Ben Berman

For over forty years, Gregory Djanikian’s poetry has masterfully explored life’s in-between spaces. 

Not that life was all that bad in France compared to the rest of Europe but we came to America with dreams of making it new. And in some ways we did. The problem, though, was that to fit in you always felt this pressure to be something that you weren’t. There were these anthologies

This piece is part of our Fall 2018 print issue.

Beats We pulled into the drive-thru hoping for some cheap and greasy late-night combo to stave off the inevitable hangover but found, instead, a homeless man humping the intercom. And without missing a beat Sam leaned over, rolled down my window and asked, hey, you want fries with that? *** The man turned around and

DANIELLE LEGROS GEORGES author of The Dear Remote Nearness of YouSolstice Consulting Poetry Editor Interviewed by Ben BermanSolstice Poetry Editor   Ben: Many years ago, when I was teaching high school in Hyde Park, you visited my class as a guest speaker, and I remember being struck by how immediately you connected with my students

With Prohibition on the horizon
and the demand for rum about to take off
no one could convince the supervisor

Say someone dies and leaves an envelope

buried in her underwear drawer, sealed

Whenever Marwizi would put down his beer and start winking at those heavy-set ladies of the night, I’d try to slip him a condom before he slipped to the back of the bar. Who has the time? he’d say. I’m practically on fire. The closest my loins ever came to . . .

When, as guests of honor in Vietnam,

we were served dog penis and the testicles

sat on our plates like Venn Diagrams . . .