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      May 4, 2023FightJohn W. Evans

      Pick up, I said, and talk to me, you said, come
      home and talk to me, I said, not until we can talk, you said,
      what, I said, like fucking human beings, you said, I won’t talk
      to you, I said, until you come home, you said, I won’t call back,
      I said, then don’t, you said, I can’t come home until
      we talk, you said, who does this, I said, talk to me, I
      said, no one does this, you said, someone is doing it, you said,
      right now, you said, people don’t, you said, act like this, I said, I’m
      trying to talk to you, I said, just come home, I
      said, can’t we talk, you said, come home
      first, I said, I left home, you said, so we can talk,
      you said, no one talks, you said, not like this, I said, just
      talk to me, I said, I am, I said, talking to you, you
      said, what did I just say, I said, it matters how you say it,
      you said, this is how I said it, I said, pick up, you said, come home.

      from The Fight Journal

      John W. Evans

      “I wrote the poems in The Fight Journal to make sense of an experience about which I felt strongly biased: my divorce. I wanted to recognize the humanity of all involved on the page because this was something I struggled to do in real life. I hoped to find closure, healing, and an answer to two questions. Why had my marriage failed? How had I been complicit in that failure? Adrienne Rich’s ‘From An Old House in America’ was the formal model for the long title poem. Marta Tikkanen’s ‘The Love Story of the Century’ was a precedent for writing about these dynamics. Both poems are personal favorites.”

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