JOSEPH RAKOWSKI
AIDEN HEUNG
JUAN CARLOS REYES
LISA HITON
ROCHELLE ROBINSON-DUKES
ALEX R. JONES
SIMONE ROWEN
LORRAINE KARCZ
MARTHA SILANO
ELLEN KOMBIYIL
MICHAEL SPENCE
MICHAEL LARSON
ANNE STARLING
OMOTUNDE OREDIPE
BARRETT WARNER
TOM PAINE
WLS
ERIC PANKEY MARIELLE PRINCE
The Carolina Quarterly
PAM CROW
with commentary by PETER O’LEARY
Vo l u m e 7 0 . 1 Fa l l 2 0 2 0 VOLUME 70.1
PUBLISHED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL
FALL 2020
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 R T H C A R O L I N A – C H A P E L H I L L
Fall 2020
V O LU M E 70.1
ED ITO R - IN- C HIE F
Kylan Rice A S S IS TA NT EDITO R S
Eli Hardwig Bailey Fernandez F IC T IO N EDITO R S
Paul Blom Matthew Duncan P O E T RY ED ITO R
Calvin Olsen NO N- F IC T IO N ED I TO R
Jo Klevdal R E V IE W S EDITO R
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Ellie Rambo
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Kylan Rice
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INTERNS 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 REVIEWERS Deborah Bacharach Anvita Budhraja
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS "The Dogcatchers at Work" and "The Dogcatchers Have a Plan" by WLS were previously published in Undeniable: Writer’s Respond to Climate Change (Alternating Current Press, 2020) and Flyway: A Journal of Writing and Environment ( June 2020), respectively.
Rose Himber Howse
Contents
Fa l l 2 0 2 0 | V O LU M E 7 0 . 1
POETRY PAM CROW
Gretel's Letter to Her Mother · 8
AIDEN HEUNG ELLEN KOMBIYIL
He Asks Me Out for Coffee · 10
Lament with Tulips and Crows · 11
Lament with Fried Potatoes and Ghosts · 13 OMOTUNDE OREDIPE
Sea of Love · 14
TOM PAINE
Gold Fish · 15
MARIELLE PRINCE
ROCHELLE ROBINSON-DUKES
Preparations · 16 The timetables of time-splicing · 17
Women in Grief: silence/ breweries / death · 18 MARTHA SILANO
2020 · 20
In the Late Anthropocene · 21 MICHAEL SPENCE
If I Could Change One Thing · 22
ANNE STARLING
Self-Portrait with Stone · 23
BARRET T WARNER
My New Plan is to Live Underwater · 25
LISA HITON
Intrusion · 27
FICTION LORRAINE KARCZ
Dancing Fingers· 28
MICHAEL LARSON
The Piano Room · 46
JOSEPH RAKOWSKI
The Stethoscope · 54
NON-FICTION ALEX R. JONES
The Maricopa · 66
ERIC PANKEY
from Essays in Idleness: a zuihitsu· 76
JUAN CARLOS REYES
The Art of Leadership, No. 1· 82
SIMONE ROWEN
Bed 15A · 86
THE FRIEND PETER O'LEARY
WLS: Openings. An introduction. · 91
WLS
El Monte Homestead / A Sequence · 92
Brainstone (Variation) · 97 Belle Isle Aquarium · 98 The Dogcatchers at Work · 99
The Dogcatchers Vacation at Cape Lookout · 100
The Dogcatchers Before the Flood · 101 The Dogcatchers Have a Plan · 102
REVIEWS Space Struck by Paige Lewis · 104
DEBORAH BACHARACH ANVITA BUDHRAJA
Glory and Its Litany of Horrors by Fernanda
Torres · 107 ROSE HIMBER HOWSE
My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by
Jenn Shapland · 110
MARTHA SILANO
2020 You used to have to wait for things. Blackberries to ripen. Cinnamon, if it arrived at all. Tulip bulbs from Holland. Now it’s all here—asparagus in the January dark. Papayas and mangoes as we push through icy slush. I am not against progress. I do not want a new disease, something like Ebola but twice as worse, but I do not want to live surrounded by cement and steel, by streetlights that dim Orion’s belt, by billboards, on-ramps and off-ramps, but I do not want to live without the quiet mornings of early December, the astonishment of fog, silent frost on silent branches, without the surprise, when I open my door, of a quail bobbing its head, pecking at a patch of dirt surrounded by miles of snow.
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In the Late Anthropocene Venus fades from the eastern sky, off to grab a morning latte, drop the lid into the street, drop out of sight because light pollution, because the haze from wildfires. Empty pop bottles litter the yard of an about-to-be-demolished bungalow, its triple-grafted apple tree—Liberty, Empire, Ginger Gold. To get here, it had to get way out of hand, way out of foot and spine: greed like the Snake River at flood stage, the town of Mora filling sandbags. Hoping for the best, but what is best, but what is hope but cramming your head into a sandbag, dragging it down to the powerful water. A hummingbird ticks and buzzes, sizing up the shriveled Salvia while neighbors amble by with their Heelers, their Corgis, chatting about the latest teardown, where each new house will rise. How many stories they want to know, how high will it go, how many stories of the scorching, the drowning?
MARTHA SILANO
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MICHAEL SPENCE
If I Could Change One Thing The horseshoe crabs I killed when I was young— I’d leave them undisturbed, roving the roots Of mangroves holding their cove in place. I split Their thin shells with a stick like a terrifying God afraid his subjects would not fear him. It seemed I’d ascended evolution’s ladder To better kill the things below me, to bar Their following. If all this is a scheme I’m part of, it’s too large to understand— Bigger than the bay that lay beyond The wreckage I created. If there’s no chance To undo my sins, I pray for some kind of balance. Maybe I’ll come back with a spike-like tail: An ancient creature another boy can kill.
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A N N E S TA R L I N G
Self-Portrait with Stone Nothing happened today. I came across a stone and didn’t wonder about the stone’s origins, how it was formed, whether or not it had ever known the sea. Whether it had eroded, or been stressed until it separated at the seams. I believe stones have seams. The stone was child-palm-sized. No pebble of a stone. No boulder. A round stone. A light brown or tannish round stone. I didn’t see a green shadow fallen upon it. Green shadows probably aren’t a thing. A caterpillar might have crawled over the stone, but I missed it. I didn’t consider chucking it into a stream or at some hapless bypasser. Passerby. I didn’t make it a marker for hopscotch, or leave it on a visited grave. I did think: What if sharp, heavy stones pelted in our direction like rain? I had no paint and no desire to paint the stone, any color— but especially blue. There wasn’t a word I wanted to see on the stone’s surface—not Peace, not God, not Love. Please, not Imagine or Dream. I didn’t use the stone to weight papers. I might have, but I had no papers with me; also, there was no breeze. A N N E S TA R L I N G
23
I wasn’t seized by the thought that the stone should become a water feature in my aquarium. I don’t keep fish, though it’s a small joy to see them flash by.
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B A R R E T T WA R N E R
My New Plan Is to Live Underwater I bike far from home in search of swimming pools outside my neighborhood where no one recognizes me. I’m a terrible swimmer. The only thing I know is how to hold my breath and move. It makes me feel weightless. My architect father gave me a book by Jacques Cousteau as if to say, maybe that will steady him for a while. My scuba class started in mid-June. It’s the first time I’ve ever broken a second sweat, an unusual warm feeling in your muscle like being bitten by a bat in your sleep. I’m the youngest in the group by at least a generation. Most are couples, except one darkly tanned man with shoulder-long hair and a silver tooth. We fool around a lot, a game where you sneak behind someone and twist his j-valve to stop the oxygen flowing into his regulator. They get me all the time, but I never do that to anyone else. It’s such an intimate thing, a j-valve, and panic swimming towards someone’s aqualung. A woman with a skirt around her swimsuit asks me why I never shut off her oxygen, says, it’s OK. Next week, I promise her. But I never do it. B A R R E T T WA R N E R
25
Still, I love the hyper-ventilation, the fussing over Boyle’s Law, atmospheric pressures, and showering afterwards with adults of my sex,   one who is going to Hawaii to swim with whales, and giant sea turtles, and, he adds, exhaling reefer, whatever falls out of the sky.
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LISA HITON
Intrusion Black sky, black water, I am intimate in the night Though it is not vivid. I Reach an hour that is black, Seductive as a dream, Though I cannot tell you Where I am or who. The once full moon Has risen now, darkening From her other side, Stealing the mystery, Lighting what was unseen, Intruding, as a ghost, On the clarity of such violence. She’s touching everything As only the dead can. To avenge is an elegy again.
LISA HITON
27
JOSEPH RAKOWSKI
The Stethoscope I need a win, bad. I go through the Daily Racing Form looking through the past performances of thoroughbreds. The fractions at the first and second call are the things I’m most interested in; it’s where I try to predict what’s going to happen by visualizing the race shape, which horses are the early speed, the pressers, who’s going to come running late from off the pace. It’s not a total science, not yet; handicapping still has some intuition, some mystery. The algorithmic computer players haven’t destroyed the entire sport. There are still bombs to be played if you know what to look for, if you aren’t stymied by things that ramble in the ancient behaviors of uncertainty. This is the opposite philosophy of chalk eaters, the people playing even money or odds-on horses. Fuck the favorites. I tell my wife all the time, life is too robotic now, too safe. Risk is the overlay. She doesn’t find that humorous with our baby on the way. But there’s no better time, I’ll tell her again. She’ll say, There are always things you don’t plan for, things you can’t see coming. I’ll say, Exactly. Every morning I get up this way—looking for winners in the racing form—but recently it’s been harder than usual to concentrate. There’s been this bird outside our apartment for weeks. It sounds like something trapped. I’m not sure how a city cat hasn’t rescued it from its bad spot in life. I’ve tried to locate it, but I can’t hear it from the roof of the building or on the street out front to get any sort of direction. The cry only pierces through our apartment like it’s behind our walls. I’ve thought about getting our dog involved, but I don’t know how to get him interested in the search. He and my wife act like they don’t hear it. Right now, they’re snuggled up together in bed. Her arm is around him, his head on her chest. My wife says Miles can sense the baby now that she’s in the middle of her second trimester, so he’s staying close. I hear them moving around in the bedroom, so I close the racing form and start making breakfast. When their door opens, Miles comes flying out and searches our apartment. He gives me a little growl and a shy bark. My wife’s behind him, hair all frazzled because she slept on it wet. “Found some winners, I think,” I say. “Let’s hope so,” she says. She sluggishly takes a seat at the breakfast bar, Miles at her feet. She’s right to be a little down on me. It’s definitely been a minute since the track provided anything substantial for us. She knows I’m dead center in one of the worst losing streaks of my career with only a c-note left in my bankroll. That’s how it
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goes sometimes, I’ve reminded her. I’ll get it back. These past months, I’ve had some puke worthy beats: traffic problems and terrible trips, bobs of life going the wrong way, horses crushed and shuffled back at the break, jockeys not reading the horse’s preferred running lines, dueling like idiots, even a DQ winner that barely drifted in. Some beats hurt so bad they’ll take your breath away, drop you right to a knee. You’ll sit with the feeling for days, months sometimes. If it’s bad enough, the rest of your life. Earlier this year, a guy was live to over half a million dollars in the Rainbow Pick 6, and the jockey fell off the horse he needed less than a sixteenth from the wire, not another horse around them. Losses like that are called suicide watches. They’ll take you right to the edge. No real point in anything after that. God hates your guts. “I’m going over to the track tomorrow to catch the morning workouts. There’s a filly I’m interested in that runs the day after. Trainer might breeze her gently, loosen her up some. It’ll be important to see how she’s working. I’ll be back before you get up.” I slide a plate of food in front of my wife. Her eyes brighten for the first time. “I’ll never get used to not having coffee.” “Can’t imagine,” I say. “So does that work?” She blows on her egg-covered fork. “Why don’t you ask the baby?” “Ask the baby?” “Yep. Get down on your hands and knees and ask the baby,” she says, shuffling the food around in her mouth from cheek to cheek. “Hot.” “Okay,” I say. I get down and crawl around the counter to where she is sitting. Miles gives me skeptical hippo eyes as I push past him to get close to her lap. She laughs as I stick my head under her shirt and rest my ear on her belly. “Is that how big I’ll look when I’m ready?” she says. “Quiet, Liz. I’m talking to the baby.” I put my lips on the soft skin of her tummy. “How you doing in there? Is it warm enough? Your mother and I can’t wait to count your toes and fingers and kiss the top of your head. It’s a crazy world out here, so cook for as long as you can. Grow big and strong.” I place my hand next to my lips and tap my finger. “We need some more money to get all prepared for when you arrive, so I need to go to the track more often. Is that okay with you? I know you don’t know what that is yet, but when you’re old enough, I’m going to take you there. I’ll show you all the pretty horses. I’ll point out the winners. Right now, mommy doesn’t think I’m a winner, but what do you think? Oh, thank you. And I love you too. I’ll let mommy know.” Liz removes her shirt from over my head and grabs my hair and pulls me to her. JOSEPH RAKOWSKI
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“Could you hear her in there?” she asks. “Yeah. I just told you what she said.” “No. Could you really hear her in there, her heartbeat or her moving around, or anything? Did it all sound okay? I can barely remember the sound when the doctor let us listen.” “Sounds just as it’s supposed to,” I say. “Peaceful as an Idaho library.” “Give me a kiss, you big dumb bear.” The first wave of horses enters the track and disappears through a thick fog that’s rolling in from the west. I can only hear their hooves pounding as the horses shoot past the quarter pole and come down the stretch. As the sound grows, I lean over the rail, and then they are right up on me, breaking through a wall of fog like a cavalry charge through an encampment, an army of rolling thunder, hot breath, shoulders and flanks rippling, their sound like a drumline playing through the clouds, a machine of hooved pistons firing with that acatalectic pace that roars ungodly before they turn into phantoms vanishing back through the stratus. When the sun finally burns off this gray cloak, most of the horses have finished their morning workouts. There was no way to spot my filly, so I decide to take my chances again and sneak onto the backside where the horses are getting hot walked and bathed. You need a special I.D. to go there, but you can get past security by mixing in with a raucous bunch of trainers and jockey agents wheeling and dealing mounts. When I’m past the checkpoint, I take a seat on a wooden bench by the trainer’s barn that holds my filly, Monkey House. She’s a three-year-old with a dark bay coat the color of wet earth. She’s coming out of a turf sprint, where she showed speed, and is stretching out to a mile on the dirt. She should be forwardly placed at this distance where her dam’s line has thrown out multiple black-type winners, all with competitive numbers. I sit there for a while waiting for them to bring her out, maybe walk her around a bit, but it hasn’t happened. They’re keeping her hidden. I think about risking a walk to her stall door, but if you start poking around in a trainer’s barn, that’s a surefire way to get noticed. There’s nothing to do but wait, and I flip through my racing form. After I get a good idea of the race shape, I look at the different horses’ odds to see if the race is even worth playing; is there money to be made after the takeout? If it isn’t a race for firsttime starters, I look for a quality work since last raced, Beyer numbers and—if I can get
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a hold of them—Thoro-Graph numbers. Pedigree comes into play if it’s a lightly raced maiden or developing horse; then I look at connections, surface and distance changes, and finally at equipment like the addition of blinkers, wraps or Lasix. After all of this is done—most importantly—I ask myself the intent. Why is this horse running in this spot today? Does it want to run here? I do this over and over until I land on a winner and learn its name. There are thousands of angles to help you find intent, help you find prices, help you find winners. A horse has stopped a few feet in front of me. The jockey jumps off and yells something. The horse is breathing heavily, straining, and doesn’t look to have worked out. The track veterinarian arrives and begins checking out the horse. She feels him over and then pulls her stethoscope up from around her neck and starts listening to his insides. She breathes with the horse, moving the stethoscope along his flank and shoulders. My great idea comes to me like the horses appearing through the clouds this morning. It appears as clearly as the four horsemen set upon the wilderness to bring about my final judgement. If there’s a bird in my wall, I could probably locate it with a stethoscope. And our baby girl, I’m sure we could listen to her heartbeat again the same way. Both of those would be a win. Not totally the wins we need, but something to turn us around. Anything to bring back the mojo and appease the racing gods. I wait for the vet to finish with the horse, and then I approach her. Right when I’m about to say hello, she’s called in another direction and she’s off again. For the rest of the morning, I follow her discreetly around the track, watching her work. As much as I like horses, they are still big, powerful, skittish animals that can kill you. Sure, I bet some are lovers, but others will bite and kick and try to smoother you against the walls of their stalls if they get the chance. I watch the vet work fearlessly among the twelve-hundred-pound animals, running her hands from their muzzles to their tails, scanning every inch of their magnificent frames. I’ve only watched this aspect of racing once before when I was a small boy: the extreme care and maintenance, her hands like divining rods. There is something spiritual in her actions. She’s totally attuned to something higher. It’s a general thing I’ve noticed between women and horses, just like female jockeys. They don’t win on horses by pushing and beating them relentlessly down the stretch. They win smoothly, asking, whispering in their ear, driving as one across the finish line. The great male jockeys have learned this too, the sweet talk, the nature of their connection, the power of feel. When I finally see the vet is done for the day, I approach her while she’s washing up in a big outdoor sink. JOSEPH RAKOWSKI
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“You got something special with horses,” I say. She looks suspiciously over her shoulder at me. She doesn’t recognize me as a trainer or an owner, and I’m damn sure not the size of an exercise rider or a jockey. “You got a horse you need me to look at? I’ll be back this afternoon.” “I have a question about your stethoscope. You got a second?” “My stethoscope,” she says, eyeing the chestpiece that dangles from her neck. “What about it?” “You think you could hear a human baby’s heartbeat through her mother’s stomach with it?” “You should see a doctor if you think something’s wrong.” “Nothing’s wrong, just wanted to hear her little beat again is all.” “Your baby?” “On the way. And her mother would be pumped if we could listen to her. We could use a small win.” The vet dries her hands and squares up to me. We shake callously. Her skin is rough and creased as fine old leather. “It’d work, I suppose, if she’s far enough along.” She looks me over, my rolled-up racing form in my hand. “What barn are you with?” “Just a fan,” I say. “Gamblers have no place back here.” “I understand. You know where I could buy a stethoscope?” “Online like anything else,” she says quickly. “You wouldn’t happen to have an extra I could buy? It would be perfect to bring home. It might change everything.” “You want to buy my old racing scope to listen to your unborn daughter?” “Yeah. How cool would that be? The connection, you know, to the track and all. It’s just the thing she needs. It’s been a rough go with this sort of thing. And maybe this makes it better.” The vet shuffles a fly away from the side of her face. She can see right into me. I can feel her looking, easy as she investigates a horse. “On your way out of here, which is now, there’s a white truck just past the racing office, says vet on the tailgate. There’s an extra scope in the passenger door. You can take that one but do me a favor. Wash it and stay off the backside of the track.” I move to give her a hug, but she shuts that down immediately. “Thank you,” I say. “Honestly, thank you.” “Seriously, don’t come back here anymore. Isn’t safe for people that don’t work
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around horses. You’re going to be a father. Use your head.” “I won’t. I promise. You got time for one more question?” “Not really.” “If a bird was stuck in your wall, you think you could locate it with a stethoscope?” “Do you want the scope or not?” I sit in my car using the scope to listen to everything in reach: the sound of the car engine through the steering wheel, the motor in the car door that brings the window up and down, the headrest on the passenger seat, which is dead as a door nail. I lift my shirt and put it to my heart. Faintly, I hear lub-dub-lub-dub-lub-dub. I’d never heard my heartbeat before, but there it is, strong and consistent, like the most important thing in the world, just patiently ticking along, making sure my experience isn’t over. This is the first time I’ve given it any attention. I’ve never taken the time to sit and listen to the source of my life, below my double chin and above my ever-growing, firm little gut. This simple thing, which I’ve never paid attention to, is making me feel like a piece of shit, my own heartbeat. It wasn’t important until now, until I bore witness to it. In the parking lot, a man unloading his horse tack from the back of his truck has stopped to watch what I’m doing. Me with my hand under my shirt and tears in my eyes. I roll my window down and yell to him. “You want to hear your heartbeat, asshole?” He looks at me like I’m a crazy person and turns around. “Lub-dub-lub-dub,” I shout. When I enter our apartment, Liz is sitting at the breakfast bar eating a Pop-Tart. Miles is next to her, and he barks at me like he doesn’t know me. I try to pet him, quiet him down, but he runs to Liz when I get close. The bird’s chirping, still stuck, still obnoxiously infecting our apartment with its droning for help. I’ll get you out. Don’t worry. “Why do you have a stethoscope around your neck?” asks Liz. “And why did you stay so long at the track? You said you’d be home before I got up. I was worried.” “I was thinking of you, that’s why.” I wrap my arms around her. “You smell like a barn,” she says. “Well wait until we check this thing out,” I say, waving around the scope. “You won’t care about my smell once you hear our baby’s heartbeat again.” “We can hear her heartbeat with that?” She looks at me confused. “Vet lady said so.” JOSEPH RAKOWSKI
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“Vet lady?” “Veterinarian.” Liz pulls her phone out and begins looking this information up. Suddenly, she grabs the scope from me and heads back to the bedroom with me and Miles following her. “You’re right. After twenty weeks you should be able to hear something,” she calls. “Hurry.” Liz lies down on the bed and lifts her shirt. “Try,” she says, handing me back the scope. Miles sits down next to her all excited, wagging his tail like a windshield wiper over the comforter. He has no clue what’s up, but he’s interested. And I’m happy everyone is happy. This is good. “Alright,” I say. “Relax.” I breathe on the chestpiece to warm it up because I think I saw that in a movie. I gently place the diaphragm on her stomach, where I think the baby should be. Liz guides my hand over to where it is. “Can you hear anything?” “Jesus, give me a second.” I close my eyes and try to drown out all the other sounds, the fridge, the street traffic, the whooshing of Miles’s tail, the bird. I move the scope around a few inches, pressing a little harder. “I can only hear your stomach,” I say. “Your Pop-Tart is being digested.” “Keep trying.” I really focus now. I close my eyes and everything. I move the scope around some more. “Here, let me try your heartbeat first,” I say. I move the scope up to Liz’s chest, and I hear the lub-dub-lub pretty quickly. “Yep. You’re alive.” I move the scope back down to her stomach, and I keep acting like this is going to turn around any second. All I can hear is some gurgling in her stomach. Fuck. “You can’t hear anything can you?” “Not yet,” I say. “Might still be too early.” “It isn’t too early. Says on the internet you should be able to hear it now.” “Well I’m not a professional with this thing.” “Obviously not.” Liz pulls the scope from my ears. “Let’s try Miles.” The dog looks at us in shock and betrayal as we grab him and pin him down. Liz hovers over him, trying to listen to his heart. She moves the scope up and down his chest until she lands on it and sits there for a while, listening to it. “He’s alive too,” she says. We let the dog wiggle free and shake off invisible assassins by the door. Liz rolls onto her back again, and I sit on the end of the bed watching her concentrate, moving the chestpiece back and forth over her stomach. I see the tears building in the corner of her eyes, and then whoop, there goes the scope, flying past my head and landing in the
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living room. Liz turns over on her side, and Miles jumps back onto the bed, resting his head on her thigh, giving me the you-fucked-us-both look. “Babe, it’s not a big deal, trust me,” I say. “You always think everything is just going to work out,” she says through a groan. “Of course, no doubt at all.” “We got this far before. You don’t think it’s like last time?” Liz squeezes her head between her hands. “Or is it? You think so?” “No,” I say. “You can’t think about last time. Stop it.” I pull her arms down. “I should go to the doctor.” “You don’t need to go to the doctor. We were just there last month. He already told you everything is fine. We’ll end up paying for nothing.” “Don’t talk to me about money,” she says. “Come on now.” “Leave me alone.” I go into the living room and close the bedroom door behind me. I pick up the scope from the floor and put it around my neck. I pace the room, thinking of something to say to Liz, but nothing comes to me. I get one of those gut-punch feelings that can drop you to a knee, a longshot hanging on the wire like a rat sort of pain. The earsplitting bird starts up. I begin on the wall closest to the kitchen with the stethoscope, but all I can hear is the damn fridge motor. I take my time, moving the chestpiece a foot to the right every few minutes. Most of the walls in the apartment sound like the passenger seat headrest, but I keep scanning, slowly canceling out sections. When someone lands on a bad beat at the track, you’re usually just happy it wasn’t you because you’d been through enough of them. Your condolences come from a place of thankfulness more than actual grief. But with Liz, I can’t help but wish there was a way for me to erase her bad beat, take that loss and chalk it up to something like a non-starter, give her a refund or even pay out her odds. Some losses aren’t recoverable. You’re never really whole again if you gamble with pieces of your soul. Those are cursed markers. That’s the great thing about horse racing: there’s always another shot. Every day, somewhere around the world from Happy Valley to Golden Gate Fields, you can find a winner, something to turn you around, build those stacks of paper. Life isn’t like that. You take too many bad beats, and it only gets harder and harder to stage a comeback. JOSEPH RAKOWSKI
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In this game, a twenty-cent super can bring you back from the dead. Roll that into something else, and ladies and gentlemen, get the red carpet out, leave the bottle on the table, the king’s back. I’m having no luck locating the bird. I’ve searched every wall, even the ceiling, and the bird still calls for help or whatever it’s going on about. I want to get a hammer and start smashing through the drywall. I feel helpless. Around seven o’clock, I order Chinese food for Liz from her favorite spot. She doesn’t come out of the room when it arrives, even though I’m positive she and the hound can smell it. I make her a plate and bring it to her. I think about eating with her, but I don’t. I still don’t know what to say. There are some things you just have to take on the chin and keep moving. I read my racing form on the couch until I fall asleep. In the morning, I make breakfast before looking in the bedroom to find Liz and Miles all curled up together. Miles’s eyes reflect the light from the living room, and he shows me his teeth with a drowsy snarl. I ask if he wants to go outside, but he just tucks his head back into the sheets. “Liz, you up? I’m going to head out in a bit. I’ll leave your breakfast in the fridge.” “I slept horrible last night. I had terrible dreams. Something feels wrong. I feel nauseous and felt pukey all night.” “You think it was the food?” I ask. “I felt it way before I ate. I really think I should go to the doctor. It can happen again.” “Stop saying that. If you still feel bad this afternoon, I’ll take you. How’s that sound?” “Like you want to go gamble and don’t care.” “You know that’s not true.” I move to sit on the side of the bed next to her, but she puts her arm out to stop me. “If you want to go, go. Don’t stare out the window acting like you care until you think up some excuse to get you out of this.” “We need money. Doctor appointments aren’t free. Neither are kids.” “Why don’t you take some odd jobs like you used to? At least bring in something steady. You had one big score. Maybe that was it. Maybe you were just—” “I need to live at the track if I’m going to make it work. You think LeBron took odd jobs when he wasn’t shooting basketballs.” “LeBron didn’t need money to make money.” “I can do this. You have to believe in me.”
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“Well isn’t this a sad state of affairs then,” she says. “Shut the door.” At the racetrack, I take my habitual seat in the grandstand and watch the tractors harrow the dirt, aerating the soil. You don’t know how fast the track will be playing until racing begins, but from what I can see, it looks dry and even. As for the turf course, it’s covered with geese waddling back and forth looking for grubs under the newly cut blades. A track maintenance worker chases after them in a golf cart, trying to shoo them away. They don’t leave but fly down a little way and begin again. I know the feeling. I fight off the urge to go look for the vet. What would I say to her? Your scope is bullshit. Thanks for nothing. She’d probably knock me out for even hinting something went wrong, for even showing up again. I don’t need a black eye or that negative energy hanging on me today. I’ve already got enough. Liz is probably in the bathtub, crying, water up to her nose, Miles sitting on the mat in front, head propped on the edge, looking at her. I ignore the pit in my gut and stay focused. I read a workout summary on Monkey House. The track specialist says she looks fit. I have no doubt she’s taking a step forward today. I’m going to get my piece of the action. It’s going to turn us around. I watch the sun pull up and rise high into the sky, its rays further hardening the track, which is now officially listed as fast. That’ll be good for her. She’s got the most speed. I don’t see any horse challenging her on the lead. I predict she gets it easily, then slows the pace down and takes them wire to wire without much asking, maybe even pulls away— everything under wraps. I’ll dance all the way to the betting window if she keeps her morning line of 15-1. I’ll dance naked if she drifts up. The announcer calls the horses to the first post. The race is for baby horses, twoyear-old colts in a maiden special weight. They’re a rowdy lot in the walking ring. They yank and weave their heads and bodies around, eyeing up everything as a potential threat. Even though they all went through schooling, they’re still young, nervous horses. They’ll need a race under their belts to settle even if they’re a precocious bunch. These races are a little bit of a crapshoot. Not as bad as a low-level maiden claiming crapshoot—nothings that bad—but outside of workouts, pedigree, and the inside scoop, you might as well burn your racing form and just watch. The horses are all in line for the opener. It’s a sprint, and the horses bolt from the starting gate, jockeys holding on as a group of five fight for the lead. They head into the turn still bunched up, their riders digging in, trying to rate the first couple. The majority are already rank and setting blistering fractions. They’ll fall off before the quarter pole. JOSEPH RAKOWSKI
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They’re heading into the top of the stretch when the horse on the rail clips heels and goes down. The grandstand hisses as the ghost takes shape, outlined among the beating breasts and racing forms and hats brandished in the air. The colt tries to stand, but his front legs are broken, and he drops back down. The jockey remains motionless in the dirt ten feet in front of him. The horse tries to get up again, but an outrider has gotten to him and lays his body over the neck of the horse to keep him from moving. There is nothing left to see when the green curtain is raised in front of the scene. I lean over, sitting only on my left butt cheek, trying to stretch out my belly. I think about getting a beer or a pack of smokes, but I don’t need those vices anymore to think deeply about things that are wrong. The feeling that something else has gone bad is here too. I call Liz, but she doesn’t answer. I try her again and get that slow ringing that no one is picking up. I get out of my chair and head for the parking lot. I call Liz again from the car, but it’s no use. Why isn’t she answering? I’m speeding now, weaving in and out of cars, still trying to reach her on the phone. A light rain begins to fall, and my busted wipers are only making it worse. It’s not supposed to rain today; at least I never saw that in any reports. You have to pay attention to stuff like that when you’re handicapping. Off tracks can ruin you. The car in front of me slams on their breaks, and I do everything I can to avoid them. I miss them by sliding into the emergency lane and off the shoulder a few feet into the grass. I pull back onto the road around them and keep going. I lose my phone in the maneuver and dig around for it on the floor. It’s gone. I get to our apartment building and run up the stairs, my legs rubbery at the top. I can already hear the bird inside crying for me. I bang on our door as I unlock it. Miles doesn’t bark or greet me. The bedroom door is closed, and I throw it open. Liz is lying down holding the stethoscope to her belly. She is smiling like she’s hit the pick five with three longshots and two bombs. She waves me over to listen to the win she needed.
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JUAN C ARLOS RE YES
The Art of Leadership1, No. 1 Leadership is a science. Theorists ponder traits attributable to leadership as well as the leadership attributable to traits. Postulates vary and/or change and/or may be disproven. Said postulates may, however, continue to be used because not all working theories require working postulates to extrapolate meaning and truth. The aim of a leadership “theorist” is to emerge with “meaning” and “truth.” The science of leadership is fiction.
A leader has answers. The answers may be right and they may be wrong.
Leadership is shaped by esteem in sexual identity—if you’re a man. A woman in leadership, however, may have to stop thinking about sex. She might have to stop having sex altogether.
Leadership is not for everyone. Reminding someone they are not a leader makes you a little more like a leader.
A leader is not always born. An unborn leader, however, must work for it. Start by shaving, practice words before speaking, train yourself to care. Make a list so you remember what to do.
Leadership is exhausting and it takes up space. A lot’s been said about leadership, most of it emphasized, much of it repeated, most of it changed, a lot of it expired, much of it lingering, all of it festering, and no one takes out the trash.
Leadership is an evolution that varies by sex. This evolution reflects variable leadership styles that diverge, generally, in one of two ways: women include and men dictate; women work hard to be accepted and men barely work.
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Leadership must be separated into two distinct categories of leadership models. Otherwise, women will keep trying to huff and puff like angry men, and men will keep using words like take it lying down and grow a pair and push your way in.
Leadership has stalled: the United States produces too few leaders to meet leadership demands; modern leadership theory excludes the intersectional discourse of the racial/ ethnic dynamic; and a company’s social responsibility as measured in financial giving is directly proportional to the number of women and racially inclusive trustees on its board. These observations might be—are probably—are definitely—inter-related.
A leader is about education. About learning that it’s not about being the best in the world. That it’s about being the best for the world. Credentials, be damned.
Leadership is always self-serving. It charms for a purpose and it can’t love and it forgets you. Leadership can only verifiably transform people when it has a benevolent intent and it never has a benevolent intent. Leadership is sociopathic.
A leader, in time, institutes a vision that transforms an organization into a series of authentic transactions. Until all that makes sense, though, a leader only has their looks. So be tall.
Leadership is a balance of risks with two scales. A metallurgist shackles the hooves and exhausts the mules. A cowboy lets the dream escalate and the fire stoke and the building burn.
Leadership is not sufficiently tied to feelings of inferiority. Emerging from a “non-majority” background or community can instill the need and desire to learn a counterpart’s experiences before feeling comfortable in leadership. As of this writing, no research exists that has tied this same kind of urgency to a leader who emerges from a “majority” background or community.
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Leadership is dangerously overgeneralized. Results speak for themselves: someone who attempts to fit into a leadership mold, whichever it might be, may quickly discover that human beings exclusively speak in masks of themselves.
A leader inspires stories. Stories inspire adjectives. Adjectives prove just how much we’re obsessed with correlating good leadership with ethical behavior. This study proposes to illustrate that the inimical voices behind prominent leadership stories belong to the hopes and unfulfilled desires of the authors and narrators that tell those stories.
Leadership, be warned: people do as they do. It is often they do what they shouldn’t be doing.
Leadership must be socially responsible. Social responsibility, however, cannot unduly impose. Additional research is necessary to understand how social responsibility can be tweaked to coincide with the ends and means of objective organizational outcomes and goals.
Leadership is a social construction whose framework varies by the context of the individual observer. The ethics you want to or think you see in a leader are only a mirror: a leader is the aggregate ego of the raging egos upholding the pedestal.
A leader encourages enthusiasm. Nurture a forum of creativity: involve everyone in a meeting, even if the meeting goes too long. Be warned: enthusiasm may wane.
Leadership is a woman. Her opportunities grow within. She is skeptical. She explores excellence passionately. Entrepreneurship is her special way. She nurtures. She works at home before working at work. Men never listen to women.
Leadership needs more stylistic categories. Color palates vary. Personal histories matter.
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Leadership makes no sense when studied outside the context of its particular group: a leader reflects the collective psychology, prioritized values, and accepted appearances of that group. Forcibly removing differences, therefore, makes it so much easier to know who the leader is.
Leadership is a paradigm, a distinguishing set of traits, that when measured correctly definitively discerns the level to which leadership sits apart from and among everyone else, within itself, and amidst others like it. Unfortunately, no research exists that can systematically measure the attributes under consideration in this study. ____________________ 1 The imagery and language in these entries about leadership are derived from articles, books,
surveys, interviews, learning modules, conference materials, industry blogs, dissertations, and presentations about leadership and leadership theory. Comparisons, analogies, and imagery are rooted in the source text or presented as logical extensions of the source text to emphasize an underlying truth.
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SPECIAL THANKS TO Daniel Wallace The Creative Writing Program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill & Arts Everywhere, whose generous support has made this issue possible The Carolina Quarterly is delighted to announce that we will soon be officially housed under the Department of English and Comparative Literature at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Many thanks to the department staff and, particularly, Department Chair Mary Floyd-Wilson for the time and care they have put into this process.
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