190. Napkins at } A Velvet Giant.

What do you do with this: “So excited and honored to have three poems alongside such incredible company in the latest issue of @avelvetgiant!❤️❤️❤️” [Spencer Williams]. It must make sense to somebody. I like Spencer Williams' poem “Masturbation”—in it, the narrator asks Adam to see if the dove that smacked into “the window” died. It did. In death it wears a crown of ants. The best poems in A Velvet Giant no. 3 are Karolina Zapal’s. But let’s be transparent: my name is Adam and my last name is Polish so naturally I’m biased. Kevin Latimer’s author’s photo deserves careful consideration. His poem “Back In the Backyard Again” led me to think about Stephon Clark, murdered in his grandmother’s backyard by the police: “black boy prepared for war / all his life.”

My contribution to A Velvet Giant no. 3 is four Napkin Poems. When I look at the issue on my laptop, I can’t view whole napkins—I wonder if on a desktop the experience is better? I do, however, like the close-up presentation, because the Napkin Poems are very much about texture. The actual napkins (as opposed to the scans) are now radically curled.