“Svoboda’s poems are as haunting as they are funny, as pleasurable as they are powerful,” wrote Publisher’s Weekly about Terese Svoboda’s Weapons Grade, published last year by U. of Arkansas Press. Her fifth book of poetry, it contains poems that appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, Paris Review, New Yorker, and Tin House. After an interview and a look at her writing space, we’re pleased to present Svoboda’s poem “Pink,” originally published in The New Yorker on October 30, 1989, on Fictionaut. Here is the author’s introduction:

I wrote this after my husband returned from a gig as assistant director working with Lindsay Anderson who directed a movie about the first rock and roll band to visit China–WHAM, in fact. Then I waited nearly six years to figure out what the last line was.

Line Breaks is a regular feature in which accomplished authors introduce and share their first published stories with the Fictionaut community. Line Breaks is edited by Gary Percesepe. You can read “Pink” on Fictionaut.


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