10 Questions with Canadian Author Julie Paul
We first met Canadian short story writer and poet Julie Paul in early 2014, back when Compose was still in its infancy. At that time we were delighted to publish an excerpt from Julie’s short story collection The Jealousy Bone (Emdash Publishing, 2008). We adored Julie from the first time we read “Instant Family“—adored her from its very first line: “When Lovey found…
Read MoreTwo Poems: From Symphosius: Word Problems #38; Types of Angels
From Symphosius: Word Problems #38 One coxswain coaxes ten rowersOn two boats, his breathDirects both. I am part of a long drive, my early soundThat of the paddler, the latter a snake’s echo. Affection teaches usThe art of war, to pursue the retreating and ambushThe attacker. My son speaks, my daughterMarries, my wife lives in…
Read MoreNo Time for Denials
You could be the colleagueat the copy room coffee pot with your grimy mug,that emblem of habit, knowingwhat the doctors said, what your owniridescent cells are instructing you in. You could be the email appearing next weekannouncing calling hours. You do not need to be in bed to be dying.So now’s no time for denials.…
Read MoreNight Vision | Five Photographs
My Father’s Engagement Ring
This is a story about love, and in my family love meant money. In 1947, Mr. D. Maizel walked into one of New York City’s Park Avenue jewelers seeking their appraisal of an engagement ring with a diamond flanked by baguettes. That diamond was a crystal doorway opening to radiance, luring light to slide along…
Read MoreStreets of Bakersfield
After years of tending bar my dad is ready for a new career, so in the summer of 1979 my family moves two hours north from Los Angeles county, over the steep mountain pass called the Grapevine down into the southern edge of the Central Valley. I’m entering fifth grade, my sister Katie is not…
Read MoreTwo Poems: Icara; Death’s Great Black Wing Brushes the Air
Icara for Kate I lifted the white bones from a pool at low tide,took them home, boiled them with boraxthen reassembled the wing and hung it,framed, in the hallway. The marvel of itsmechanics: radius and ulna so like my own,wingtip evolved into fingers. Because I asked for wings, a lover lookeda year before he found…
Read MoreSiren
My lover is an ambulance driver. I look at him while he’s sleeping. Sleeping tensely, one might think—except he isn’t tense or vigilant. He sleeps like a baby. This fact of him, that he’s a physical being, more than metaphysical, more than poetic—this fact is far from something I would change. It’s why one day,…
Read MoreThe King Is Dead
Excerpted from The Pull of the Moon © Julie Paul, 2014. Reprinted with the permission of Brindle & Glass, an imprint of TouchWood Editions. There was little chance we’d see any loon chicks that morning on the lake. It was the middle of summer, and I knew the babies had been growing for months already.…
Read More