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RANGI MCNEIL

5 articles published

AN IRREGULAR ODE

AN IRREGULAR ODE Thirty days shy of forty, on a rush-hour-crowded Coney-Island-bound F train, I questioned the exact circumference of the sandy circle in which the Children of Israel wandered for forty years. Forty years. Were desert environs so sundry as to provide a passable facsimile of farther & farther? Of progress rather than round…

ByRANGI MCNEILFebruary 10, 20240Comments

ARSENAL

ARSENAL Yesterday was beautiful; today is thick & stagnant: hurricanes threaten communities from Kitty Hawk to Nantucket – all low-lying areas are evacuated. I seek alternatives (routes & pathways previously discredited) & I understand the efficacy of Harriet Tubman’s oft-brandished pearl-handled pistol: you go on or you die, she promised, every wavering runaway slave committed to…

ByRANGI MCNEILFebruary 10, 20240Comments

BIRDS ARE NOT THE ONLY MUSIC

BIRDS ARE NOT THE ONLY MUSIC A name, if not heavy, still of a certain heft, but less jagged than affection: a suitable anchor for this good earth. Its freight & pestilence (with promise’s promises intermixed): Josephine, Blondena, Ola-Bell, Herbert, Rufus. Borne in indefinite directions, all. ... Rangi McNeil is a native of Laurinburg, North…

ByRANGI MCNEILFebruary 9, 20240Comments

A FIELD GUIDE TO THE UNEXPECTED

How could I mistake the scent of anxious-approaching-angry skunk for that of cheap marijuana? A scent I called skunk weed, but Vida says that term is reserved for the good shit. And rules are rules (like carpe diem or don’t write checks with your mouth that your ass can’t cash.) The future differs from all…

ByRANGI MCNEILFebruary 9, 20240Comments

My Poems Bear The Weight And Suffer The Limitations Of My Experiences: An Interview With Rangi McNeil

MY POEMS BEAR THE WEIGHT AND SUFFER THE LIMITATIONS OF MY EXPERIENCES Qalandar Bux Memon: Your poems often evoke death and also aging - which we might say is a movement towards death - it seems the scent of death lingers in your poems. Why. And, then, can I ask, is, for you, live a means…

ByRANGI MCNEILFebruary 9, 20240Comments