositions. The opposing forces are multiplied when he is asked to do something as mundane as a driving test. Li Po, from what we know of him from the historical record, was a person whose sole reason for existence was to write the next poem. I think his fixation on the moon throughout the poem symbolizes that singularity of purpose. 

The poem is built upon the tension between the tedious challenges of the driving test and Li Po’s obsession with the moon. Once he has that license in hand, he is free to give himself over to the “lonely country road” and the “great, drunk, glorious moon.” That freedom is ironically his undoing, which could be interpreted as a statement on the undoing of self that is demanded by art. There is also a not-so-subtle allusion in “dying to touch the moon” to the mythology of Li Po’s actual death—falling off the deck of a boat in a drunken moment while reaching for the moon.

It feels like there’s a lot of longing in this poem as an undercurrent. Can you talk about that?

“Li Po took a driving test” is the first in a series of three poems in which I’ve placed Li Po in modern settings. What arises in each poem is a longing to get back to his time and place, symbolized in this poem as an obsession with the moon. None of this was by design. I simply put Li Po in various situations and let him speak. One of the things he seems to have wanted to say is that this modern world is no place for a poet. 

Another thing is that these poems are part of a collection whose themes are alienation, loss, regret, and coming to terms with the dharma of impermanence. The Li Po poems add levity but are also riffs on those themes. It’s easy to think of longing as a wanting for something that is elusive or just out of reach. There is also a kind of longing for that which has been lost, for the distant past—which is different from nostalgia. In “Li Po took a driving test” there is longing for the elusive moon, and at the same time an undercurrent of longing for the days of the Tang Dynasty.

What made a prose poem format feel right for this piece? Did it go through other forms first? What does your editing process look like?

It felt right as a prose poem from the jump and I never questioned it. In fact, it gave birth to a series of prose poems featuring Li Po, Ryokan, and Ikkyu in modern settings. I find the prose poem to be the perfect form for placing historical characters in modern settings. There’s a kind of surrealism to such a scenario, and the prose poem excels as a surrealist form.

A lot of my poems are composed while in formal meditation practice. I work them out in my head and jot them down in a little notepad once the session has ended. These poems often have the opening lines and the landing worked out, but the body of the poem is sometimes skeletal. So I spend some time at my desk fleshing out individual lines. The next morning in meditation I work out kinks or compose new lines. Shunryū Suzuki might say to me, “When you sit, just sit. When you write, just write.” And he would be right! But for me poetry takes precedence. I can sit anytime. Poems don’t always arise.

What themes do you return to in your writing?

When I was younger it was street life, working-class life, alienation, the fight to keep one’s soul intact in a world gone wrong. Now that I’m older it’s death, loss, regret, and the dharma of impermanence. And the occasional touch of mysticism. 

What books are your favorites? What authors do you admire?

When I began studying poetry in earnest, back in the mid 90s, I found a lot of the Western canon inaccessible. I turned to the classical Chinese and Japanese poets, of whom Li Po and Ryokan were my favorites. I was already a serious meditator and had a sensitivity to the ways Zen influenced their writing. I appreciated the simplicity. Letting the image speak for itself. Stylistically, these guys had a profound influence on my writing. They taught me how to land a poem.

I also cut my teeth on Charles Bukowski, Jack Micheline, Gerald Locklin, Todd Moore, Fred Voss, Adrian C. Louis—the street poets. Sharon Olds, early Sherman Alexie, Rilke, William Blake, Baudelaire, and Raymond Carver—Where Water Comes Together with Other Water is a book I come back to probably more than any other.

In addition to editing Shō Poetry Journal and being exposed to a wide range of contemporary voices, I read a lot of craft books. Gregory Orr’s A Primer for Poets and Readers of Poetry sits at the top of my stack.

A few favorite fiction writers are James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, and John Steinbeck. I think it’s important for poets to read across genres.

What are you working on now?

My debut collection, The Broken Buddha, is scheduled for release by Roadside Press on March 18th. Now I have to figure out how to get people to read it!

I’ve also begun the process of organizing a collection of “early” poems, written between 1994 and 2004. My working manuscript from those days was a finalist in several book and chapbook contests, but was never published. There are some very energetic poems there that I think work well as a group.

Johnny Cordova dropped out of the literary scene for 17 years, then started writing poetry again in 2021 upon returning from 10 years in Southeast Asia. Recent work appears in Chicago Quarterly Review, Louisiana Literature, Moon City Review, Salt Hill Journal, and elsewhere. He lives at Triveni Ashram, in northern Arizona, where he co-edits Shō Poetry Journal with his wife, poet Dominique Ahkong.