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
Spring/Summer 2017 V O L U M E 66.3
E D I TO R- I N - C H I E F
Moira Marquis F I C T I O N E DI TO R
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 MA N AG I N G E DI TOR
Christina Stephens C OV E R DE SI G N
Patrick Wilson, Carolina Union Design
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My halo is...
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LIANA AMBROSE-MURRAY photo courtesy of www.saatchiart.com/clivefrost
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FICTION READERS
SUBMISSIONS
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The Carolina Quarterly welcomes submissions of
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unpublished fiction, poetry, non-fiction, book reviews,
Andrew Kim
and visual art. Manuscripts and editorial or business
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correspondence should be addressed to the appropriate genre editor at Carolina Quarterly, Greenlaw Hall CB #3520, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599. No manuscript can be returned nor query answered unless accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope; no responsibility for loss or damage will be
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NON-FICTION READERS 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.
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BOOK REVIEWER Anneke Schwob
Contents
Spring /Summer 2017 | VOLUME 66.3
FICTION J.DUNCAN WILEY Dying Five Days a Week 14 MEAGAN PERRY KonMari Your Family 44 T.S.DILLON Saint Marty, Pray for Us 77 DEREK UPDEGRAFF Release from the Ceramic Doghouse 118 BRANDON HAFFNER Highway to Norman 131
POETRY HANNAH DOW
Postcard from the Dead Sea 9 Postcard from York, Maine 10 Postcard from the Kunsthistoriches, Vienna 11 Postcard from Yosemite 12
K.E.DUFFIN
Field Sparrow 40 Ruffed Grouse 41 The Burned House 42 Widow 43
JOHN HART
Oaks in Autumn 53 Thorns and Thistles 54 Le!er to Combine Driver’s Wife 55
WILLIAM HUHN
Abandoned 56 Expedition 57 All You Want to Know About 58 The Owl 59
GEORGE KALAMARAS Inscribed Into Him, Into His Him of Her 61
Returning Home for the Funeral of a Friend, My Thoughts Roaming... 62 BRIANNA NOLL
Breaker 75 The Fir and Bramble 76
JOSH MAHLER
Strange Dream of My Mother 92 Desire for a Room 94 Love and Death 95
LINDSAY WILSON
The Mud Suckers 97
WILL WELLS
Her Middle Name was Helen 99 Auspicious Bird 100 My Yellow Period 101
R.T.SMITH
Duet 114
BRENDAN STEPHENS Shadow 116
Easter Eggs 117 MICHAEL HOMOLKA Enclosure 128
Poem in the Manner of Self-Help as Obvious Projection 129 MIKE PULLEY
Out of Place 158 How the World Was Made 160
DIANA REAVES
Page of Winter 162 Breath Away 164
LYNNE POT TS
Rim of the World 167 Half Lives 168
AIDAN COLEMAN
Primary 166 Regent & Seal 170
NONFICTION ELIZABETH PAUL Marshrutka 30 CASSANDRA PASSARELLI Denouements 102 CODY LEE Pioneers, O Pioneers. 147
ART LIANA AMBROSE-MURRAY
Artist’s Statement 64 Untitled (Waters) 65 Grand Terminal 66 Sandra Bland Parkway 67 Mx/Miz Overseer of All Guns 68 Bunbun 70 My mom has many books 71 Untitled (Unmasking) 72 After Watts 73
HANNAH DOW
Postcard from the Dead Sea This is what she wanted— to be le# alone on the Sea’s placid face, clutching its fabled stones to her chest as if they could grant her passage to the next life, as if the fertilizing salt from the Sea’s own womb could make her more than mother. This is what she wanted— to prove that a person can drown, become immersed while still floating, or else baptized into something more than water. From the shore I watch her face sink from the sun, head pressed to water by invisible hands.
HANNAH DOW
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Postcard from York, Maine Still, every day like coming to the ocean in the dark—hearing it, but only seeing its sudden enormity upon waking. Your mother’s words: we are not a family anymore. A gull lands on the seawall. He doesn’t feel the year is new, hasn’t checked his body for changes. He is content to be alone, or else is learning to live with it. Home is no protection from even the smallest storms— the boarding up of windows, slight tearing of the sail.
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Postcard from the Kunsthistoriches, Vienna In early depictions, Jesus carries his cross like it’s made of feathers, without breaking a sweat. Not until the late Middle Ages, I learn, did artists think to emphasize his burden: a heavy line in sand, fine red a!ention to strokes along his crown, wrists bound, yanked at the neck like a dog— all to make me feel something like devotion. Yet I cannot imagine myself in his place or swoon like a Boschian virgin. I do not see a face that resembles my own in the hostile crowd, only feel that I’ve swallowed something small and alive—a bird whose wings keep gravity from drawing me to my knees.
HANNAH DOW
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L I A N A A M B RO S E - M U R R AY
Statement by the Artist These digital collages represent a creative energy that brings me back to my childhood, a time when I would spend hours on the computer collaging home spaces, imagining myself as an interior designer. I only returned to digital collage recently when I was stuck on a painting and I used Microso#’s “Paint” program to brainstorm some ideas. Then I kept going with it. It was exciting and freeing. I could pick any color and fill a space with only the pressure of my finger. My digital collages depict my own constructions/reconstructions of subjects that are both political and personal to me. Most images I use I find on Tumblr. The collages are a product of my own internal processing of national tragedy, of loneliness and searching for a feeling of place, of trying to build place and revive energy where I could feel none, and trying to construct the answers to questions that may not be answerable. I o#en do this type of processing through collage form whether I use paint, the computer, printed or magazine images and glue, or sound. For me, collage is an umbrella term for visual storytelling and mapping experience. With collage, I can piece together things, colors, people, or places that aren’t supposed to be together. Collage is the practice for someone to make the thing they wish existed and for those who must construct a deeper and truer reality from what they live and see on a daily basis. I find new places and stories in collage. I find a place to bring and re-imagine all of the things my consciousness is collecting. My digital collages are displays of my most immediate expression. The most exciting thing about digital collage is that, with only a click, they could be completely new and different. Each one represents only one moment with infinite potential. I view each one as an entry, an entrance point into infinite places, stories, and times.
Untitled (Waters)
L I A N A A M B R O S E - M U R R AY
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Grand Terminal
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C A R O L I N A Q U A R T E R LY
Sandra Bland Parkway
L I A N A A M B R O S E - M U R R AY
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Contributors
Spring/Summer 2017 V O L U M E 66.3
L I A N A A M B R O S E - M U R R A Y is a multidisciplinary visual artist from Asheville, North Carolina. She is currently a junior at Yale University majoring in African-American Studies with a concentration in Art and Studio Practice. Her work has been exhibited at the YMI Cultural Center in her hometown; at the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC; in Miami, FL with YoungArts and in New Haven, CT. She is a 2014 recipient of the Presidential Scholar of the Arts award. A I D A N C O L E M A N has published two poetry collections which were shortlisted
for national book awards in Australia. Besides poetry, he writes speeches, book reviews and Shakespeare textbooks. He lives in Adelaide. T . S . D I L L O N lives on a small ca!le farm in North Alabama with his wife and
two daughters where he works to provide transitional housing for homeless people in rural areas. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review and Nashville Review. He is completing his MFA in Creative Writing at Spalding University in Louisville, KY. H A N N A H D O W ’ S chapbook, Options for Penance, is forthcoming from dancing girl press. Her poems have recently appeared in North American Review, Ninth Le!er, Crab Orchard Review, and The Journal, among others. She is an Associate Editor for Mississippi Review. K . E . D U F F I N ’ S work has appeared in Agenda, Agni, Carolina Quarterly, The Cincinnati Review, Crannóg, Harvard Review, The Moth, Pembroke Magazine, Ploughshares, Poetry, Poetry Salzburg Review, Prairie Schooner, Scintilla, The Sewanee Review, Shenandoah, The SHOp, Southern Poetry Review, Southword, Thrush, Verse, Zymbol, and other journals. King Vulture, a book of poems, was published by the University of Arkansas Press. B R A N D O N H A F F N E R received his MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He lives in Virginia, where he teaches rhetoric and composition at Longwood University. J O H N H A R T was raised in Kansas City, KS and currently resides in Apopka, FL.
His poems have been published in the Antioch Review, The Cha!ahoochee Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, Verse Daily, and Washington Square Review.
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M I C H A E L H O M O L K A is the author of Antiquity, winner of the 2015 Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry from Sarabande Books. His poems have appeared in publications such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, Antioch Review, Agni, and Poetry Daily. A graduate of Bennington College’s MFA program, he currently teaches high school students in New York City. W I L L I A M H U H N ’s narrative essays have appeared in The American Literary Review, Tulane Review, Fugue, Strings, many other publications, and most recently in Stories of Music, Volume 2 (Timbre Press) which includes an MP3 of his fiddle playing. His nonfiction has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been cited five times as a “Notable Essay” in The Best American Essays series. He and his wife are based just outside of New York City, where she dances for American Liberty Ballet. A chapbook of Huhn’s poetry was published by Red Dancefloor Press as part of their Prime Poets Series, and his credits include a le!er in The New Yorker about James Thurber, published on the same page as the last words to appear in the magazine, also a le!er, by the poet James Merrill while he lived. G E O R G E K A L A M A R A S former Poet Laureate of Indiana (2014-2016), is the author of fi#een books of poetry, eight of which are full-length, including Kingdom of Throat-Stuck Luck, winner of the Elixir Press Poetry Prize (2011), and The Theory and Function of Mangoes, winner of the Four Way Books Intro Series (2000). He is Professor of English at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, where he has taught since 1990. C O D Y L E E is an MFA candidate at The University of North Carolina at Greens-
boro. He lives in Greensboro with his girlfriend and two cats and misses the great state of Texas. J O S H M A H L E R lives and writes in Virginia. His work has appeared in Light – A Journal of Photography & Poetry and Rufous City Review. He was educated at George Mason University. B R I A N N A N O L L’ S first book, The Price of Scarlet, was the inaugural poetry
selection for the University Press of Kentucky’s New Poetry and Prose Series. She is Poetry Editor of The Account, and her poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Southern Humanities Review, Prairie Schooner, South Dakota Review, Crazyhorse, and The Georgia Review. She lives in Chicago. C A S S A N D R A P A S S A R E L L I S T O U T is a vagrant at heart, and has spent much
time wandering, from Guatemala to Burma, between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. She’s published a couple of dozen stories, most recently in Ambit, CONTRIBUTORS
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Chicago Quarterly Review and MIR. Cassandra won the Traverse Theater’s Debut Author Prize and has been short-listed for a few literary prizes. Her novella Greybill won the Books for Borges Competition. She ran a bakery, managed a charity, was a sub-editor and set up a library foundation for children in Guatemala. She’s been accepted by the University of Exeter to do a PhD on the sacred and every day in the short story. She lives in Devon, England with her daughter.has three pet goats, and works at Radford University’s McConnell Library. E L I Z A B E T H P A U L has an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and her work has been published in River Teeth, Cold Mountain Review, Weave Magazine, and Assay. Her chapbook Reading Girl, a collection of ekphrastic prose poems based on the work of Henri Matisse, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016. For two years Liz served as a Peace Corps education volunteer in Kyrgyzstan, and she currently teaches writing and ESOL in the Washington, D.C. area. Find her at elizabethsgpaul.com. M E A G A N P E R R Y grew up in Northern Alberta, Canada, and has lived in many corners of the country: Winnipeg, Edmonton, Whitehorse, and now Toronto. A radio producer since the late 80s, Perry started podcasting in 2005 and led Canada’s first podcast network until 2014. She served as editor-in-chief for rubble. ca, Canada’s largest alternative news website. She has worked extensively with CBC Radio, directing their flagship current affairs program As It Happens. Her audio work has appeared on BBC, CBC, NPR, and Irish Public Radio. This is her first published work of fiction. L Y N N E P O T T S ’ first book, Porthole View, won the 2012 National Poetry Review Press book prize. Two more poetry collections are forthcoming in 2017. She is Poetry Editor of AGNI and lives in Boston and New York. Lynne’s work has appeared in Paris Review, American Literary Review, American Le!ers and Commentary, Meridian, Guernica, Denver Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, California Quarterly, New Millennium Writing and more. Manuscripts have received special recognition from Colorado Review, New Issues Press, Merick Press, Alice James Press, and Ohio State Press in addition to being awarded fellowships from the Massachuse!s Cultural Council, Ragdale, Virginia Colony for the Creative Arts and Moulin a Nef, France. M I K E P U L L E Y ’ S poems were recently published in Canary, Cold Mountain Review, South Carolina Review, Café Review, and the Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology, among others. For 15 years, he worked as a full-time print journalist for newspapers in Northern California where he won Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI) awards. Currently, he teaches literature and advanced writing at Clemson University and lives in upstate South Carolina.
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D I A N A R E A V E S grew up on the Cha!ahoochee River in Valley, Alabama, and
still weekends there frequently. She holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas Program in Creative Writing and Translation, where she was a Walton Fellow. Her poems have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Meridian, Raleigh Review, Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, Southern Poetry Review, The Louisville Review, and Chicago Quarterly Review, among other journals. She lives and teaches in Gastonia, North Carolina. She is the faculty adviser for Blutopia, Gaston Day School’s literary and art magazine, and she recently joined the editorial staff at Tar River Poetry. R . T . S M I T H is editor of Shenandoah and Writer-in-Residence at Washington and Lee University. His 14th book of poetry, Summoning Shades, will be published by Mercer University Press. He is a long-time contributor to Carolina Quarterly. B R E N D A N S T E P H E N S lives in Orlando, Florida where he is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida. Currently he teaches Introduction to Creative Writing and previously has taught English at the secondary level. D E R E K U P D E G R A F F is the author of the fiction collection The Butcher’s Tale and Other Stories (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2016) and is a contributing writer for The Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain (Wiley-Blackwell, 2017). His short stories, poems, translations, and essays have appeared in CutBank, Natural Bridge, Rosebud, Bayou Magazine, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, and other places. He holds Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from the University of Missouri and M.F.A. and B.A. degrees from Cal State Long Beach. Currently he is an Assistant Professor of English at California Baptist University. W I L L W E L L S ’ latest book of poems, Odd Lots, Scraps and Second-hand, Like New, is forthcoming this spring from Grayson Books a#er winning the 2016 Grayson Books Poetry Prize. His previous book, Unse!led Accounts, was published by Ohio Univ./Swallow Press in 2010. An earlier volume won the Anhinga Prize. He has work in current or recent issues of Image, River Styx, Birmingham Poetry Review, Evansville Review, Southwest Review, Cortland Review, Alabama Literary Review, Tampa Review, Comstock Review, Potomac Review, 32 Poems, Plainsongs, etc. He is a college English Professor in Ohio. J . D U N C A N W I L E Y ’ S fiction has been anthologized in Best Small Fictions 2015
and has appeared or is forthcoming in Pleiades, Cream City Review, South Dakota Review, Nimrod, and Jelly Bucket. You can find him online at jduncanwiley.com. L I N D S A Y W I L S O N is an English professor in Reno, Nevada, and has edited the
literary journal The Meadow since 2006. He has published five chapbooks, and his first collection, No Elegies, won the Quercus Review Press Spring Book Award. His poetry has appeared in The Bellevue Literary Review, Pank, The Portland Review, Verse Daily, and The Missouri Review Online.