Loisa Fenichell

Pine Row Issue No. 2 Autumn 2020 - Featured Poet

Greeting Card


Hello, earth, I have met you. You have lurched me

forward. You have rocks over which I have stepped

& canoes in which I have floated like playing the blues

in Heaven. In the future I will find myself underneath

a gravestone. I will own a cemetery. No, I will be

cremated, in the future. On first dates, I do not try

to be morbid. I drink water. I bore. On one bad date

it was 11pm at the Chipotle, the guacamole turned

rotten as an old dwelling. There are some who say

that boredom provides comfort, but I still hate you,

boredom, who speaks to me at night just prior to the ritual

that is brushing my teeth, or praying to God that my name

will turn to Alice instead, like my first doll, whose arm fell

off in an airport in Jamaica. Hello again, earth. I am Loisa.

I am wondering if this is what it means to be of service:

to repeat motifs until the weather turns back to bruise.


Interview with Loisa Fenichell

by Kathleen Harsy, Pine Row Editorial Board

What inspired Greeting Card?

A prompt, actually, given to me during a workshop led by Alex Dimitrov! The prompt was to use my own name in a poem, so that's what I did with Greeting Card...

Do you ask particular people to be the first readers of your work?

Yes! Well, actually, now I'm an MFA candidate at Saint Mary's College of California, so I suppose some of my first readers are now generally classmates. But I have some close friends -- they know who they are! -- I turn to frequently as well...

What is your favorite poem written by another poet?

Gosh, so difficult to choose! Right now, I'm reading a prose-poetry book called "Bough Down," by Karen Green, and it's so, so lovely. I adore "Zuihitsu" by Jenny Xie as well.

Any advice from another writer that really changed how you approach your own writing?

First piece of poetry advice, from my mom! "Poetry is not necessarily about saying something new, but about working to say something in a new way."

What living or dead authors would you invite over for dinner and why?

Hmm, can I say Virginia Woolf? No real reason, other than that I love The Waves. Also the friends I have who write poetry (come over for dinner!)!


//end

Loisa Fenichell holds a BA from SUNY Purchase College, where she studied Creative Writing and Literature. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in various publications, such as Winter Tangerine Review, The Rising Phoenix Review, Porridge Magazine, and The Nervous Breakdown. Her debut collection, ‘all these urban fields,’ was published July of 2019 by nothing to say press.