Just One Thing with Steven Espada Dawson

Dawson’s dog, Raya

Steven Espada Dawson’s August issue poem “A River is a Body Running” paints the tender horrors of addiction in vivid hues. Here he shares just one thing about the piece:

"The question ‘What is the difference between / a lake and a river?’ is completely reaI; but I didn't hear a paramedic ask my brother that. In an emergency room, after my mom suffered a concussion, the intake nurse asked her that—verbatim—to assess the severity of brain trauma. In my work, my mother and brother seem to have a strange, sometimes unexplainable connection, so it felt like the right addition. The extra phrase also pushed the poem to 14 lines, making it loosely a sonnet. Some say sonnets are the ‘form of both love and war.’ I think familial addiction can feel a lot like both of those things.”