Thrilled to have a piece in the new issue of Conjunctions, which just arrived in my mailbox. Theme: Nocturnals. It’s stuffed with hero-writers like Anne Waldman, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Cole Swensen, Brian Evenson, Carole Maso, Joyce Carol Oates!

Here’s an excerpt from my piece, “Prey Ethics”:

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Nocturnal hunters include foxes, owls, hedgehogs, and the Greek goddess Artemis.

Artemis is the protector of young girls, those giving birth, those leaving fawns secured in vegetation while going abroad to feed in the daytime, obviously off-limits. But the usual essential problems are these:

 

  1. The quarry is nocturnal, the hunter diurnal.
  2. Immobility = invisibility, while
  3. The less you move the more you see, yet
  4. Paralysis in sleep confers blindness, not sight.

 

Thus the hunter must roam against the instinct for shelter, while cultivating attention against the instinct for sleep.