Yusef Komunyakaa was born in rural Louisiana, the son of a carpenter. His numerous poetry collections include Dien Cai Dau, a stark portrayal of the Vietnam War, for which he served as a correspondent; Neon Vernacular, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the Pulitzer Prize; and Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth: New and Selected Poems 2001–2021 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021). His honors include the Wallace Stevens Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and the William Faulkner Prize. Komunyakaa earned an MFA from the University of California–Irvine and is a senior faculty member in the New York University Creative Writing Program.

Laren McClung is the author of the poetry collection Between Here and Monkey Mountain and coeditor of the anthology Inheriting the War: Poetry and Prose by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees. She served as the fortieth poet laureate of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and teaches at New York University

From Trading Riffs to Slay Monsters

by Yusef Komunyakaa and Laren McClung

At the start of the pandemic Yusef sent Laren three tercets—nine lines—and asked her to add nine lines and send it back. They have been exchanging in this way throughout this time. In this excerpt the first three tercets are Yusef’s, the next three are Laren’s, and so on.

Our self-isolation isn’t like an outback
farm I read about by Judith Wright.
I remember the mom & dad were dead,

two young children left there, growing
into themselves, & the forever stockman
seemed aboriginal, a hard worker, going

hectare by hectare, day & night, becoming
merely the landscape. The brother & sister,
did they cook saucy victuals & waltz to 78s?
People on couch
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