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 2019 V O L U M E 68.2
E DI TO RS- I N - C H I E F
Sarah George-Waterfield Kylan Rice F I C T I O N E DI TO RS
Paul Blom Matthew Duncan P O E T RY E DI TO R
Calvin Olsen N O N - F I C T I O N E D ITO R
Travis Alexander RE V I E WS E DI TO R
Ben Murphy MA N AG I N G E DI TOR
Evan Miles
MO RE O N L I N E AT
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ON THE COVER
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COVER DESIGN Sarah George-Waterfield READERS Kelly Copolo Katie Leonard Ben Penley
SUBMISSIONS
Sydney Ponthier
The Carolina Quarterly welcomes submissions of
Kylan Rice
unpublished fiction, poetry, non-fiction, book reviews, and visual art. Manuscripts and editorial or business correspondence should be addressed to the appropriate genre editor at Carolina Quarterly, Greenlaw Hall CB #3520, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC
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INDEXING The Carolina Quarterly is indexed in the Book Review
Kacey Rigsby Sarah White
BOOK REVIEWERS Zach Metzger
Index, Poem Finder, Index to Periodical Fiction, American
Marcy Pedzwater
Humanities Index, and the Annual Bibliography of English
Carly Schnitzler
Language and Literature. Member Council of Literary Magazines and Presses. ISSN 0008-6797. Library of Congress catalogue card number 52019435.
Contents
Fall/Winter 2018 | VOLUME 68.1
FICTION KAREN ACKLAND Tell Me Something New 14 KATHERINE ANN DAVIS The Red-Flag Men 34 J. CHRIS ROBINSON Haircut 58 FAITH MERINO The Teacher 72 SHIRLEY SULLIVAN Three Quarters Gone 88
POETRY JILL BERGKAMP
Wildlife Premonition 9
The Peacock After Hysterectomy 10
Carambola Tree Lullaby 12
CONNOR YECK
Burn Pit 13
PETRARCH | LEE HARLIN BAHAN
327: Not leaping and hopping 30
333: Luke 20:34-35 32 NANCY KEATING
My Life Was the Size of My Life 53
Three Thrushes 54
RAYMOND BERTHELOT
Empty Spaces 55 Hummingbirds 56 MARK TUCKER
Warning — Toxic 57
S O N ATA P A L I U LY T Ė | I R E N A P R A I T I S
Paryčiais | Early Morning 100
Laikraštinis | Newspaper 102 JACQUELYN NASTI
Genesis 106
Caryatid 107
SM STUBBS
Learning to Shut Up 108
TRAVIS TRUAX
The Final Forest or What the Olympic
Peninsula Means to Me 122
The Retelling 123
Long-Gone 124 JACK STEWART
The Uses of Rain 125
LANE FALCON
Rehearsal 126
Interlude 127 ANGIE MACRI
How to Draw a Hungry Bear 129
LISA CALORO
Lost Men 130
JOSHUA MARTIN
Spills 128
Sashimi 156
SHEN HAOBO | LIANG YUJING 冰湖 | Frozen Lake 158 心是一尊虚伪的神 | The Heart is a False God 160 KATHY DAVIS
A Tender Dance 193
NONFICTION GAIL HAMMILL
I Sing the Body Mammalian 132
DAWN NEWTON
Juglans Nigra/(Eastern Black Walnut) 148
DON BOGEN
My Father Before I Was Born 164
TONY WHEDON
Survival Time 168
DANIEL UNCAPHER
The Blue Devil of North Mississippi 181
ART BRIAN D. COHEN Artist’s Statement 110 Angel 111 Air 112
Artisan 113 Chariot 114 Death 115 Earth 116 Fortitude 117 Star 118 World 119 Moon 120
REVIEWS MARCY PEDZWATER The Taiga Syndrome by Cristina Rivera Garza 196 ZACH METZGER Dog Symphony by Sam Munson 200
CARLY SCHNITZLER
Permanent Exhibit
by Matthew Vollmer 203
JILL BERGKAMP
Wildlife Premonition It started with the peahens who disappeared, and the chimney swift who soared out of the fireplace and thrashed at the wall before you caught and pitched its body back into the night, only for it to circle right back into the flue. It started with the peacock who limped after the hurricane, disappeared for awhile, then returned. With the discarded egg shells the swallow dropped away from her nest site to confuse predators. It started with the deer you had to dispatch because the police officer who showed up first said he wouldn’t discharge a firearm within the city limits, so you took a shovel to the back of its head. Only, when I ask, you admit that it didn’t die instantly. Tell me again how wild things know how to take care of themselves. The way you said the three Osceolas weren’t harbingers at the back window. That it was just a coincidence the house would be empty by Thanksgiving.
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The Peacock After Hysterectomy At first it hurts when someone asks: Why don’t you have another one? You remember the decision, solid as a boat whose oars you tucked inside before pushing it out to sea. But in the spring the world looks different. Circuit breakers trip and the moon pulls your steering wheel toward every motel on Old Dixie Highway where you can check in and smell the cold of freon on a bedspread with no history. Instead, you visit a park and see mournful eyed peahens scavenging the lot, skirting for crumbs. Each one more beautiful than you will ever be. Because it wasn’t the babies you nursed with their sticky thumbs in your hair, but that you no longer have a purpose. And you move to a different house, and a peacock who was born on the property starts to follow you everywhere. And you wonder what it’s baltic blue skin would look like split open, the way you’ve been. You wish you had asked to keep the fibroid-like barnacles tethered to your uterus, the carapace with no heart that you carried like a third ghost. And this creature with its gloriously long throat
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trumpets the first time you feed it, then flies to its tree to roost in the backyard and you think: Mine. And you wonder how such an exotic bird survives on beauty alone. If hardiness can be learned. You imagine a cross section through the chambers of its heart, the thick, tough underside of its skin, the muscle of its left ventricle, pumping.
JILL BERGKAMP
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SHIRLEY SULLIVAN
Three Quarters Gone They haven’t just lost their son to the war, but the body was found in four parts. That’s what the old man with the walker tells Kate. Both legs and an arm. Kate goes to funerals for people she doesn’t know. In the past three months she’s been to as many as one a week. She scans the local newspapers, searching the obituaries for the right one. The death of an older person holds little mystery; it’s more or less anticipated, often times hoped for. So she picks someone young. She also prefers a service that’s not too far away, since she doesn’t have a car and has to ride the bus. Today’s deceased is a young Marine Corps sergeant and she’s standing by a hall table in the family home, reflecting on his photograph, the boyish face, ears set out from his head like a child’s, uniform meticulously pressed. The old man next to her, his hair wavy and white as meringue, draws erect and salutes the younger man in the photo. He almost falls over. Lined up against the wall of the main room are women in black dresses seated in straight-backed chairs, their faces imprinted with sadness. They all seem certain of how they’re supposed to feel. Kate wants to feel that certainty, only she doesn’t. She feels curious. The stony afternoon light that filters through the curtains, that’s what feels sad to her–the Christmas tree in the corner of the room, topped with a tin star, the needles beginning to dry out and drop to the floor. She turns from the others and walks slowly through the unfamiliar house. Down the hall is a room with an old silvered mirror fitted to the front of an armoire. There on the dresser is a rosary and a prayer book with a faded ribbon marking a page. She sits on the edge of the bed and opens the book, reading passages until the phrases shame of the heathen and tongues of a serpent fly up and circle her head like a horde of wasps. The book is slammed shut and returned to its place. A drawer in the dresser hasn’t been shut all the way, revealing a layer of camisoles and a packet of yellowing letters tied up with string. The sound of approaching footsteps causes her to slide the drawer shut;
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people under these circumstances tend to carry things off. As she prepares to leave the room, she catches sight of herself in the mirror, the wide face and high, pure forehead, the daughter of an acclaimed urologist, waiting still, at age twenty-eight, for someone to hand her life instructions. The place is filling up with guests pushing toward a makeshift bar, a table protected by a simple white cloth where shot glasses of tequila are lined up in rows. She stands next to a man in sunglasses and the same uniform as the boy in the photo, his arms crossed over his chest. The name on his jacket reads “Sergeant Morrison.” “You a member of the family?” he asks, glancing at her. Hipless and freckled from the sun, his reddish hair lies flattened from his cap. She picks up a shot glass and glances around at the mostly Hispanic crowd. “Do I look like I’m a member of the family?” She downs the tequila. “Nope. You look like an Icelandic princess.” She feels the heat in her face, wondering if he’s mocking her. They both move on to a table with platters of ham and tamales and chili rellenos. He has a greedy way of scooping up handfuls of chips, forcefully dipping them into the guacamole. “I guess you might say he was family.” There’s guacamole on his chin. “We were in the same unit.” He stuffs a napkin into his shirt collar. “Where was that, Sergeant?” “Kandahar.” “Kandahar. Wow. I’ve never known anyone who’s been in the war.” He stops chewing. “You saying you didn’t know Manny?” “Manny?” Kate stands there, smiling a bright, vague smile, as though she can’t hear a thing. She gropes in her bag for a cigarette, then thinks better of it. “I knew this girl once, when I lived in L.A.,” he says after a pause, “her name was Elizabeth. Went to a fancy school. Maybe you went to that school. She had scars on her wrists, same as you. Sometimes this girl, Elizabeth, she’d ride the bus late at night, let strangers feel her up there in the dark.” SHIRLEY SULLIVAN
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“How did you know this girl?” her gaze level. “Met her on the Metro.” It has been three months since Dr. Amar walked her to her father’s waiting sedan, sparkling from a recent polish, and handed over her suitcase. Her stay at Hollinswood was over. “There she is,” her father said, in a jaunty hat and an eagerness she recognized, knowing he was trying to conceal his concern. “She’s going to be just fine.” “Absolutely,” Dr. Amar said, smiling. “That’s what she’s going to be. Just fine.” That first time she met Dr. Amar, his given name was Stefan, she wondered if he was Spanish, or maybe Lebanese. What she knew for certain is that her heart had flown right out of her, like she was sixteen all over again. For their meetings together Kate wore a sheer, blue-flowered tunic with no bra and nail polish gold as a sun-warmed day. As the days passed and his response to her was not what she’d hoped for, she affected a brazen sexual aggression, recounting the times she had sex for money in a sea-of-beige room at the Hyatt Regency. She described in detail the different services she was asked to perform. Stefan kept in rhythm with her words by tapping his pencil against his lower lip, then asked if she thought her actions were a way of punishing herself. “For what?” she asked. Crossing her legs, she changed the subject. “You keep any grass in that drawer? That drawer you keep locked. No? Okay. What do you keep in there, anyway? Hustler? Gay Men?” There, a flicker of a smile. “Did I ever tell you about the island I inhabit?” she asked.” Well, it’s true, and since it’s guarded by the Wooly Mammoths, I can’t escape and swim to the mainland. I’m stuck there.” “Let’s talk about your attempted suicide,” he said. “Once, I only did it once, but I didn’t plan it right,” she said. “I did it in the middle of the afternoon, on the floor of my apartment. I spread towels down in the kitchen so the blood wouldn’t stain the tile, and swiped at my wrists with a kitchen knife. I lay there waiting for the deity who would lead me to the white light festival. Only it was Mrs. Hutchinson, from the floor below, who found me and called 911.” He chewed on the
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eraser and nodded his head. “So maybe you just wanted the attention?” “Maybe not,” she smiled hugely. He would sometimes ask, “what is it you hope to gain here?” “To claim back the belief in infinite possibilities, of course.” “Ah, yes,” he would say, and she wondered what he was really thinking. Since he was good-looking, great looking, with unkempt hair and tight jeans, not to mention the accent, her mind often wandered during their sessions. She imagined trips to the Bosnian coast where she discovered he’d lived and gone to some university no one had ever heard of, the two of them drinking vodka on a hotel balcony, cruising the open air markets, exploring the caves of the Adriatic as the light moved through the water, the colors changing as they descended. Her fear of the sea abated by holding tight to his arm. When the hour ended, he reached out and shook her hand. “See you next time.” Then he turned back to his notes. What a lovely shelter he’d made for himself; no one could interfere with it. On her last day there she picked up a wooden paper weight from the top of his desk, slipping it in a pocket and telling herself it wasn’t a real theft. She just hoped it would create some confusion in his mind. No one made a fuss about it, since things were always disappearing from all over the place – sneakers, tampax. Whatever was lying around. On visiting day Kate sat in the garden with her parents in large wicker chairs set out by the staff. The three of them sat under the cherry trees. There was an abundance of tiny white butterflies and bugs that nibbled on her arms. There were brilliant beds of dahlias and beyond the garden, but within sight, a sunlit lake where fishermen could be seen casting for trout. Her mother, her small frame practically lost in the chair, fanned herself with a leaf that had fallen from a tree. “What has she done to herself?” she asked her husband. “Don’t they let her fix her hair? Or wear lipstick? She looks like one of those Amish women.” “She’s fine,” her father said, “and lovely as ever,” his words an erasure somehow, amputating the past. “She’ll never marry at this rate.” She brought lettuce and tomato SHIRLEY SULLIVAN
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sandwiches, and everyone ate off their laps, dabbing at their lips with paper napkins. Kate ate dutifully, searching the trees. Where are you, little yellow orioles? Pygmy nuthatches? Tiny warblers? She imagined racing across the perfectly-tended lawn, her own wings unfurling, lifting off with the currents. Airborne at last. The sergeant is at her side again. “Is there anything to do in this town?” “Like what?” she asks, hands on her hips. “I’d like to take you somewhere. Buy you a drink.” “Like maybe the Hyatt Regency?” “That could work.” Suddenly cheered by this man, she thinks, why not. It’s Christmas, there are leftovers in the fridge. “Okay.” “Yeah?” “I have a bottle of really good scotch at my place.” “Well, goddamn.” He takes her by the hand and pulls her through the crowd until he finds the dead boy’s mother. “Mrs. Salazar, I want you to meet a friend of mine.” Kate steps forward. The woman, no longer a stranger, takes her in her arms. Kate feels the warm moist breath on her cheek. For a moment the two women remain in the embrace, caught in a world beyond their making. Outside the house, the afternoon has passed. Leaving behind a family in ruin, they walk without speaking or touching, moving through shadows from overhead pine branches until they reach the short distance to her apartment. Up two flights of stairs, she inserts the key in the lock and pushes the door open. “Sorry for the mess. I wasn’t expecting company.” She turns on a lamp and closes the door to the bedroom. A balsam pine stands in the living room, hung with colored lights and angels made of flaxen yarn. “What’s your first name?” His cheeks are pink with the cold. “Jimmy. Who’re you again?” She plugs in the tree lights, pleased with the glow they cast like
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twilight inside the room. She slips out of her jacket. He removes his sunglasses and his eyes, a deep shade of blue, are all over her. “Merry Christmas.” She rubs the back of her neck beneath the blondish hair. Since she’s not on the ground floor, there are no curtains at the windows of her apartment; anyone can look in. From the kitchen, separated from the living room by a cluttered counter, comes the highpitched twill of a bird, like a small signal of distress. “I’m here, Benny,” Kate says as she enters the kitchen. An orange-colored canary watches her every move from a perch inside his cage. There’s a soft little peep as Benny drops to the floor of his cage, seizing a seed. Kate presses a finger through the bars to rub his head. “Silly bird,” she says affectionately as he rustles his feathers. She takes a tray of ice from the fridge and sets out two glasses. “You want anything with your scotch?” Jimmy slips out of his jacket and drops it on a chair. He unbuttons the top buttons of his shirt, then shakes a cigarette out of a pack and lights it, blowing smoke at the ceiling. “Nope.” As she pours the drinks, Kate imagines tomorrow. Defrosting the chicken in the freezer and roasting it in the oven. She can use her good linen napkins. The two of them, a dinner together, with candles, like regular people. She hands him a glass. Maybe they’ll go to the movies, buy popcorn, kiss the whole time. “This is good,” he says. “You know how good this is? Being here with you? Usually if I have a drink with a woman, and I don’t agree to see her again, my lighter usually disappears.” He takes a long pull from his drink. “So how come so many books? You a writer or something?” She’d have liked to have been a journalist and written about things in Barcelona, Stockholm, Berlin. Gone to Sarajevo. Learned the language, blended in, made a difference. “I’m a translator.” Another lie, the unwelcome inheritance of her mother’s ambitions. She’s a substitute teacher, hoping for a permanent position. “Get outta here. You speak Dori?” “Do you?” SHIRLEY SULLIVAN
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“I can say fuck off.” “I’ll bet you can. Was your father in the military?” He passes a hand over his eyes and tells her his father was an evangelist. The whole family traveled through backwater towns in a van they sometimes slept in, convinced their delivered word would bring all doubters to Jesus. She walks to the sofa and drops down next to him, clasping her arms around her legs. She still feels the repression of her own Catholic upbringing, like a blood red suit she’s been sewn into. “Do you go to church?” she asks. He tells her he went inside a mosque once, after hearing the morning call to prayer broadcast over a loud speaker. Rows of people on their knees, heads to the floor. How, at first, he thought it was cool, but then began to wonder if the young man in the front row responsible for the IEDs that were blowing up his buddies. “That your family?” he asks, pointing to a group of photos on a small table by the window. He strolls over and picks one up. “Well, looka here. It’s Kate at age ten on a pony named Tim, long blonde braids halfway down her back.” He puts it down and selects the one of her grandparents holding hands on their wide porch, surrounded by a silver dust light. “Little girl of privilege,” he says. “Your teachers liked you. Who’s this?” It’s her father in his officer’s uniform. “What war was he in?” Jimmy wants to know. She tells him her father was part of a trauma unit in Viet Nam, but seldom talked about it. Things came out, though, as she got older. The confusion and remorse. Skies turned orange and black as villages erupted in flames. How it became a sport for the ground troops to kill the monkeys and the parrots, shooting them right out of the trees. She read what could be bought on the river, the women and the drugs. The men, opiated, dazed, exhausted from lack of sleep. The jungle a green death. There were dances at the hospital. Garlands of ivy adorned the doorways. She wore her summer party dress, while from the terrace piano music floated in through French doors. She had closed her eyes, pretending that Stefan was her partner. Other times she pretended
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her partners were baboons. The detachment made it easier, somehow, to deal with their hopeful faces. One, two, three. One, two, three. Around they went. Rapturous. Later they ate vanilla ice cream, the smell of jasmine vine permeating the air. Jimmy tosses off the rest of his drink. “You a nice girl?” His blue eyes shine with expectation. “Are you a hero?” she asks . Jimmy fiddles with his watch, explaining that he was just one more faceless grunt standing on a road knocking the dust off his boots, waiting to be suited up after his friend Salazar got hit. How they had to carry him off the road in pieces after the IED he’d been working on blew. Manny-fuckin’-Salazar. They hadn’t even been looking when it happened. “That’s what you do? You dismantle bombs?” Eyes huge, she fingers the pearls at her neck, cool against her skin. He tells her how they lived never knowing who was civilian or who was military. If the guy on the side of the road was holding a cell phone or a detonator that looked like one. She listens to stories of how tough the sandstorms were. The best they could do was play the radio all night. Take the meds the docs handed out. The Zoloft and the Valium. She’s on Zoloft. He flashes a smile. “Is this turning you on?” He touches her hair. “Hmm? Like checking out funerals? Mingling with the dead?” She moves his hand away from her hair. He’s different than the other men she’s brought to her apartment. By and large they’ve been younger and less focused, full of compliments in the beginning, careful to wash themselves in the bathroom as soon as they’ve finished in bed. Jimmy sits forward, his elbows on his knees, doing something with his shoelaces. He’s been extended, he’ll be back over there in a week. He doesn’t mind. They look off in different directions. “So, what’s next?” he asks. “More liquor.” Kate pushes off the sofa and heads to the kitchSHIRLEY SULLIVAN
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en. Past the window the city lights glimmer through a fuzzy dark. It’s started to snow. “Who’s this?” Jimmy has followed her into the kitchen and spying the canary cage, bumps it with his arm, causing the bird to spread his wings in alarm. She walks quickly to the cage and steadies it. “It’s okay, Benny.” “Benny, huh? Birds make me nervous. They never shut up. Right, Benny? You ever shut up?” “He’s a good friend. I had a cat for a while, but he didn’t belong to me. He went back to his real owner.” “Yeah?” The sleeves of his shirt are rolled up. She starts to refill their glasses when he takes her hands, putting them behind her, holding her captive. “I’ve been dreaming about you,” he says. With one hand on her throat, Jimmy slides his tongue deep inside her mouth. “Know what I’m thinking?” he asks. “We should get loaded. I’ve got some X. Know what that is? Sure you do. I figure you for one of those chicks who wants to get in over her head.” “I’ve never done street drugs,” Kate says. “You ought to. Drugs are a way of mourning. Betcha didn’t know that. And you don’t have to get dolled up for it. Don’t have to wear mom’s pearls or even leave the house.” She gives herself up to the hum of the radiator, the rustle of Benny’s feathers. “I know what you want, all you girls, all dressed up in your good dresses. You and Elizabeth, you want danger in your lives. Your skin’s rippling with it. I can do that for you. I’ll feed you green candy. Next time I’ll feed you smack. I’ll take your clothes off, lay them on the floor real careful, I won’t rip anything.” He rubs his hand over his mouth. She’s in the Adriatic and the water’s turning dark. She can no longer see the surface. “I’ll do everything.” He pulls her to the sofa. “Sit here, in my lap.” He finds the buttons to open her dress. “Raise your arms. Good, you’re my good little bad girl. Jesus, look at you. Now close your eyes and we’ll pretend we’re sailing on that river you talked about, with the monkeys watching from the banks. You can see their tails, like dangling ropes.
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And paper lanterns and orchids growing on the masts. I won’t hurt you. I’ll take care of you, fuck you all the way to the South China Sea.” When she next opens her eyes it’s still dark although she knows it must be dawn. Last night’s snow has chilled the room. Jimmy lies next to her, his breathing loud and irregular. She clicks on the lamp next to the bed and reads the time. Five o’clock. She sits up, feeling exhausted and headachy. Maybe if she starts the coffee. She rises and walks naked and barefoot through the living room, where the tv is still on with no sound, just images dancing across the screen, then on into the kitchen, where she finds Benny on the floor of his cage, his feet curled, his head at an odd angle. There’s enough light from the Christmas tree to see he’s beyond her help. At the window she looks out. There’s no one in the street, only a man at the window of a neighboring apartment, both his hands to the glass, looking back. There’s a wounded sound coming from inside her head. Back in the bedroom, she grabs her robe. She sits in a rocking chair facing the bed and rocks, holding the edges of her robe tightly together. She waits. She calls his name. When there’s no response, she calls to him again. His eyes open. “Did you kill Benny?” The bedsprings give as he gets up. He looks thinner in this light, thinner than he did last night. “Did I?” he asks. Then he tells her that he got up in the middle of the night to watch television and the bird kept calling out. Jimmy’s eyes are still and steady, as if some sediment has settled, allowing her to see, not remorse, but that killing is something that rises naturally to the surface of life. There’s a moment of transference, an understanding of their identities, it’s there in the curve of his mouth, that they are not teacher and soldier, but someone’s daughter, floating beneath the surface, and a warrior turned feral. He reaches out and strokes her hair, automatically, with an unpracticed tenderness. She listens as he crosses the room to the bathroom to urinate, wash his hands, pull on his clothes. She hears him say something about Salazar being the lucky one, hears the door open and close, followed by footsteps in the hall and down the stairs. SHIRLEY SULLIVAN
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The world isn’t even up yet, hasn’t had its coffee. She jerks up. Where are you, little dark-eyed Junko? White-winged Crossbill? In response, a sound of stirring wings. Fly, she cries, it’s no longer safe. She’s back in the kitchen and not yet ready to touch Benny. She returns to the window in time to see Jimmy step off the curb and into the frozen road. The road is narrow and not well-traveled. A short distance ahead is a stand of trees in pale winter leaf and dusted with snow. He removes his beret from a pocket and pulls it down on his head then takes off in a run. He runs with a languid swiftness. If he were to lose his way and wander off the road, deep into the trees, the Wooly Mammoths could be waiting. As soon as it’s daylight, Mrs. Hutchison and her arthritic black Lab will emerge from their first-floor apartment. They’ll move slowly up the sidewalk, the older woman’s slip visible beneath the hem of her dress. And Kate will call after her. By then, she’ll have removed Benny from his cage, stroking the soft feathers in the same way Jimmy stroked her hair. She’ll have placed him in an empty Kleenex box and taken him across the way for burial where the two women will stand together and weep. Mrs. Hutchinson will give her a mama bear hug. In a little while, she’ll turn on the lights in the apartment, but not yet. There’s plenty of time. For now, she’ll just watch at the window, with the cascade of snowflakes like a white light festival. Watch carefully so no one else dies when she’s not looking.
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BRIAN D. COHEN
The Fool’s Journey The Fool’s Journey is a book of twenty-three etchings of the major arcana of the traditional tarot deck (and including a title page). Modeled on Renaissance cosmography, the book is a visual portrayal of a philosophical world-view, each card presenting a universal archetype of human experience and a parallel, symbolic element or quality of the physical world. In my interpretation I took the major arcana more or less as is, inserting the four elements in place of the emperor, empress, priestess, and hierophant, who didn’t really play much role in my life, and using my own image as the Fool. The text for the book is the titles of the cards themselves. Angel is the second to last card and the apogee of spiritual ascent, while the last card, World, returns us to the place we started and discover anew. In the context of the Renaissance notion of cosmography, that pictures are a model of the world, the tarot developed. In addition to religious and devotional images among the several uses of the earliest prints made in Europe in the 15th C. were as Tarochi cards.The game of Trionfi (Triumphs) played with Tarochi cards was a sort of Renaissance allegorical “The Game of Life” with all its virtues and temptations, the cards each depicting emblems in a succession of “triumph” over the preceding image. The trump (picture) cards evolved into the 22 major arcana, representing archetypes of a path of spiritual ascension and evolution, and over the past 500 years successive artists would create new decks on that set pattern. In tracing the various developments and interpretations of the tarot to the present day, I crafted my own take on this tradition, incorporating imagery from my own experience and vision to this form. The Renaissance notion of cosmography, that pictures can be a simulacrum of the world and not just a representation of it, appeals to me. I am fascinated by the attempt to embrace philosophical themes through visual images and by the historic conflation ofphysics and metaphysics. It is a naïve or at least anachronistic view. Each image is etching and calligraphy on handmade 12 x 9 inch paper.
Angel
BRIAN D. COHEN
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Air
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Contributors
Spring/Summer 2019 V O LU M E 68.2
K A R E N A C K L A N D ’ S writing has appeared in Catamaran Literary Review, Story Quarterly, Summerset Review, Salon, and the Ploughshares and Prairie Schooner blogs. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and earned an MFA from Pacific University. “Tell Me Something New” is part of a story collection about the things that haunt us. Karen lives with her husband in Santa Cruz, California. L E E H A R L I N B A H A N will discuss her second collection of Petrarch translations, To Wrestle with the Angel (Finishing Line Press, 2018), at the 2019 North American Review Writing Conference. Her first, A Year of Mourning, was a special honoree for the 2016 Able Muse Book Award. Lee has new work forthcoming in Artful Dodge and Think. J I L L B E R G K A M P lives with her husband and rescue dog, Ruby, in the heart
of North Carolina. Her work has most recently been published in The Cresset, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Rattle, and Sugar House Review. R A Y M O N D B E R T H E L O T has served as the Parks Program Manager for the Louisiana Office of State Parks for over twenty years. He oversees educational and interpretive programming representing the natural and cultural resources of the State Parks system. He also teaches Louisiana History as an adjunct faculty member at Baton Rouge Community College. Originally from New Orleans, Mr. Berthelot worked in the Archives Department at Xavier University of Louisiana for several years before moving to Baton Rouge. He holds BA degrees in History and Political Science from the University of New Orleans and an MA in History from Louisiana State University. D O N B O G E N is the Nathaniel Ropes Professor Emeritus at the University of Cincinnati, he has two recent lyric essays in Copper Nickel and poems in The Yale Review, with a new essay forthcoming in Hotel Amerika. His website is www. donbogen.com. L I S A C A L O R O teaches writing and poetry at a small community college in the Catskills. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Slant, Jelly Bucket, and Evening Street Review, among other journals. When she is not teaching or writing poetry, she is dealing with her children’s pre-teen drama and her neurotic dog’s whimpering by perfecting the art of alcoholic beverages. You can find her on weeknights behind the bar of a tavern practicing poetry and cocktails on the locals.
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B R I A N D . C O H E N is a printmaker, painter, writer, and educator. He founded Bridge Press, publisher of limited edition artist’s books and etchings, in 1989. K A T H E R I N E A N N D A V I S is a writer from Wisconsin who serves as Senior Prose Editor for 3Elements Literary Review. Her fiction has appeared in Gigantic Sequins, Nat. Brut, Sycamore Review, and elsewhere, and “The Red-Flag Men” is from the first chapter of her recently completed novel. For more about her work and background, visit katherineanndavis.com. K A T H Y D A V I S ’ S work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Blackbird, Nashville Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Southern Review, storySouth and other journals. She lives in Richmond, VA, where she works for a nonprofit that helps students in need find the financial resources to continue their education beyond high school. L A N E F A L C O N ’ S poems are forthcoming or have been published in American Poetry Journal, The Chattahoochee Review, December, Fifth Wednesday Journal, the Journal, RHINO, Spoon River Poetry Review, and more. Her poetry was also anthologized in antiBODY: An Online Anthology of Poetry & Medicine. She lives in Alexandria, VA with her two young children. G A I L H A M M I L L is an Assistant Professor of English at the American University
in Dubai. Having been, in a former life, a dancer at the School of American Ballet and a teacher at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, Gail has had a lifelong interest in the expressive potential of the human body. She writes about literature and experience of the body in connection with gender, sacrifice, and spirituality. Her work has appeared in Mothers Always Write and The Haiku Foundation. N A N C Y K E A T I N G ’ S poetry has been published in several anthologies and literary magazines including New Letters, “Poetry Daily,” Southwest Review, The Gettysburg Review (pending), The Southampton Review, Tar River Poetry, Potomac Review, Crab Creek Review, and others. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she is completing an MFA at Stony Brook University. L I A N G Y U J I N G grew up in China and is currently a PhD candidate at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His recent books of translation include Zero Distance: New Poetry from China (Tinfish Press) and Dai Weina’s Loving You at the Speed of a Snail Traveling around the World (Cold Hub Press). A N G I E M A C R I is the author of Underwater Panther (Southeast Missouri State CONTRIBUTORS
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University), winner of the Cowles Poetry Book Prize, and Fear Nothing of the Future or the Past (Finishing Line). Her recent work appears in The Journal, Quiddity, and The Southern Review. An Arkansas Arts Council fellow, she lives in Hot Springs. Find her online at angiemacri.wordpress.com A PhD student in creative writing at Georgia State University, J O S H U A M A R T I N has published or has poems forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review, Borderlands: The Texas Poetry Review, Salamander, Nashville Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Florida Review Online, Raleigh Review, and elsewhere. He was recently awarded a fellowship to the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and is currently working on his dissertation. F A I T H M E R I N O ’ S short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Harpur Palate, Crab Orchard Review, Notre Dame Review, and The Moth, among others. A 2017 WxW fellow, her first novel is scheduled for release in 2020. She lives in Sacramento with her husband, two sons, and two elderly, high-needs dogs. J A C Q U E L Y N R O C H E L L E N A S T I lives and works in New Orleans. She recently
received her MFA in Poetry from the University of New Orleans, where she won the 2018 Maxine and Joseph Cassin Prize for best poetry thesis. Her poems can be found, or are forthcoming, in The Pinch, New Orleans Review, and elsewhere. D A W N N E W T O N was trained as a writer of fiction, receiving an M.A. in Writing from the Johns Hopkins University, but she swerved into the genre of memoir as a result of a cancer diagnosis. She has published short stories, essays, and poems in 1966: A Journal of Creative Nonfiction, Gargoyle, the Baltimore Review, and The South Carolina Review. “Juglans Nigra” received an honorable mention in the 2018 Gulf Coast Nonfiction Contest. Dawn’s memoir Winded is forthcoming from Apprentice House Press in the Fall of 2019. Dawn is the mother of three children, now fully grown. She lives in East Lansing with her husband, Tim Dalton; her dog, Clover; and scads of dog hair. Read her blog at dawnmarienewton.com. S O N A T A P A L I U L Y T Ė is a contemporary Lithuanian poet and translator. Her book Sonatos won the Salomėja Nėris prize (a best book of the year award). She lives in Vilnius, Lithuania. F R A N C E S C O P E T R A R C A (1304–1374), also known as Petrarch, largely is remembered today for a book officially titled Rerum vulgarium fragmenta. Its 366 poems detail how the speaker unrequitedly carried a torch for a beautiful, married, and devout woman named Laura while she was alive, and for a quarter-century after she died of bubonic plague. I R E N A P R A I T I S is a poet and translator. A professor of creative writing and
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literature at California State University, Fullerton, her most recent book is Rods and Koans (Red Mountain Press, 2018). J . C H R I S R O B I N S O N is a writer from North Carolina living in Brooklyn. His
writing has appeared in 3:AM Magazine and The Brooklyn Quarterly. He is currently at work on a novel. S H E N H A O B O , born in 1976, is considered one of the most controversial voices among the new generation of Chinese poets for being both wickedly erotic and politically satirical in his poetry. His first collection Great Evil in the Heart (2004) was banned and he went abroad for a few months to escape arrest. As the leading poet of the Lower Body group, he is the author of seven poetry collections. J A C K S T E W A R T was educated at the University of Alabama and Emory University.
From 1992–95 he was a Brittain Fellow at The Georgia Institute of Technology. His work has appeared in Poetry, The American Literary Review, The Dark Horse Review, A New Ulster, The Southern Humanities Review, and other journals and anthologies, most recently in New Welsh Reader and Image. He lives in Coconut Creek, Florida, and teaches at Pine Crest School. S M S T U B B S is the co-owner of a bar in Brooklyn, NY. He grew up in South Florida, attended Wake Forest University and later received an MFA in poetry from Indiana University. He is the recipient of a scholarship to Bread Loaf and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for Best New Poets. Poems have appeared in The Pinch, The Normal School, Jabberwock Review, Cherry Tree, Poetry Northwest, Opossum, Atticus Review, and The Bookends Review. S H I R L E Y S U L L I V A N ’ S work has appeared in the Tampa Review, The Fiddlehead, Sou’wester, Harpur Palate, Anomaly Literary Journal, The Fourth River, Quiddity International Literary Journal, Halcyon, Duende, Pisgah Review, Writing on the Wind: An Anthology of West Texas Women Writers, and others. Sullivan lives in southern New Mexico, where it is believed playful spirits inhabit the winds that sweep across the land, rearranging the lightning bolts to create their own show. T R A V I S T R U A X grew up in Virginia and Oklahoma and spent most of his
twenties working in various national parks out west. A graduate of Southeastern Oklahoma State University, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in Salamander, Quarterly West, The Pinch, Sonora Review and Bird’s Thumb. He lives in Bozeman, Montana.
M A R K T U C K E R is an Australian writer of poetry and short fiction who also CONTRIBUTORS
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writes nonfiction as a columnist for runnerstribe.com and as an occasional contributor to craftypint.com. His poetry has appeared in Gargouille, The Offbeat, Cake Magazine, The Wax Paper, and elsewhere. Mark received his Master’s Degree in Education from Butler University (Indianapolis). D A N I E L U N C A P H E R is a Sparks Fellow at Notre Dame, where he received his MFA. A disabled bisexual from North Mississippi, his work has appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, Tin House Online, Baltimore Review, Penn Review, and others. T O N Y W H E D O N is a jazz trombonist, a painter, essayist and poet. His essays and poetry have a appeared in American Poetry Review, Harpers, Agni, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. The author of two essay collections and four books of poetry from Mid List, Fomite, and Green Writers Press, he recently completed a third essay collection about Georgia’s Low Country. He is a retired professor of Creative Writing at the University of Northern Vermont, and a founding editor of Green Mountains Review. Tony lives in Darien, Georgia and Montgomery, Vermont. where he performs with the poetry/jazz ensemble PoJazz. C O N N O R Y E C K ’ S poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, Columbia Journal, JuxtaProse, phoebe, The Southampton Review: Online, and Crab Orchard Review, for which he received the Allison Joseph Poetry Prize. An MFA candidate at Western Michigan University, he is currently Poetry Editor at Third Coast.
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