Guest Post, by Luca Dipierro: A Sentence About a Sentence I Love

“I wished so hard my father would die, but he just wouldn’t.”

–From Harold Brodkey’s “The State of Grace” in First Love and Other Sorrows

I wish so hard that I could write a sentence like this, but I just can’t.

Luca Dipierro is a visual artist, writer, and filmmaker living in North Carolina.

John Madera is the author of Nervosities (Anti-Oedipus Press, 2024) and Nomad Science (Spuyten Duyvil Press, forthcoming in 2026). His fiction is also published in Conjunctions, Salt Hill, Hobart, The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and many other journals. His poetry is also published in elimae, Sixth Finch, Contrapuntos, and elsewhere. His criticism is published in American Book Review, Bookforum, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Rain Taxi: Review of Books, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other venues. Recipient of an M.F.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University, two-time New York State Council on the Arts awardee John Madera lives in New York City, where he runs Rhizomatic and manages and edits Big Other.

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