19 May 2013 Gleaning with Claire Millikin
their hands singed with tobacco’s tinge.
from “The Wounds”
I have a hard time stopping writing. It always seems to me that the most interesting thing to see is yet to be discovered and the way to discover it is through words, through what words see, and that if I keep writing I will see the things I want or need to see. It is something of an addiction, the way that when I was younger I used to ride trains up and down the eastern seaboard convinced that the place I should stay was there somewhere, in the South (where I am from) or in the North (to which I escaped from the South). Instead, I lived on trains, which is an exhausting place to live but also does let you see a lot, not necessarily pretty scenery but burned out factories, nuclear plants, weird rubble that you’d never see from highways or roads, the backs of people’s yards, the depths and distances from which one writes. — Claire Millikin
“I admire Claire’s work for its quiet austere music and its metaphysical dignity, and the subtle threads of Faulknerian danger and damage, running beneath the poised surfaces” Wayne Koestenbaum, author of Blue Stranger with Mosaic Background
Order The Gleaners for $8 per copy. Send check or MO to: