I like the look of old, liver-spotted hands
Playing Rachmaninov with complete agility
Pounding out the chords or whispering the pianissimi

Because I was brown
they cocked their thumbs
aimed pasty forefingers
at me while they shouted
‍ ‍ Take that, Geronimo!

A conversation with Terese Svoboda about her latest book, Hitler and My Mother in Law, and how writing through uncertainty and using humor to face the unbearable truths history leaves behind.

“you ask me to be patient. i paint an old bookshelf

& remember my posture, the way blossoms become

one last thing.”

“In the spring of 2020, when the lockdown began, Liz still owned the ax that broke down her childhood front door…”

“Even if it’s just a small piece of me, it’s good practice for the trillions of years yet to pass in which I will not exist.”

“lingering mysteries I knew / I would never know: a boy who / drank rivers…”

“I’d hear this man’s footsteps above me when in bed, trying to trap the sound of his feet with my eyes…”

“At its core, the madness memoir is an effort to impose a literary structure on an inherently disorganized condition.”