Carolina Quarterly 61.3

THE

CAROLINA QUARTERLY

W I N T E R 2 0 1 1 I S S U E | V OL. 6 1 , N O. 3

P O E T RY | F I C T I O N | E S S AYS | R E V I E W S

ABOVE | Amtrak Station, Raleigh, NC 1974 John Rosenthal COVER | Valle Cruce, NC 1979

O N L I N E AT

www.theca r o l i n a q u a r ter l y. co m

John Rosenthal

FICTION EDITORS

ASSISTANT EDITORS

POETRY EDITORS

Phil Sandick

Bhumi Dalia

Matthew Harvey

Lindsay Starck

Heather Van Wallendael

Lee Norton

NON-FICTION EDITOR

COVER DESIGN

WEB EDITOR

Nick Anderman

Philip McFee

Ted Scheinman

Matthew Hotham | E D I TO R- I N - C H I E F INTERNS: Shannon Beamon, Kirsten Chang, Madison Cumbee, Scott Davis, Hannah Dockery, Mandy Eidson, Kelsey Foster, Megan Harley, Jordan Hopson, Kristen Johnson, Alice Martin, Ben Miller, Livia Nelson, Peyton Riley, Kevin Rothenberg, Liana Roux, Rachel Shope, Brittany Spruill, Nathan Vail, and William Wright FICTION READERS: Laura Bennett, Kelsey Foster, Alice Martin, Livia Nelson, Madeline Raskulinecz, Jerrod Rosenbaum, Ben Thompson, Zachary Vernon, L. Lamar Wilson, and Nate Young POETRY READERS: Jasmine V. Bailey, Melissa Birkhofer, Katy Bowler, Taylor Burklew, Melissa Golding, and Rachel Kiel NON-FICTION READERS: Emily Banks, Kirsten Chang, Mandy Eidson, Jonathan Pattishall, and Brittany Spruill

FOUNDED IN 1948 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 PAEULTH HO I LRL N A M E

3

CONTENTS WINTER 2011 | VOL. 61, NO. 3

P O E T RY 9 NICOLE TEREZ DUTTON | Devoted

Girl #1 Girl #2 Fall 38 ARTHUR BROWN | The Pantheist

,}b µbq bµ 40 DAVID KUTZ-MARKS | Liberation Two

Rules for Arcadia 48 SAM PEREIRA | Assuming Halleluiah 69 MICHAEL BAZZETT | She 89 G.C. WALDREP | On the Miscibility of Planes

Red Admiral Adair Wind Project 96 LAUREN HILGER | Cucumber Gin

With My Pulling 110 HOPE COULTER | Breath 112 SEAN BISHOP | My Father, Former Attorney, Sings the Blues in

His Sleep Catalogue of Novembers Notes Toward a Basic Betterness

FICTION 17 ALYSSA KNICKERBOCKER | The Lives of Pioneers 50 WOODY SKINNER | The Knife Salesman 98 MEGAN MAYHEW BERGMAN | Night Hunting

NON-FICTION 7

JERALD WALKER | Men

70 ADRIANA PARAMO | The Limbless Boy of a Mayan Mother

REVIEWS 118 TRAVIS SMITH | Ennui Prophet

by Christopher Kennedy

A RT 6

ANDREW ABBOTT | Pen Go Ins

16 ANDREW ABBOTT | Yea 42 JOHN ROSENTHAL | North Carolina Series 66 BILLY LOPEZ | Three Comics 81 BILL MCALLISTER | Khmer Infrared Series 120 Contributors

Girl #1 Girl in clear, coal-hot squares of disco, the sudden pangs and minnowed light moving across, sloped as candle wax and allowing such octaves into the small thrum, her sternum, a Doppler resonance, pleading its maps. Listen, I am girl.

Here and here. Place me 8 bËb bµµ O ² ob YV ½ ½ O u ½}b µO²bb door thrown wide and night coming on like horses.

12

THE CAROLINA QUARTERLY

ANDREW ABBOTT

16

THE CAROLINA QUARTERLY

| Yea

A LYSSA K NICKER BOCKER

The Lives of Pioneers One year, two months, and four days after she ran away, Zoe is going home.

She’s wedged against the cold pane of the window on a bus rocket u ²½} ½ n +b8½½ bV ½b8² u  }b² o ub²µ É ½} }b² ½bb½}¢ +}b ²bµµbµ 8 o ub² 8 ½ }b² ½}V u²8Fµ ½}b O½ O bV Yb O8½b 8µ 8 O8½V 8 Y ² µ¢ The pain is hot and brief and satisfying, like scratching an itch.

Out the window: the soggy plains of the Skagit valley, a route she Y² Èb 8 Ë ½ bµ É ½} }b² n8½}b² u² É u  i8 É8˵ ½}b µ8 b q YbY ob YµV u²8µµbµ µ½8 Y u  ½ ½}b ² bO µ µ Èb²Ë É8½b²V F 8O µ } Âb½½bµ of cattle in the distance, against the mountains. This landscape should be as familiar to her as her own skin, but looking out the window she feels lost—a freak February snow has turned it into something unreadable.

The earth is white and the sky is white, everything the same, pale and q8½¢ ½ µ b Ë u 8 µ½²8 ub FbYV ½}b ½ µ}bb½ n½bY } u} 8F Èb Ë ÂV about to drift down to cover you.

Yesterday—Valentine’s Day, ha ha—she was married to her tall, dark, pierced, tattooed, rock-band boyfriend. Now Spencer’s head is on her knee, his lanky body folded double in the cramped seat. His hair is like the tail of a despondent rooster—a dark feathery faux-hawk that q µ n² b µ Yb ½ ½}b ½}b²¢ Ð ²bµµ Èb Y µO n µ8 È8 }8µ bY under his cheek, soaking warm and wet into her jeans, and his open mouth rocks against her. She can feel the softness of his lips, the hard infrastructure of his teeth and bones beneath. This is the body she will cherish, the house of the soul she has professed to love. ² ½}b Ob²b Ë µ}b É ²b O}bO b²bY Èb²µb µ b8 b²µV oµ} b½ stockings, and a strapless white minidress. They were married in a pub.

Like some kind of joke, the pub owners had gotten a justice of the peace to come in for the day, and there was a sign-up sheet if you wanted him to marry you. But it wasn’t a joke; it was real. Zoe and Spencer stood in line behind other giddy, giggling couples who had no fucking clue what they were doing, and then it was actually happening—Zoe watched her A LYSS A K N I C K E R B O C K E R

17

own hand signing the paper and then Spencer was tipping her head back into his elbow and kissing her for too long in front of all the bar patrons, who cheered in a half-assed way, like people singing “Happy Birthday” to strangers in a restaurant.

8½b² ½}bË 8Ë 8 bY } µ FbYV 8 8½½²bµµ ½}b q ²V } µ ²b ½ed room in a huge, falling down house in Capitol Hill. There were so many other rooms and roommates, Zoe could never keep track of them all—it was like being in a hive, always aware of the other lives buzzing around you. Bass thumped through the wall from the room next door É} b + b Ob² b bY }b² É ½} ½É ub ½ b o ub²µ 8 Y ½ } µ } ½ ½ uÂb right there, which was startling and horribly intimate and almost hurt— b ½ ÂO} u 8 µO²8 b É ½} Ë Â² Y²ËV µ8 ½Ë o ub²¢ b bY }b² buµ open with his elbows, petting her pubic hair towards her belly, moaning against her ardently. He had insisted on doing this tonight—their wedding night—though usually she did not let him. He claimed to love it, but it embarrassed her; she felt spotlit, tense. He slid his tongue up and down and in tiny dexterous circles. She hid her face in the pillow, which had the pleasant, dowdy scent of unwashed hair, and reminded her of being carried by her mother.

She tried to relax, to focus on Spencer’s hands and mouth on her body—but a word throbbed in her mind: mistake, mistake, mistake. She wondered if everyone felt this way, after such a thing: holding a person’s hands in your own and promising to love him until you die, the whole ½ b É8½O} u ½}b ½} Âu}½µ q O b² } µ bËbµ b ou²bµ È u Fb} Y a closed curtain, and understanding right then that you will never really know him, that he will always be a stranger to you.

7 b ½Â² bY }b² }b8Yi ½}b É Y É É8µ }b² É ²bqbO½ V ½²8 µ 8²b ½ 8 Y u} µ½ Ë¢ b} Y ½}b q 8½ u È8 n }b² n8ObV ½ É8µ µ½8²½ u to snow.

Husband. It is a strange word, archaic and vaguely kinky. She’d µbY ½ n ² ½}b o²µ½ ½ b ½}8½ ² uV ½}b Èb ( ½µ b² É}b²b Ë Â could get spaghetti and meatballs for breakfast if you wanted, which she did. When the waitress appeared, sweet-faced and sweaty and destroyed, Spencer was in the bathroom.

18

THE CAROLINA QUARTERLY

Rules for Arcadia Treat people as though each were a small whorl of leaves.

As if there were a forge inside, man with bellows and hammer eking out shields to quilt the condemned shack of somebody’s body he lives in.

As though by the time they swing from rusted hooks, they are themselves gilt green by the green world’s breathing.

DAVI D K U TZ - M A R K S

41

JOHN ROSENTHAL

42

THE CAROLINA QUARTERLY

| Kill Devil Hills, NC 1984

WOODY SK INNER

The Knife Salesman Today is not a sales day. Here at Cutcorp, we’re interested in establishing long-term relationships; we’re interested in community. So every now and then, we host a “Cutters of the Future” day at a local elementary school. Today is one of those days.

I do my usual demonstration for the kids, the one with the rubber snakes and the tomatoes and the crash test dummy. I’m under strict contract obligations not to sell to anyone under the age of eighteen (part n ½O ² ¯µ µ8nb½Ë o²µ½ OË V F½ É}8½ }8 b µ Fb½Ébb O} Y²b 8 Y their parents is out of my control.

When I walk out of the school gymnasium, minivans curl around the parking lot. They’re waiting for me. Most of the parents already have the checks made out. I speak to each and every one of them about the responsibilities of Cutcorp knife ownership. I tell them that a Cutcorp nb É µ}²bY ½}² Âu} 8 Ë o ub² b ½ µ µ O u ½}² Âu} 8 µ uuË carrot. But when I hand over the knives, the parents toss them haphazardly in the backseat, into the arms of their screaming children.

It’s not uncommon for me to enchant parents with my passion for ½}b Éb Fb u n ½}b ² F² Yi½ Y8ËV oÈb ½}²bb ½}b²µV ½É n8½}b²µ 8O½Â8 Ë 8µ b Y8½bµ¢ b8 É} b ½}b ² O} Y²b 8²b ½²8 µoÊbY FË ½}b OË ²bqbO½ µ n ½}b ² n8Obµ ½}b F 8Ybµ¢ u}½ É ²²ËV }8Y ½ µ b ½ the last half-hour of the knife assembly talking about safety.

I’m a huge advocate of knife education for our country’s youth. I always say to parents: you can make sure your children brush their teeth twice a day, you can make sure they eat their green beans, you can make sure they’re dressed warm enough in the winter, but whatever you do, don’t hide the knives from them. Because one way or another—in the world we Èb i½} µb ²bO µV µ Ë ½½ b }8 Yµ É o Y ½}b ² É8Ë ½ 8 F 8Yb¢ I can take care of the cutting needs of just about everyone, from the gory, blood-spattering hacks of the local butcher to the delicate dices of pearl-necklaced housewives. I’ve worked for Cutcorp for seven years

50

THE CAROLINA QUARTERLY

now, and I’ve won the company’s national salesman of the year award for three years in a row. It hasn’t even been close. I sell what I want to who I want. I’ve sold butcher knives to blind nursing home patients. I’ve µ Y ob Y Y²bµµ u Èbµ ½ O8²Y É b Y u b Fb²µ n ( ,Т ¯Èb µ Y boxes of steak knives to vegans on the streets of San Francisco.

It hasn’t always been this way. I haven’t always possessed a prodigal talent with knives, with people. I started in the Whet Your Feet program as a knife sharpener and, upon graduating, began my apprenticeship under a Cutcorp legend, one Doc “wallet-shredder” Henderson. Doc FbO8 b n8 µ ½}b É ² Y n nb µ8 bµ n ² } µ oÈb ¯O O µ}8Y É trick—he’d scrape Cutcorp blades down his bristled cheeks, shave himself in clients’ living rooms, the black wool of his face wafting down to the spotless white of vacuum-crisp carpets.

On those long, hot, slow afternoons during my apprenticeship, as the invisible disease of complacency crawled into me, Doc motivated me by repeating the tale of Jack McGregor, the legend of Cutcorp. Jack McGregor had been a prominent New York City surgeon until one day, ½}b YY b n 8 b b²ub OË 8 b Y Ê ²b È8 V }b FbO8 b Y µµ8½ µobY with the dullness of his scalpel and walked out of the surgery, walked out of the medical profession, walked out on his wife and two daughters, in search of a higher order, in search of sharpness. He sought steel that could cut through people, through skin and muscle and bone. But when }b n  Y ½V }b É8µ ¯½ µ8½ µobY¢ b É8 ½bY µ½bb ½}8½ O  Y O½ ½}² Âu} everything. He wanted steel that could carve away the hulking mystery of the Earth.

Today I have a house call with a woman I met while I was staked out at Starbucks. Her name is Hillary, and she lives in a tall, narrow Victorian in the Shaw neighborhood of St. Louis, where rich people who like old things live. I feel like I’m on the set of a digitally remastered black and white movie. The houses are old. The cars are old. The people are old. Even the dogs they’re walking look old, like they’re just waiting around for the vet’s needle.

When I ring the doorbell, a cleaning woman answers, invites me in. The ceiling is so high, I have to squint to see it. The place smells like WO ODY S K I N N E R

51

BILLY LO P E Z | Yours Truly

67

MICH A E L BA Z ZET T

She walked through the door and announced that the weekend had been mostly fucking boring. She paused a little, before the boring.

This created a tension, which he grasped like a wire to pull himself upright then waltzed to the closet where his man suit hung like skin from a hanger, resembling ½} u µ ÂO} 8µ 8 b ½}bY oµ}¢ Shall I put this on, he inquired in a debonair tone.

Perhaps we could enjoy an evening of mostly television. She laughed and unzipped her feminine wiles, letting them fall around her legs like a loose curtain. They conceded they were both hairy underneath, driven largely by scent. Then it grew suddenly cool.

He checked for drafts. Nothing can be done, she murmured. You need more than storm windows to hold out particular truths.

M I C H A E L BA ZZ E T T

69

A DRIA NA PA R AMO

The Limbless Boy of a Mayan Mother I. NO ORDINARY PARTY , Y8Ë µ 8² ½ µ¯ o²µ½ F ²½}Y8Ë¢ 3b u8½}b² 8½ 8 8² O} 8 O Ânity hall adjacent to the Guadalupe church in Immokalee, Florida, where an army of caseworkers have volunteered their culinary skills to help Ob bF²8½b¢ ½¯µ 8 bÊ O8 obµ½8¢ Ð 8²²8Ë n µ8 µ8µ picosas and homemade 8O} µ o ½}b Ob ½b² n ½}b É} ½b È Ë O Èb²bY ½8F b¢ bÊ O8 8² 8µ meander through the hall from the kitchen to the cement benches outside the front door. It smells of fried beans, rice, and a medley of pork, chicken and beef seasoned with chili powder and garlic. Women sit in plastic chairs placed next to each other against the walls. Some have their babies on their laps; some have them in American-made baby strollers and car seats. The men stand outside. They don’t like to hang around women and babies. They chat, laugh, and tell jokes in Amusgo, a Mayan dialect that only they understand.

Spirits are high, but there is no music, or a piñata, or balloons.

There are no noisemakers or cone hats. No lollipops or curling ribbon eggs in coordinated colors. There can’t be any of that. Carlitos is not a regular baby. He was born without limbs. His body is a perfect rectangle of flesh and bones topped by a perfectly round head of soft hair. He giggles a lot, more than a regular baby. Francisca, his mother, a teenager who screws her nose when she laughs and looks more like a Mayan doll than the mother of a deformed baby, sits in one corner of the room with Carlitos glued to her chest in a kangaroo-style baby carrier.

The party guests have been carefully chosen. They are farmworkers from the community, mainly from Guerrero, the Mexican state that Carlitos’ parents are from, and they all have babies. Sick babies. The unspoken theme of the party is solidarity. The caseworkers want Francisca and her husband to feel that they are not alone, that other mothers have

70

THE CAROLINA QUARTERLY

also given birth to extraordinary babies like Carlitos and that this is a safe place where the deformed, the underdeveloped, the handicapped, the feeble are all beautiful children.

Across the dinner table from me is Cristina. Her shiny, black hair is gathered at the back of her head in a braid so tight that it makes her F² É bËbµ µ 8 ½ 8 F ½¢ Â8 ½ V }b² F8FËV µ oÈb ½}µ Y 8 YV b Carlitos, he is no ordinary baby. He was born with a cleft lip and palate and some other issues that if I want, she says, she’ll tell me about later.

Cristina gulps a hungry mouthful of fried bean dip as she motions for me to walk around the table.

Juanito is asleep inside his stroller. Half of his small face is at peace; the other half, the one with the cleft, is at war. A deep trench interrupts the course of his upper lip, separating it into left and right halves. The trench disappears into his left nostril. His mouth is closed, yet I can see his pink tongue somewhere behind his gums.

This is no ordinary party. There is an American journalist who traveled deep into the Mexican mountains to show Francisca’s parents pictures of their deformed grandson. There is also a photographer, who is pointing her camera at Carlitos from every possible angle. The woman shoots while Francisca feeds him, when he is strapped to a barrelshaped device that allows him to be upright, when he frowns inside his straitjacket-like apparatus, when he giggles, when he cries, when he spits his food. The photographer doesn’t ask for permission, she just shoots.

Francisca and her husband, Abraham, hold the baby and smile for the camera, once, twice, and many more times, until Francisca stops smiling and Abraham leaves the hall to join the other men outside.

In one corner of the hall, with dark bangs covering her eyes and a t-shirt covered in food stains and dry breast milk circles, sits Rosa and her three-month old baby boy, Camilo. ¬ b¯µ 8 ½½ b µ O V­ * µ8 ½b µ b É}b ½ ÂO} } µ ½ Ë o ub²µ É ½} mine. She cradles Camilo in one arm and with the other lifts his shirt. A pink scar splits his tiny chest in two.

“Heart problems,” Rosa says, as she shakes her bangs on the baby’s face, cooing into his breath. Camilo coos back.

A D R I A N A PA R A M O

71

BILL MCALLISTER

82

THE CAROLINA QUARTERLY

| Ta Som

MEGA N MAYHEW BERGMAN

Night Hunting Every year we went to a holiday party at Mr. Simons’, where a haggard orange tabby held court on a chair with broken caning and an apricot poodle wove between guests’ legs. Mom and I always came back to Pawlet for the holidays to be with my grandparents—they were usually staples at the party. This year they were in Florida on a senior cruise, but Mom and I promised we’d attend in their place, especially since we’d just moved back to Pawlet for good.

Pawlet was a small town in Southern Vermont, the kind of place where you couldn’t count on cable or phone reception. We’d been used to living in wild places, quiet towns that sat on the verge of nothing, towns that bordered vast deserts or thousand acre tracts owned by paper companies. Six months ago we’d moved to Pawlet to be near my grandparents, taking a rental next to their house. Mom was sick. Every night, every family dinner, there were unspoken words in her mouth: When I die.

Our life in Pawlet was a contrast to the solitary existence we otherwise led; we went to basketball games at the high school, pancake breakfasts at the community center. In her last months Mom wanted to be around people, to feel the warmth of connection, for both of our sakes. ²¢ + µ¯ Y² ÈbÉ8Ë É8µ ObY Èb² 8 Y 8 Y µ}ÂnqbY ² way from the dirt road to the front door in the country dark. The house u ÉbYV 8 Y ½}b µ } Âb½½bµ n b u}F ²µ o bY ½}b É Y ɵ¢ ,}b q Ylights revealed the breath of the horses grazing in the side pen, the slick spots ahead of us.

That’s coyote scat, I said, pointing at a pile in the driveway.

Dog, Mom said, trying to hurry me inside with a palm on the back of my neck.

Similar but different and I know when I’m right, I said, standing over it. You can always tell by the hair. And the oval prints.

Mom was afraid of coyotes, and for good reason. Back in Utah, one sank its teeth into her leg as she defended her favorite dog, a terrier named Aida. Round about fall, people in Pawlet started talking about a

98

THE CAROLINA QUARTERLY

seventy-pound albino coyote in the woods behind our house. I’d noticed Mom stayed out of the backyard. I hated to see her scared.

Lightning can’t strike twice, I’d said, but then we’d both thought about the return of her cancer. The theory was shit.

Mr. Simons’ slate steps were slick with ice. The soft roar of the party enveloped us as we opened the door. Mom scanned the overburdened coat rack. I stuffed my mittens into the pockets of her jacket for safekeeping. I was notorious for losing things.

Remember, Mom whispered, squeezing my hand, gripping a bottle of wine in the other, be polite.

Marvelous! Mr. Simons cried, walking toward Mom and me. He kissed us each on the cheek. So glad you’re here.

Where are your folks? he asked Mom. Florida, she said. I made them go. They never travel, you know.

They deserve it.

Mom had begged them to leave; they hadn’t wanted to. I think Mom saw the cruise as a premature thank-you for taking care of me, a chance for them to rest before the cancer worsened and she needed more help. ,}b 8²½Ë O² ÉY É8µ YV Y u obYV ½}b ²  8Yb  n8Obµ Éb O ing in the low light. Bakers, lawyers, farmers, quilters, retired teachers. They wore heavy knit sweaters to keep out the Vermont wind, long velvet skirts, artisan earrings. The kitchen and dining room tables were crowded with potluck fare. Masking tape marked the plastic trays and wooden bowls: 8 b µ 8 Ë¢ ² no ¢ ( b8µb ²b½Â² ½ F .

Pepsi, please, I said to the sullen man behind the card table bar. Maker’s on ice for my mom. Stir in a little orange juice to make it healthy.

Point to your mother, the bartender said.

Mom waved.

Mom had one breast and a habit of moving towns when she got bored, dating men that could never hold her interest. She liked it that way.

But now her cancer was back and she was weak. She held onto the kitchen counter as she greeted friends, mostly people my grandparents knew. She smiled, but I could see the dark circles around her eyes, her hollowed-out cheeks and thinning hair. I memorized her body, her voice. Everything she did felt like the last time. Everything she said felt like the last word.

M E G A N M AYH E W B E RG M A N

99

Notes Toward Basic Betterness ,}b É8Ë ½}b 8 u b²oµ} u}½ ²8½}b² Fb just the light it hangs in the Atlantic dark, or the moon might want to live as only the cloistered stones adored by NASA, today in this inner-life dusk I’d like to become a smaller, simpler portion of myself.

Pretty soon now the day will dim down to its little black dress and slink toward darker needs, lurching high-heeled with a cruel thug ’til dawn and smashing all the neighbors’ windows.

For once, dear bitterness, I think I’d like not to forgive it, exactly, but at least allow its fact— the way the girl burned by the bombings learns to live only among her basic beauties, and not the way the pilot opening the hatch inhabited entirely the motive for the war.

What today wants, maybe, is no part of itself at all, but the idea of its dayness, like the couple in bed who want so much to be for an hour the space they’ve built between them.

116

THE CAROLINA QUARTERLY

How every atom envies light.

How the moon, now that I think of it, might rather be the golf ball abandoned on its surface, or one just like it: a dimpled concept of itself the people of Earth can hold and consider, so it might feel at last what I am feeling for you right now, secret reader.

SEAN BISHOP

117

T R AV IS SM IT H

Flowers of Ennui ENNUI PROPHET by Christopher Kennedy BOA Editions, Ltd. 92 pages; $16.00 paperback

If you’re a poet, how do you make ennui entertaining? How to write from a state of mind that might not be suited to the drama and energy that each line break carries? This was Baudelaire’s question around 1855, and his answer was the prose poems of Paris Spleen: “Supple enough and rugged enough to adapt itself to the lyrical impulses of the soul,” as he put it to his editor. Baudelaire being the supreme chronicler of ennui, it’s hard not to think of him when taking up Christopher Kennedy’s third full-length collection of prose poems, Ennui Prophet.

Kennedy has clearly studied up on his Spleen. Like Baudelaire, Ken bY˯µ Yb ²bµµbY µ b8 b²µ n½b o Y ½}b µb Èbµ Ëb8² u n ² ½}b² ²b8 ties, to see the world with a renewed sense of enchantment. In “Museum of Wrong Turns,” for example, a “roommate who thought Mt. Rushmore was a natural phenomenon” becomes an object of jealousy: “I defend her right to be so wrong…I envy her sense of wonder.” But desire to be transported doesn’t equate to a desire for literal travel, as we see in “They Are World Travelers”: “I’m sick of them arriving on the backs of rogue elephants,” laments Kennedy. Rather, the speakers in Ennui Prophet are trying to establish faith in the transporting power of words themselves, without which metaphor—and prophecy—becomes meaningless.

This struggle is the subject of much of the book. Over and over again, we see Kennedy’s words getting him into trouble. In “My Argument With The World, Part 3,” the speaker critiques the birds’ “inadequate attempt at song” only to be attacked by sparrows. Prayers fail: in the title poem, the ennui prophet himself is resigned to “the daily bloodletting, the prayers that fall on deaf gods’ ears,” and later in the book,

118

THE CAROLINA QUARTERLY

the attempt to pray yields only the word “Aloha,â€? which can mean, the poet reminds us, both “helloâ€? and “goodbye.â€? Prophecy, meanwhile, Y‘bÂľÂ?¯½ Š8†b ‘½ ŠÂO} Fb½½b²¢ ÂŹ*8ÂľÂ?½€Â?ÂŻÂľ ‘‡‡Ë­ oÂ?YÂľ bÂ?Â?bYĂ‹ Y‘ÂF½ing the Russian mystic’s words while admiring his facial hair: “More likely you were a source of unreliable information, yet somehow I still oÂ?Y ˑ² Fb8²Y €Â?½²€u€Â?u¢­ Occasionally, Kennedy lets himself get too relaxed in the prose form.

Remarks like “All this is to sayâ€? or “What I want to say isâ€? distract the reader from otherwise engaging poems. Some of these moments might }8Ăˆb FbbÂ? €Â?½bÂ?YbY ½‘ O‘Â?½²€F½b ½‘ ½}b ½}bŠb ‘n Â?‘b½€O €Â?¾ÂnoO€bÂ?OĂ‹V F½ they arrive in poems where that theme has already been communicated in the images themselves.

If Kennedy seems disillusioned with words in these poems, though, that doesn’t prevent him from entertaining us; his dark humor and eye for the surreal image make Ennui Prophet a great deal of fun to read. ,8†b ½}b o²¾½ ¾b�½b�Ob ‘n �n½b² }²€¾½Š8¾­U  ɑ²b ŠË ¾�8†b¾†€� ¾‘O†¾ and a renewed sense of shame.�

While his world-weary stance descends from Baudelaire, Kennedy also shares the irreverent, surrealist tendencies of two American masters of the prose poem, James Tate and Russell Edson (One poem, “Ghost €Â? ½}b 8Â?Y ‘n +†b‡b½‘Â?ÂľV­ €¾ YbY€O8½bY ½‘ Y¾‘Â? ¢ Â? ÂŹĂ? 28uĂ‚b bŠ‘²Ë ‘n 3€Â?uÂľV­ 8 ¾É8²Š ‘n FbbÂľ q€bÂľ €Â?½‘ ½}b ÂľÂ?b8†b²¯¾ }b8YV 8Â? bĂŠÂ?b²€bÂ?Ob ²bO‘²YbY €Â? 8 Y€¾½Â²F€Â?u Yb8YÂ?8Â?¢ ,}Ă‚ÂľV ½}b oÂ?8‡ ÂľbÂ?½bÂ?Ob ‘n ÂŹ ²€bn +b8sonâ€?: “Then a quiet sound caught my attention as if a blind carpenter were hammering roses.â€?

TR AVI S S M I TH

119

CONTRIBUTORS WINTER 2011 | VOL. 61, NO. 3

ANDREW ABBOTT resides in Maine. He would like to thank The Carolina Quarterly and God. More of his paintings can be seen at allabbott.com.

MICHAEL BAZZETT’s poems have appeared in West Branch, Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets, Green Mountains Review, DIAGRAM, and The Los Angeles Review, among others. He was the winner of the 2008 Bechtel Prize from Teachers & Writers Collaborative and was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two children.

MEGAN MAYHEW BERGMAN was raised in Rocky Mount, North Carolina and now lives in Shaftsbury, Vermont with her veterinarian husband, two daugh½b²µV 8 Y 8 } µ½ n 8 8 µ¢ +O² F b² É ÂF µ} }b² o²µ½ O bO½ n µ½ ² bµV Birds of a Lesser Paradise, in March 2012. Her work has been published in the 2011 Best American Short Stories, New Stories from the South 2010, New York Times, Ploughshares, Oxford American, Narrative, One Story, and elsewhere.

SEAN BISHOP teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a former Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellow, a former Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow, former managing editor of Gulf Coast, and founding editor of Better Fb½½b² 8u8Î b¢ ²u ¢ µ b µ }8Èb 8 b8²bY ² 8²b n ²½}coming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Forklift Ohio, Harvard Review, Indiana Review, iO, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, Poetry, and elsewhere.

ARTHUR BROWN¯µ o²µ½ F n b µV The Macherel at St. Ives, was published

by David Robert Books in 2008. He has published poems in AGNI, Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, Southwest Review, The Raintown Review, The Malahat Review, American Arts Quarterly, and other journals. His poems have won the Morton Marr Poetry Prize and the American Literary Review Poetry Prize.

120

THE CAROLINA QUARTERLY

HOPE COULTER’s work has appeared in such journals as North American Review n ²½}O u V Rattle, and New Delta Review¢ +}b µ 8 o 8 µ½ n ² ½}b ÁÏ Á 8 bµ Hearst Poetry Prize and a Pushcart nominee. A native of Louisiana, she received }b² Ð n² 8²È8²Y - Èb²µ ½Ë 8 Y }b² Ð oO½ 8 Y b½²Ë n² )Âbb µ University of Charlotte. She lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, and teaches creative writing at Hendrix College.

NICOLE TEREZ DUTTON’s work has appeared in Callaloo, Ploughshares, 32 Poems, Indiana Review, and Salt Hill. Nicole earned an MFA from Brown University and has received fellowships from Cave Canem and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is the winner of the 2011 Cave Canem Poetry Prise and her o²µ½ F V If One of Us Should Fall, will be published in 2012. She is currently a poetry fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

LAUREN HILGER has been awarded a fellowship in poetry from The MacDowb Ë 8 Y É8µ 8 o 8 µ½ n ² ½}b ÁÏ 38F8µ} (² Îb n ² ( b½²Ë¢ b² É ² has appeared in Sonora Review, Washington Square, CutBank, New Delta Review, Grist, Sugar House Review, and Moon Milk Review, among other journals. She lives in Manhattan.

ALYSSA KNICKERBOCKER ²bOb ÈbY }b² Ð oO½ n² ½}b - Èb²µ ½Ë n Wisconsin-Madison and is currently the Axton Fellow at the University of Louisville. Her work has appeared in Brooklyn Magazine, The Bat City Review, Meridian, Sou’wester, Avery Anthology and others, and is anthologized in The Best of the West 2011: New Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri. Her novella, Your Rightful Home, was published by Flatmancrooked in 2009 and is É 8È8 8F b 8µ 8 b F n² ÂÈb 8 }½½ ººU ÂÈb 8F µ¢O ¢ +}b Èbµ in Louisville with her husband and son.

DAVID KUTZ-MARKS holds an MFA from Columbia University. Recent work appears in Kenyon Review Online, The 2River View, Ozone Park Journal, and other venues. David lives in Dunmore, Pennsylvania and he teaches literature and creative writing at King’s College and Marywood University.

CO N TR I B U TO R S

121

BILLY LOPEZ is a writer, musician, cartoonist, and amateur leg-watcher. For the past few years he’s worked in preschool television as the head writer on shows like Nickelodeon’s The Wonder Pets and Disney Jr.’s 3rd and Bird. He lives in New York City with his wife Sarah and their Siberian husky, Job. Billy plays in the rock band Bel Argosy, which you’ve probably heard of, if you’re in it. He’s currently developing an animated sitcom called Donkey Town, based on his web comics, which you can see at donkeytowncomics.blogspot.com.

BILL MCALLISTER, a Chapel Hill native, has been involved in creating and teaching photography for over 30 years. He has taught at the Art Institute of Atlanta, Chowan College, and the Art School in Carrboro. Bill was a fellow at the Michael Karolyi Memorial Institute in Vence, France, and is a longtime member of the Society for Photographic Education. He is a member of the Orange County Artists Guild and is represented by FRANK Gallery in downtown Chapel Hill.

You can see more of his work on his website: billmcallisterstudio.com ADRIANA PARAMO’s work has been previously published in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Los Angeles Review, Fourteen Hills, Magnolia Journal, Consequence Magazine, Line Zero, Thumbnail Magazine, Waccamaw Journal, and the rest. Her upcoming memoir, My Mother’s Funeral, explores women’s lives in modern Colombia. She is a cultural anthropologist and co-producer of LOL, nb ½ ÂYV 8 ²b8Y u µb² bµ n oO½ ,8 8 8ËV ² Y8¢ +}b Èbµ Florida with a Scotsman and two mutts. “The Limbless Boy of a Mayan Mother” µ 8 bÊOb² ½ n² 8 u²  n µ½ ² bµ (8²8 O bO½bY É} b Y u ob YÉ ² 8 u  Y O b ½bY É b É ² u ½}b ² Y8 ob Yµ¢ SAM PEREIRA has published three books of poetry so far: The Marriage of the Portuguese ¯ b²È b² (²bµµV ¸g V Brittle Water (Abattoir Editions/Penumbra (²bµµV - Èb²µ ½Ë n bF²8µ 8 8½ 8}8V g¸ V 8 Y A Café in Boca (Tebot Bach, ÁÏϸ ¢ Ð bÊ 8 YbY bY ½ n ½}b o²µ½ F µ YÂb ½ Fb ÂF µ}bY ½}b µ ² u of 2012 by Tagus Press at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. His latest collection, Dusting on Sunday, will be published in 2012-2013 by Tebot Bach. He lives in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where he teaches English.

122

THE CAROLINA QUARTERLY

JOHN ROSENTHAL’s one-person shows include exhibits at The National Humanities Center, The Asheville Museum of Art, The National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC, the Panopticon Gallery of Boston, and many more. His work essays and photography have appeared in ARTVU, Five Points, The Sun Magazine, Kenyon Review, ,}b Âno u½ ( µ½, The New York Magazine, and more. ²¢ * µb ½}8 µb²ÈbY 8µ 8 È µ ½ u bO½Â²b² n ² oÈb Ëb8²µ 8½  b - Èb²µ ½Ë¯µ stitute of the Arts. In 1998 a collection of Mr. Rosenthal’s photographs, Regarding Manhattan was published by Safe Harbor Books, and in 2005 his work was included in Safe Harbor’s Quartet: Four North Carolina Photographers.

WOODY SKINNER u²bÉ Â 8½bµÈ bV в 8 µ8µV Fbn ²b b F8² u 8 oÈb year college tour of the Deep South. He is currently an MFA candidate at Wichita State University, where he has been awarded the 2011-2012 Fiction Fellowship.

His work has appeared in Necessary Fiction.

TRAVIS SMITH is an MFA candidate at the University of Mississippi, where he is a John and Renee Grisham Fellow. A Chapel Hill native, and University of North Carolina graduate, he has poems online at storySouth, The Oxonian Review, and in the 2011 Music Issue of Southern Cultures.

G.C. WALDREP’s most recent poetry collection is Your Father on the Train of Ghosts O 8F ²8½ É ½} } 8 8}b² ¢ b }8µ ²bOb ½ É ² New American Writing, Boulevard, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly Review, and others.

He lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he teaches at Bucknell University, edits the journal West Branch, and serves as Editor-at-Large for The Kenyon Review.

JERALD WALKER is the author of Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption, recipient of the 2011 PEN New England/L.L. Winship Award n ² oO½ 8 Y 8 bY 8 bµ½ b ² n ½}b 5b8² FË Kirkus Reviews. His essays have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies, including three times in The Best American Essays. Walker is an Associate Professor of creative writing at Emerson College, where he is Interim Chair and Director of the Boston Summer Writers’ Conference.

CO N TR I B U TO R S

123

Out the window: the soggy plains of the Skagit valley, a route she drove many times with her father growing up—always the same flooded fields, grasses standing up to their necks in silvery water, black silhouettes of cattle in the distance, against the mountains.

This landscape should be as familiar to her as her own skin, but looking out the window she feels lost—a freak February snow has turned it into something unreadable.

The earth is white and the sky is white, everything the same, pale and flat. It is like lying in a strange bed, the top sheet lifted high above you, about to drift down to cover you.

A LY S S A K N I C K E R B O C K E R

F E AT U R I N G A D D I T I O N A L W O R K BY Michael Bazzett

Sam Pereira

Megan Mayhew Bergman

John Rosenthal

Sean Bishop

Woody Skinner

Arthur Brown

G.C. Waldrep

Nicole Terez Dutton

Jerald Walker

David Kutz-Marks

and more

$ 9. 0 0

FREE TO UNC STUDENTS