The young performance artist carefully opens the envelope from Hong Kong with her green—dark green, forest green—fingernails. Perfect color, perfect application. Her thin wrist is tattooed with a band that looks like a beaded bracelet my daughter would carelessly wear and lose. The artist moves her hands as if they were leaves on branches. The green so vibrant a small sparrow would be forgiven to mistake her for a tree. Meanwhile, the letter in the envelope waits: its words mixed with the scent of dusk and birdsong.

—From a manuscript-in-progress, Fragments from the New World

Linda Nemec Foster

is the author of nine poetry collections, including the critically acclaimed books Amber Necklace from Gdansk (Louisiana State University Press, 2001) and Talking Diamonds (New Issues Press, 2009). She has two forthcoming collections: a chapbook, The Elusive Heroine: My Daughter Lost in Magritte (Cervena Barva Press, 2017), and a full-length book, The Lake Michigan Mermaid (Wayne State University Press, 2018).

Her poems have appeared in more than 350 magazines and journals such as The Georgia Review, Nimrod, North American Review, New American Writing, Quarterly West, and Witness. Her work has also been published in anthologies in the U.S. and Great Britain, translated in Europe, exhibited in museums and galleries, set to music, produced for the stage, nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and honored by the Arts Foundation of Michigan, ArtServe Michigan, the National Writer’s Voice, and the Academy of American Poets.

Foster is the founder of the Contemporary Writers Series at Aquinas College, and from 2003-2005, she served as the first Poet Laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 2015, she was honored by the Dyer-Ives Foundation for her poetry and advocacy of the literary arts in Michigan.

Expanded bio at poet’s website

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ The Talent of Knowing in Duende (Issue 2, Spring 2015)

⚡ Two Poems, “Mount Fuji” and “The Dead,” in Streetlight Magazine (23 December 2016)