Volume 66.1 Fall 2016
tangles of memory the world exhales and superheroes make us feel inadequate
The Carolina Quarterly Poetry | Fiction | Art | Essays Reviews
Founded in 1948 P U B L I S H E D AT T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N O RT H C A R O L I N A – C H A P E L H I L L
Fall 2016
V O L U M E 6 6.1
E D I TO R- I N - C H I E F
Moira Marquis F I C T I O N E DI TO RS
Rae Yan Laura Broom P O E T RY E DI TO RS
Sarah George-Waterfield Calvin Olsen N O N - F I C T I O N E D ITO R
Travis Alexander B O O K RE V I E W E D ITO R S
Ashley Werlinich Anne Fertig C OV E R DE SI G N
Tyler Harris
M ORE O N L I N E AT
www.thecarolinaquarterly.com
SUBSCRIPTIONS
ON THE COVER
The Carolina Quarterly is published three times per
Jenna’s First
year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
WILLIAM PAUL THOMAS
Subscription rates are $24 per year to individuals and $30 to institutions.
STAFF Aisha Anwar
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Current single issues, recent back issues, and sample
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copies are $9 each. Historic back issues (before 2008) are
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available for $5 each. Issues can be purchased on our website through PayPal, or by money order or check payable in U.S. funds.
SUBMISSIONS The Carolina Quarterly welcomes submissions of
Joel Pinckney
FICTION READERS Mallory Findlay Kenneth Lota
unpublished fiction, poetry, non-fiction, book reviews,
Lauren Pinkerton
and visual art. Manuscripts and editorial or business
Anneke Schwob
correspondence should be addressed to the appropriate genre editor at Carolina Quarterly, Greenlaw Hall
POETRY READERS
CB #3520, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
Ma!hew Hotham
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manuscripts submi!ed during the rest of the year,,
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please allow four to six months for response.
INDEXING The Carolina Quarterly is indexed in the Book Review Index, Poem Finder, Index to Periodical Fiction, American Humanities Index, and the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature. Member Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. ISSN 0008-6797. Library of Congress catalogue card number 52019435.
Contents
Fa l l 2 0 1 6 | V O LU M E 6 6.1
FICTION RYAN BURRUSS Subway Passenger #12 14 INGRID KEENAN A Perfect Night 30 DENNIS MCFADDEN Dancing O’Hanlon 84
POETRY GILLIAN CUMMINGS Palette Unpainted in Her Thick Bark 9
Beech, Birch, Buckthorn 10 SCOT T T. HUTCHISON
One-Leg Crow 11
ARDEN LEVINE Today I will clean out his damn car 12 JACOB GRIFFIN HALL
Considering the Steps Between 13
ALEXIS ORGERA TOPSY 40
A VERSION OF CONCAVITY 42 WHERE ONCE A SATURNALIA FLOODED IN ME 43 EMILY NASON Poem for Boy at Reenactment at the Battle of Darbyton
Road, 60 First Night of the Reenactment of the Battle of Honey Hill 62 JOHN A . NIEVES Runoff 81
Failsafe 82 WILLIAM BREWER
THE MESSENGER OF OXYANA 106
TO THE MAN I MUGGED IN OXYANA, WE ARE 108 RELAPSE AS MENAGERIE AND SONG 110 BRIT TANY SCOT T A Jungian View 124 CHELSEA DINGMAN
Clan of Fatherless Children 125
Hands, I’ve Had 126
NONFICTION JACQUELINE KOLOSOV Enclosures, London’s Gardens 44 ABIGAIL JOHNSON What Mary Learned 112
ART WILLIAM PAUL THOMAS
Artist’s Statement 64 Untitled (Brittany & Dason) 65 This Woman 66 Some Mexican Dude 67 She Bad 68 To Stephen 69 More or Less 70 My Hitta 72 Paul Magee as Eddie Byrd 73 Study of Tre’ 74 Study of Theodore 75 Evie’s Last 76 Manali’s Dad 77 Almost 78 No Collar 79
REVIEWS ANNEKE SCHWOB Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine, Fine by Diane
Williams 128 DOREEN THIERAUF Square Wave by Mark de Silva 130
Karen folded her arms over her giant belly, fatale trumping the femme, nature trumping it all. “I can’t help if you can’t hold your own.” “Nice. And I didn’t ‘walk out on you.’ I went up to the roof to get some air. Is that allowed?” “Right. Because I’m such a monster that I stifle you, Dennis. I extinguish your flame. That’s why you haven’t sold a book in two years.” “Why do you need me when you fill in all your own blanks?” It was a question that wasn’t a question at all, a shot fired. I gri!ed my teeth; I was always defensive because I always had to be defensive. The whites of Karen’s eyes flashed like pearls in high noon’s light, swallowed her pupils whole, took over her stare. Her face shivered just below the surface, brigades regrouped. “What?” All semblance of Georgia was gone; this was a confederacy a#er Sherman, a#er fire and pillage, this mother-to-be’s voice all righteous indignation and starvation. The word—more a groan—developed deep in her diaphragm, somewhere beside the baby, grew exponentially in her esophagus, exploded under the moon like a dirty bomb. Every rebel in Karen became uncorked, every fear. “I am not a monster!” she bellowed, the firm roundness of her middle giving her skinny limbs some grounding, like a cannon. “I am carrying your child! How could you say that? What kind of man are you? You . . . you . . . don’t pin it on me! No, don’t turn it around on me,” she seethed, turning it around on me. I knew she needed me to fight back, needed a bold adversary, a villain. I knew she would love me forever, in some fashion alien to me, but no less real, if I would just strike back. I tensed for just a moment, and caught just a small hitch in her breath, a tiny thrust of her belly to me—presenting it, a him, a her—but my resolve wilted, poisoned by a guilt that I shouldn’t be here, that I still didn’t know what it was I was supposed to be to her. I couldn’t chase the bandaged, childish sort of nobility I still kept, the warm womblike blur the vodka kissed over my dreams. We couldn’t both be the hero; that’s not how the stories go. I drank and watched her scream at me until she wore herself out, collapsed into tears more like condensation than sadness. I held her, not because either of us wanted me to, but because neither of us knew RYA N B U R R U S S
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of anything else le# for me to do. Once she had stopped shaking, we gingerly walked back to the stairwell, blue like a prequel to Picasso’s refugees. I le# my glass on the ledge; maybe the Revenger would swing by again, heading to another rescue, or back home a#er a long night. Maybe he would need a li!le something to take the edge off, too. In the morning, Karen and I, a pair of deuces, acted as if the night had never happened. We never apologized, the unspoken rule that could never be broken, lest it undo everything: Never say you’re sorry, because it only cements you did something wrong. It only gives the other footing. ———— A few weeks later, I was on the subway, heading back from another interview downtown; we were ge!ing into code red territory, or so I was told. I still had some residuals coming in here and there, small stuff, Band-Aids, and there was still a li!le in savings, but my optimism was becoming flimsy even to me, a sketch of a bird on a crumpled napkin. Karen never argued about money, not directly, but it was the black river coursing below everything else, salty, buoyant, carrying all the other baggage to the surface. And it was hard to argue against; I figured bringing more in might trick one of us into being happy, and that would be one more than we were currently working with. Such were the skirmishes and surrenders that put me on the subway that day, department store tie wrapped around my neck. It turned out to be the train that jumped the tracks, the one you certainly read about, the one from which that picture came. Of course, it didn’t so much jump the tracks as it was blown from the tracks. It was bad, as bad as you can imagine (as bad as many did imagine, apparently, as I’ve met more people who have claimed to be on that train than there was ever room for)—but it could have been much worse. It should have been much worse. He saved all our lives that day. I’m grateful, in a way, but that part of the story’s already been told a thousand times. It was in all the papers, on the TV, that picture, the
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Internet. Jesus, the Internet: My birth mother in Jackson Hole spo!ed me on YouTube two time zones away before I even had a chance to call and tell her I was okay, that she even had a reason to believe I might not have been okay in the first place. That was the middle of July. Ho!est one on record, just like the last. Underground and ra!ling, though, everyone on the train looked pasty and cold. I looked around at the other passengers, no one smiling, everyone hunched, curled over themselves. I remember an article or a book, or an article summarizing a book, making it fun-sized, where the author explained that everything—planets, gravity, ma!er, the celestial works—was slowly, over the next few billion years, heading toward equilibrium. That’s what the other people on the subway car looked like: Equilibrium. Inertia. Riders on the Styx, either coming or going, already dead, perhaps forgo!en on the boat. I remember eyeing my hands, the skin of them in the fake light, and wondering if the trip was worth the trip. And then I imagined I was just being a young, idealistic prick, this just being the way things were. That’s about when the Revenger came crashing in, startling me, sha!ering the emergency exit door. Safety glass rained over the pissstained industrial carpet. Lamp black from head to metal toe—except for that shock of red—he carried a bundle under his arm, ran down the aisle toward the back of the subway car, quick but calm. I don’t know how anybody can double-time it like that and still look ambivalent— but he pulled it off, set us at something close to ease. We didn’t know it at the time—we didn’t know anything, and people usually smudge that part, that the end was not yet defined at the time—but he had a live bomb under his arm. Ambivalent or not, though, there was something happening in the eyes. I got to look right into his eyes. They danced, but didn’t, like a formal waltz. Maybe that’s what I’m saying: He was measured, but he was also turned on. Like he was feeding on it. “Stay put, folks,” he said, or something paternal like that, and he didn’t need to tell us twice. He kicked his way into the subsequent car. We stuck with the staying put. RYA N B U R R U S S
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A few moments later, the other one bustled in, the Harlequin, the psychopath who always wore fedoras over the creepy, smiling wax mask; he had his gun out, waved it at us. “Where is he?” he shouted, his voice deeper than I expected it to be, each syllable punctuated with his pistol. A woman screamed like she was trying out for a Corman flick. Another man—I recall an unfortunate moustache—pointed toward the rear car, and then slowly retracted his hand, realizing what he’d done. I’m sure Wax-face would have figured it out anyway, but still, the man blushed, then lost all color altogether, horrified, doomed to repeat that moment, there was no doubt, for as long as he lived. He might as well have been his own crystal ball. I understand the science, that alcoholism is genetic, that those who keep the allergy are born that way. Some, though, I’m sure—I know—are made. I saw one earn his wings on the train that day. An explosion rocked us out of our seats. Everybody screamed, except it wasn’t a scream, but a primal banshee screech, the vocal equivalent of shi!ing your pants. Even the psycho killer was floored—his pistol flew from his hand, hit a wall, fired a shot into some college kid’s leg. He was in the city on summer break with his family, the papers later revealed, but I don’t remember from where. The story is ubiquitous now—the Harlequin had planted a package of plastic explosives on a subway train that day, our subway train; the Revenger had caught him in the act, but before our hero could defuse the explosive, the villain hit a bu!on, sped up the detonator’s clock. (Why didn’t he just detonate it and kill us all? That one has never been adequately explained—and probably won’t be, since the asylum escape—but I’ve always thought that somewhere along the way, when the terrorism moved from murder to a suicide mission, the psychopath with the translucent, cartoon grin got cold feet, got a li!le whiff of the reek of real pain, hesitated at the ledge.) All the Revenger could do was tuck the package like a football and dash to the rear of the last car. The investigation determined it exploded in mid-air out in the tunnel, where he’d hurled it—it didn’t blow us up, but the force was enough to knock the last three cars off the track, and we cla!ered against the tunnel walls until the driver and gravity could finally bring the whole calamity to a halt.
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We didn’t know any of that, though; we just knew two costumes had come barreling through our commuter pity party, and now we were banging against the inside of the car, pinballs in the dark. Everything was shadow a quarter mile underground, and we careened into each other—knocking out teeth, cracking kneecaps—as the car smashed its way to inevitable inertia. Equilibrium. Everything was so still for a moment that you could hear the heartbeats racing. Or maybe just your own, so fast and off its own tracks that you imagined it included someone else around you, a human symphony. Then there were some sighs, some exhalations, some we’re-not-deads, some gentle weeping, the way that people who are really hurting weep. The emergency lights kicked on overhead, 45 degrees off-center, flickering whispers, enough to make out bodies that were starting to slowly, painfully move. We were mostly upright, but the le# side of the car was jacked up a few feet over the right. From where I sat or stood, somewhere in between, I remembered the Harlequin, that he was in the car and probably one of those bodies rustling around. My shoulder was on fire. I had landed in a seat, sortof, sprawled out across a padded bench like I didn’t have a care in the world, relaxing under flickering emergency lights and spider webs of cracked safety glass. I glanced around for the fedora, the waxy smile. Across the aisle, down in the corner that formed where the floor met the opposite wall, I gleaned the outline of something with hard, square ends, something that didn’t fit the line of the wall, that interrupted the clean edge. The gun. I was staring at the Harlequin’s fucking gun. I watched it, realized I was being watched myself. The waxy mask was beaming at me, a small tear of blood beneath it, along the curve of the neck. We formed a perfect equilateral triangle—the Harlequin balancing himself in the aisle, me across the seats, and the gun, handle up, coyly tempting us both. I felt sick. I knew my legs worked, but I couldn’t get them to move. My mind filled up with thoughts I had no control over: I thought of myself as a li!le boy when I would wet the bed, wake up in the dark warm and embarrassed. The look on my dad’s face when I’d have to tell him the next morning, when he realized that I had slept all night RYA N B U R R U S S
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in its chill. I thought of my stepmother’s threat to make me sleep in the dog bed, and how it never came to pass. I thought of the fault line that formed over Karen’s brow when she started to ramp herself up. I thought about bedding her, the way she would scrape all the magnolia she could muster when she wanted me to beg. I thought of my unborn child, imagining it a boy, then a girl. I thought of the job interview and how I choked on the question about what three things I most needed to improve on (that is the brain-fuck one, the one where they shuffle papers during your answer). I thought of what it might feel like to get shot in the face. I pictured what I looked like with a giant hole in my forehead. I thought about the kid again, the boy, the girl. I thought about how I had to stand up, stand up right now, throw myself on the gun. I thought about how it was right fucking there. I thought about how the guy in the creepy fucking mask was slowly walking over to it, and how he was fucking up our perfect fucking equilateral triangle. I thought I might die. I thought of those pros and cons. I thought and thought and thought and couldn’t fucking move. I thought of the guy with the unfortunate moustache, the way his hand retracted, slow, slower than slow, back and to the le#, a low-rent Zapruder film. The Harlequin calmly made his way toward me. He stopped, looked at the gun, then at me. “Good boy,” he snarled, and I vomited. I puked right there, the whole jumble of shit in me escaping out of my mouth. It shot right next to him, spla!ering all over the far wall, the floor, the gun. His shoulders dropped in disgust and he turned to grab me. I could taste the partly digested filth on my lips, the acid from the middle of me. I was embarrassed about my breath. I didn’t want to die with that on my breath. A shadow leapt past—the Revenger. One freak barreled into the other, knocking the fedora clean off. I stood-sat there, and watched the man-shaped storm pummel the Harlequin. I remember him smiling, but that can’t be right; he wore a mask. Moments later, the Revenger stood over the broken smile, fists still balled. Passengers started taking pictures with their iPhones. And that’s when it happened, that iconic moment when he trumped
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them all, grabbed a smartphone from one of the saved and took the selfie to end all selfies, the one that would land on the front page of every news site that a#ernoon, some variation of “Say ‘Cheese’” or other likewise uninspired headline framing the shot, the Revenger’s eyes burning in the foreground, the unconscious Harlequin grinning like an idiot in the back. Still, even then, I hardly moved. I didn’t even pull out my phone, get a picture to prove I was there. I only had the presence of mind to feel my crotch, make sure it was dry, make sure I had at least been able to manage that. Before he disappeared into the tunnel, the Revenger asked if I was okay. I told him I thought I had dislocated my shoulder. He said I’d be fine, that I should just pop it back in place. I could see up close that he wasn’t any older than me, yet he saved me like I was some damsel in distress. I was the B-movie queen. He was my daddy. I looked at him and I hated myself, and I hated him, and I hated myself for hating him. He walked away and the hate passed, but it le# something behind, a stain, a scratch. The first responders came and pulled us all out of the train car, then the tunnel. Topside, the cops took our statements. I told the uniform about everything except the puking and the gun. I figured they’d find the gun on their own, and if they wanted to trace the puke, then Godspeed. I was never asked about either, though. I told the guy my full name, Dennis Alexander Potowski, which he wrote as “Dan Patusky,” and beneath it, “Subway Passenger 12.” I said it was Dennis, or even Denny, and he nodded and smiled and said okay, but I never saw him fix it. That night, I came home to Karen worrying over me. I told her I was fine and pieces of the story, poured the drinks neat. I picked a fight until I could feel my heart pound and I made her cry. I went up to the roof and passed out, woke up to a relentless morning sun. ———— It wasn’t like on TV, or in the movies. There wasn’t a slapstick rush to the hospital, or an edge-of-the-seat, hairpin-turn taxicab birth. RYA N B U R R U S S
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Karen’s water never even broke; she had to be induced, and then we sat in the li!le room and waited. We watched Family Feud, then the evening news. It was at the time the Rifleman was picking people off all over the city, everybody frightened by the randomness of it, as if anything were anything but. If you think about it, cancer, like sniper fire, can be predetermined or random. Being ugly is random. Nothing really goes according to plan. But the immediacy, I figured, the violent immediacy of someone like the Rifleman, makes a difference in the perception of the many. I mean, one minute you’re pumping gas into your Smart car craving Cheetos, and the next minute you take a single tap to the temple from 200 yards. Finit. No good-byes. I couldn’t decide if such a fate would be horrible or perfect. Probably both. The bobbleheads anchoring the news drummed up the tension as much as they could, fame and glory pulling at their unblinking eyes, and every report was filed as “breaking news.” I can’t remember exactly when regular news became insufficient, or when breaking it became a mandatory marketing strategy, but even the fact that there was no news to report managed to land itself a breaking news header during this period. I looked over at Karen, who had gone quiet, gri!ing her teeth; the contractions were kicking in, the real pain had begun. I stood up, adjusted my waistband, cracked my neck. I went out and called for a nurse, who called for the anesthesiologist, who brought the epidural. Clockwork. It’s like they had done this a thousand times before, and we were nothing special, either way—which is comforting on some level, but still demoralizing. Nobody wants to be nothing special, even when the upside is that everything is going according to plan, when the alternative is chaos, tragedy, a mess. An older nurse strolled in, gave Karen a once-over, announced it was time to get down to business. My son was born at 7:59 p.m. on a hot August Tuesday night. Neither of us had any family around, so when they rolled Karen into the room we were to share with another new family, I flipped on the TV.
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Another news wave had broken; the sniper had struck again, this time downtown. More importantly, one anchor sighed, her chest heaving like a flapper on the tracks, the Revenger was hot on his trail. Sirens blared through the night, same as every night, all night, the city’s lullaby. This, though, felt different, as if the sound was coagulating, bearing down on the three (where yesterday, there had been two) of us. I went to the window, pulled the shades across. “What are you doing?” The meds were wearing off. “Do you hear that?” “We’re in the Village. I always hear that—I can’t get away from hearing that.” The baby had begun to wiggle, to cry. “I think he needs a diaper change.” “I think he’s hungry,” I said without turning. Irritation building: “Well, then I will feed him a#er you change his diaper.” “There’s something going on out there. It’s coming this way.” Karen pointed to the baby’s diaper. “Well, there’s something going on in here. And it’s coming your way.” I took the baby from her. He grew tense in my tense hands, shook like something older than he could possibly be. I took him to the changing table against the far wall. “An hour into being a father and you’re already dropping the ball.” I turned to her and she just stared ahead, not particularly at me, not particularly away, Buddha-like. Her most biting insults were the ones delivered cold, a teacher reciting a lesson. She would glow just a li!le, something like a winter’s moonlight, as if ascensions came from knocking things down. I wiped another human being’s ass for the first time in my life. It was not as awful as I assumed it would be. The boy at least seemed appreciative, though I knew he was too young for that to be even remotely true. You hold on to whatever you can, though, when you can, and I wrapped my son—my son, my son—in a hospital-issue blanket, held him close, smelled him, rocked him to the window. I glanced down at the baby, and then up to the huge city beyond him, all its transient victories. I looked at our reflection in the window, RYA N B U R R U S S
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something faint, out of focus, easily lost—two where there had been one, none where there had been two. Squint and you can see this man and this boy; again, and all you see are the right angles of office buildings, the piss-colored headlights of cars inching along four stories below. A world of people trying to go somewhere else. The child opened his eyes, just for a moment, fought the gravity of his face, the exhaustion from his ordeal, saw where he had landed, regarded this strange creature before him. What did he see? What did he see with those cloudless blue pools? His father? A hero? A vigilante? A terrorist? I tried to catch our reflection again, but something flu!ered outside. A figure darted across a roo#op opposite. I saw it. I saw him—a quicksilver shadow. I looked down at the boy, eyes now closed, asleep. I rushed to Karen’s bedside, where she also had started to doze. “I need you to take him.” “Wha . . . what?” “I need you to take the baby.” “I’m sleeping.” “Karen, take the baby.” I plopped him on her chest, gently. “Jesus fucking Christ!” she screamed, waking the newborn, who began to cry, immediately joined by the one on the other side of the curtain. I heard a deflated voice curse us in Spanish. “You really are worth—,” Karen started—she stopped when I pulled the pistol from my waistband, stopped in mid-breath, staring at the gun, the metal dancing in the fluorescent hospital glow. “What are you doing?” Georgia was burning, and the undercoat of her anger, the sadness, so#ened her voice, blurred it. “Oh, God.” “Take the baby.” “You have a gun.” I looked at her, nodded. “I do,” I said, felt a shiver in my chest, felt myself blush. I looked at my son, his eyes closed tight, wondered what he saw behind them, what he had already seen. I brandished the weapon all the way down the hall. Nurses and obstetricians screamed, ducked into rooms both empty and full. “Stairs!”
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This Woman
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Some Mexican Dude
W I L L I A M PAU L T H O M A S
67
She Bad
68
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To Stephen
W I L L I A M PAU L T H O M A S
69
More or Less
70
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W I L L I A M PAU L T H O M A S
71
My Hi!a
72
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Paul Magee as Eddie Byrd
W I L L I A M PAU L T H O M A S
73
Study of Tre’
74
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Study of Theodore
W I L L I A M PAU L T H O M A S
75
Evie’s Last
Evie’s Last
76
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Manali’s Dad
W I L L I A M PAU L T H O M A S
77
Almost
78
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No Collar
W I L L I A M PAU L T H O M A S
79
PUBLISHED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA- CHAPEL HILL
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The Carolina Quarterly
FEATURING
Scott T. Hutchison
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Emily Nason
John A. Nieves
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Volume 66.1
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Summer 2016
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