At Length

literature that looks good on a laptop

Adam Tavel

  • The Devouring
    The Devouring

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    “[H}e has outlived // everything but the taste / of his sons’ hair when gently / he kisses them incessantly // at the altar of their sleep.” In a new poem from Adam Tavel, Goya’s savage image of Saturn inhales decades of violence.

  • Until The Beast Was Slain
    Until The Beast Was Slain

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    “repurposed      rubble erect / for these     dirt counties’ / mad whelps     reluctantly / the pity funds     trickle.” Adam Tavel reconstructs the horrors of the Wicomico County Almshouse, twice obscured.

  • Where His Lines Run

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    Starting from a six-sentence obituary that ran in 1855, Adam Tavel crafts a riveting sequence of letters and monologues invoking suicide, infidelity, race, and the “bent trumpet of grief” that echoes over generations.