We recently published Chloe N. Clark’s gorgeous “Other Skins.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story.

 

1) That dismissive moment with the doctor is so small and so accurate — is that an experience you’ve had yourself, that moment where the doctor thinks they know more about your body than you do?

I’ve spent a lot of times in hospitals and at doctor’s offices, throughout my life, and I can say that those kind of moments are far too often. I actually have a lot of ideas about how doctors should need to take specialized communication courses and what those would look like (because as a teacher, my teaching mind never sleeps). For people who question whether doctor’s dismissive attitudes, especially towards women-identifying and nonbinary people, are that prevalent — they should check out Doing Harm by Maya Dusenbery.

2) Your voice as a poet always seeps into your fiction, creating these lovely melodic lines and imagery. How does your fiction writing inform your poetry?

First thank you for that compliment 🙂 Second, I often get called a prose-y poet–so I think it seeps in there a lot. I like simple language in poetry and a clear sense of plot–abstraction has never worked for my brain. So I think poetry and fiction for me are often just different spectrums on the same wavelength.