In our Nine Books About Your Life series, authors are invited to talk about nine types of books that have had an impact on their lives. In this installment, we speak with July Westhale, author of the forthcoming Via Negativa (Kore Press).
July Westhale reads “Teresa of Avila Patron Saint of Via Negativa” appearing in Your Impossible Voice #18.
July Westhale reads “On Friendship” appearing in Your Impossible Voice #18.
Issue 18 features work by Joanna Ruocco, Miguel Barnet (translated by George Henson), Ricardo Piglia (translated by Robert Croll), Lise Gauvin (translated by Aliya Esmail), Dia Felix, Brooks Sterritt, Roberto Rodriguez-Estrada, Molly Yingling, Silver Damsen, Rob McClure Smith, Amitai ben-Abba, July Westhale, Martina Reisz, Thomas March, Adam Clay, Elizabeth Spires, and Mia Ayumi Malhotra. Cover art by Sean Casey.
July Westhale
You left the door agape as a mouth, met me
in the middle of the road. Car red
as a throat, your hair on my tongue, your breasts
on my breasts—I hardly cry, but your body
July Westhale
We all feel like magical realism.
As if we may ascend, like Remedios Moscote.
Maybe we haven’t fathers to show us something pedestrian,
like ice. Nor the trajectory of a firing squad. We at least