Cellar Door Spring 2011

cellardoor ART

FICTION

POETRY

Appelbaum

Bearman

Carlstrom

Hall Jones Long Raskullnecz Vesral

Banks Dehmer Holmes

Coulter Halloran Hoang Mishra Sorosiak Vestal

Hutcheson

Jones MacNair Rose Roux

Wainer

INTERVIEW WITH

CATHY SMITH BOWERS

spring m m xi

FREE

s p r i n g m m x i

Cover: Silhouette from Shweta Mishra's The Couple

SPRING MMX I (il

STAFF EDITOR-IN_CHIEF

MARIA CARLOS

PRODUCTION

EDITOR

SAMUEL V LEMLEY

FACULTY

ADVISOR

MICHAEL

FICTION

MCFEE

EDITOR ART

EDITOR

STEPHANIE KOMOSKI WILSON

SAYRE

POETRY

EDITOR

ALiSHA GARD

FICTION

ART CANNON

ALLEN GRAYSON

JORDAN MARIA

POETRY

BLAND CALEB AGNEW

CASTELLOE DEVLIN

SAMANTHA

RODAN

JOE AlBERNAZ

SARAH BUFKIN WENDY

LU

MICHELA

WAGNER

ELLA OTT HANNAH

RIDDLE

TREASURER DESIGN

& LAYOUT WEB MASTER

MARIA CARLOS SAMUEL V LEMLEY

JORDY

ISENHOUR

CONTENTS ... 4

JUDGES AWARDS.

.5

ART.

.7

POETRY

23

..

. .. 3 7

FICTION.

.6 9

INTERVIEW

7 8

CONTRIBUTORS""

COVER: Silhouette

from

Mlshra

Shw

eta's The Couple

JUDGES SHAFFEH lives and works in Asheville, NC. He is the son artist Cher Shaffer and learned from a number ~f pioneering artists in this genre as a youth. He has an extensive background ~n writing and music, performing at such notable events as South ,By Southw:~ In [ART]GABRIEL

of renowned

Austin,TX

folk/visionary

and Around The Coyote

Festival

in Chicago, IL. Gabriel

his work across the country and sold hundreds stars, celebrities,

politicians, best selling authors,

galleries and museums,

out various major cities, nationally and internationally. of magazines,

He has appeared

rock

through. in dozens

and blogs such as Raw Vision, Art Papers. Traditional Digest, NY Arts Magazine, The Huffington Post An Nahar (Beru-

newspapers

Home,Architectural it, Lebanon's

has exhibited

of works of art to collectors.

most prestigious

newspaper),

US AifWOYS Magazine, Ca[e Royal, WNC In 2009 and 20 I 0, Gabriel was

Magazine, Lifelounge, C~Monster and juxtopoz. voted western

North

He is a graduate

where he studied Marianne

# I visual artist for the Best ofWNC

awards.

DAVID ROWELL is the deputy editor of the Washington Post

[FICTION]

Magazine.

Carolinas

of the University

creative writing

Gingher.

Pieces-~netion

a. Henry

of North

Carolina

at Chapel

under James Seay, Max Steele, Doris and nonfiction--he

has edited

Hill

Betts, and

have won the

Best American Shon Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Sports Writing, Best American TravelEssays, and New Stories From the South: The Year's Best His novel, The Train of Small Mercies, is being published this fall by Putnam, an imprint of Penguin USA Pushcart Prize, the

[POETHYj

Prize, and have been

CATHY SMITH BOWERS

re-printed

in

is a South Carolina native and is

currently serving as the North Carolina poet laureate, Smith Bowers received both her bachelor's and master's degrees in English from Winthrop University four books: The Love that Ended Yesterday in Texas (1992), Traveling in Time Danger (1999), A Book Minutes (2004), and The Candle I Hold Up to See You (2009). Smith Bowers has received a number of awards for both her poetry and her work as an educator. Of her poetry Goverin Rock Hill, Sc. She has published

or

nor Bev Perdue said, "Cathy's powerful

or

poems

open new avenues of thought

~re a reflection of the love of WOrds and learning." Cathy Smith Bowers lives near Asheville in Tryon, NC.

4

and

currently

-

AWARDS st

1

PERSPECTIVE, ZACHARY

I<%:

2nd

OF

GATHERING

DUMMIES,

GREGORY HALLORAN

« 3 rd

SUBURBAN ZACHARY

1st

2nd

I-

RAIL,

VESTAL

TI-IE FIRE UNDERFOOT, MAQELlNE

Z 0

VESTAL

RASKULINECZ

MASK, MEREDITH JONES

U u..

3rd

SAID THE FAIRY TO THE GIRL, SHANNON

I st

BEAMON

BY WA Y OF EXPLANATION, EVAN ROSE

~

CONCEPTION,

Ieu

EMILY BANKS

o 0..

3rd

LINES

ON THE 1970 U.N.M. BAYONET RIOTS,

MEREDITH JONES

-'

~

ART FROZEN WOMAN , SHWETA MISHRA:

81 THE

COUPLE,

SHWETA

MISHRA:

9/THE ART GALLERY, DENVER

CARLSTROM:

101 GATHERING

DUMMIES, LORAN

GREGORY

OF HAL-

10/ MEATS OF

OUR LABOB., PELBAUM:

JESSICAAP-

XX, JENNIE HOANG: 121 RIGHT THERE, SEANNIE COULTER: 131 TRAIL OF TB.ASH, GREGORY HALLORAN: 141 STUDY OF TB.ANSITION, MICHELLE WAINER: lSI NEW GROWTH, CARLIE SOROSIAK: 161 PEB.SPECTIVE, ZACHARY VESTAL 18/ SUBURBAN RAIL, ZACHARY VESTAL: 20

II

7

SHWETA

8

MISHRA - THE FROZEN WOMAN

1-------

4

SHWETA

MISHRA - THE COUPLE

9

c

DENVER CARLSTROM

GREGORY HALLORAN

10

- THE ART GALLERY

- GATHERING

OF DUMMIES

JESSICA APPELBAUM

- MEATS OF OUR LABOR

II

JENNIE HOANG

12

- XX

SEANNIE COULTER

- RIGHT THERE

13

GREGORY HALLORAN

14

_TRAIL OF TRASH

....

MICHELLE WAINER

- STUDY OFTRANSITION

IS

n

z» fTl;D ~r

m

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r-~ r20

WRlTEH'S BLOCK NOAH

DEHMER

The light hitting the trees looks so ... stupid.

22

POETRY WRlTEl{'S BLOCK, NOAH DEHMER: 221

ON THE WAY TO

MARS,

REBECCA HOLMES:

241 BETWEEN

THE

BUILDINGS, EVAN ROSE 251 BYWAY OF EXPLANATION, EVAN ROSE 261 LINES ON THE 1970 UN.M. BAYONET RIOTS , MEREDITH JONES:

28

ME AND MEASA

BOY, NOAH DEHMER: 291 CONCEPTION, EMILY BANKS: 301 BE IT WHAT IT IS, IT IS TI-IAT, GRACE MACNAIR: 3 I I LEAVES, DAVID HUTCHESON: 321 MARKS IN LIBRARY

BOOKS,

LIANA ROUX:

34/A CINKO TIlliE EN ROUTE TO THE

MOMA,

GRACE MACNAIR:

35

23

24

ONTI-IE WAY TO NIAItS

On the W3Y rc Mars we drill for me landing and do crosswordstrivia of a canon we're forgetting.

Fourth grade goes to srarlc.

REBECCA HOLMES

something about Mesopotamia, lions in the Coliseum, rhe meaning of thirrcen red and white stripes.

The gods live on the Olympus Mons, bur no one can remember what tickufope parade was supposed ro mean.

On the way ro Mars I dream of snow between srations and red run falling. steeples swallowed and quarries 611cd with slag of bridge and plow.

Everything is quier.

On the way I starr to forger the meaning of my namesomething

abour desire

or Possession. On me surhtce there will be no saints, no bones. Someday a school, lettuce growing under domes, bur no myth ripening to oil underground, no swords in Stones.

25

The rooftop barbecue? Bad idea.

BETWEEN THE BUILDINGS EVAN ROSE

Ir was like a city-sized Rube Goldberg machine, the kind where a marble hits a match, which lights a fuse. which burns down a toothpick cathedral, which tips a tall glass of bleach into a goldfish tank and kills the fish.

Then, somehow, the basement light comes on.

This was like that, except it was steak and it was my dad, easing meat onto the grill.

Then the grill. and the smoke, and the fat billowing up and into that space inside city blocks that no one ever sees. The barbecue lid, the lid clammed shut. The pinky caught and cleaved and bleeding. The German widow from across the no-man's land. one storey up, who wore sunglasses (for the smoker) and yelled from her kitchen window, My apartmenrz full of smoke!

There was the fire extinguisher, the family next door peering over their porcelain Buddha and shaking their heads.

There were the day care folks shepherding their glue-flecked wards into the street, Velcro shoes still undone.

There was the siren, the ticket, the steel-toed firemen, the unburdened elevator, and the lecture, the chemical-powdered

steaks.

It's funny how every disturbance, in its difference, contains irs end. And nota bene: like ell delicate things set going. these roo rerurned

to

balance as they were,

I think, a flaming strip of meat well worth the sight of all the little worlds tumbling our of place, then circling back again.

This is why people love a swing set, after all, or a hammock -- the rocking ever blissful only in the knowing it can stop.

26

BYWAYOF

'XP

ATI N

EVAN ROSE

As a green garbage truck shimmied across Franklin, I saw the white wing of something _ a ~[rd?

Snow owl? -

cauglu in the meral overbhe

:1{

the back.

I was streeching at the rime, bem at rhe waist and watching things upside down. And when me truck made irs rum onro .l...afuyenc,I could swear J saw the wing furl, unfurl and furl again.

J don't know. Ir was probably jusr rhe bumps.

Bur 1 still shouted, Assholcs! whidl made some people rum

[0

look at me

and the chunk of asphalt I had picked up to throw, maybe try and knock OUt the bird.

111cn, I became the menace. Was mat a Wing?

A piece of mattress? Docs it marrer?

I get so mixed up, sometimes,

in the space

berween hypotheticals and solid ground, asking myself ,uhar if? unci.! it is, or appears to be. and 'left lost in the departure.

27

It's usually more interesting there anyways, the place where I can be rwo things at once, or at least believe them both somehow.

Like when T said, lee's live together, then pretended you hadn't heard, or me woman who fell into the subway tracks and wasn't saved, or the night they threw me out of the Tribeca Tavern, after Isaw the bird, or didn't. I had latched one hand onro the chef's neck and the other onto the doorframe, was shouting over and over, I've got one more thing to say, till everyone shut up, someone lee go my collar, and in the drift of Yuengling, the strangers watching at the bar, I saw the shadow of a wing light across the wall. and that one more thing escaped me.

28

LINES ONTHE 1970 U.N.M.

BAYONET mOTS MEREDITH JONES

When the revolution came, my grandmother

was pregnant.

My mother would wear shoulder-pads, but Blanche wore stockings, spectacles, slick, groomed hair, and pairs of thick-heeled shoes that chewed each foot-bone until she walked. on stubs.

One small step for man - spat

OUt over transmission wires moon, to earth, to Blanche, sprawled shoeless 011 a woolen rug and listening for the news,

from man,

to

or for Ed's foorsreps, measured, slow, heralding the daily intrusion.

When me occupation came, the rcurine continued !.ike a rotary dial, each child fed, clothed, kenneled. Already the Seventies, already May, already Janie, crawling. TIle SUIl made New Mexico sharp-edged with hear, and forced a dull confinemenr, Blanche barefoot in her bunker.

That hear! And far away, the Guard, straight-shouldered at the university.

The sun moved sightless through the blinds, striking ar some buried Hint-seed in Blanche's soft belly. Janie would walk before she scepped outside, the yard cratered, unfamiliar. as far removed as decades, or the moon.

29

ME AND ME ASABOY NOAH

DEHMER

Through the doorless frame, escaping a light rain, you entered with the wind, whistling weak..

And saw the floorboards drifting into soil, me sea that houses float upon, and after some rime, sink intOresigned. exhausted, to drown.

And I am watching through the holes all around.

I am watching with a fierce stare, snipping the room ofirs textures and feeling them pour and rumble down into wherever it is these things go.

And in the next room, dust-yellow pages scattered where you lay spread across mother. and a scone fireplace where hands once opened to hold its Iighr.

And when you lenyou were like the moth at death that carries the soul out through the mouth.

3D

Ann Marie was a nymphomaniac, at least that's what Cissy told my mom and Joan, and Ctssy

CONCEPTION

was crazy, but sometimes she knew things nobody else did, and it was true Ann Marie wore her skirrs

EMILY BANKS

a little righr, and there was that old man on the park bench, and the curtains of her dorm room window left open while she rook off her cloches. Ann Marie, me lime girl who kneeled in glass rc prove her love for Jesus, all grown up, confessed. years later, to why she married Bill, that moment of indiscretion that grew and grew into the baby that died, and Brcrr said Bill found her rocking it, already blue, asking why it wasn't waking Lip. She must have thought Jesus was punishing her for not loving Him enough. As if He wasn't conceived in that same second, like Ann Marie was, decades before, when my grandma ran into the sailor who'd hitchhiked New York for her-he was staying at the Hophouse, she bought him a toothbrush and let him come inside.

My mother always told me to be careful, to

the women in her family are so fertile-so fertile, and so easy convince of One last drink or one more slice of cake while it's still moist, this race of women unable [0 say no to rhar extra scoop of ice cream, dripping with cool sweetness, uncontainable in its cone, to staying one more hour, kicking off your shoes, moving one Inch closer, then one rnore. to

We were conceived_how else could we have been?

No scientist would mix this kind of blood_ nor in Planned Parenthood clinics or honeymoon hotel rooms, but in that half-light that comes at the birth of morning when Jesus is still sleeping, with aU those wltispers of CarefUl, carefiti, carifUi growing full of breath and less insistent.

JI

BE ITWHAT IT IS , IT IS THAT GRACE MACNAIR

What there was nor . was the artist, warehouse apartment m San Francisco where her voice continued fa echo off the blue and gold walls even after she left. What there was not was the Russian mystic she recommended you meet at 4:00 am every morning to drink tea, meditate and do rai chi.

What there was not was your bedroom lircered with her diaphanous slips like breaths made visible in me cold. What there was not was your bathroom filled with her bright bottled tinctures and roots, pounded and ground.

There was you moved back to North Carolina laying stones you wished would smash your heart. There was you telling him about everything that was not, and him sometimes wishing you would open your mouth JUSt a bit wider so he could fit in a stone. There was no coffee one work day but there was still you with everything that was not. There was him listening, listening, listening, until there was him whirling around. small stone in hand, saying: Be it what it is. it is that!

Then there was still what there was not but not without laughter.

32

LEAVES DAVID HUTCHESON

The sun bares these little veins on rhelr backs. and I imagine them with razor blades in a bunch of little bathtubs, or puddles. or wherever leaves would go co kill themselves. all isolated on the ground without their shoots, branches. boughs, not to mention the tree that held them up even as

me ground

kept pulling the roots down and farmer down; and now they're crying, and they look ridiculous.

No, those leaves aren't fu.1lof pain. A pile of variegated brown, what's sad abour mar?

Even that Volvo pining in the shade over there is painted a shade of purple that makes it hard take it seriously. Pure novelty,

to

like those old typewriters in the window at Shaw's: Royal portables, decked-our in subdued neons of red. pink, orange. green, blue against the keyboards' functionaJ black and white.

J mostly s~il copy machines now,

these are just /or fim, the old days. said the owner, Shaw himself who was also either father or fairly older lover to rhe man moving his antique dolls from the back to stan his new boutique next door where it JUStwent vacant.

Last time she and I Went by, it was a Sunday. but we Stopped on the off chance the leather shop was open to see about a shoe repair.

JJ

It was closed. The whole hallway fuU of little stores was dark.

He'd finished it up. and good God there's nothing creepier than a dark doll shop their jeweled eyes unillumlnared, insisting on some dull joy in the dark, reminding me of laugh..ing maniacs, or the dog at the pound humping me fence (0 cry to get it off.

Make the best of it, said the fortune cookie a couple days after I "made her" end it and leave me after three good years. Or as I'd rather say, a couple days after my baby gone and left me, because that seems (0 master it so well, and makes it seem it's not my fault.

The Blues are so one-sided, helps with the catharsis, I guesswho'd want to hear about the ins and outs of who wronged whom from both sides and sort out all the possibilities of forgiving and forsaking?

The other side's JUStcoo exhaustingthe more 1 think. the more I think I can make her understand and get her back, and I get all up. like some dumb dog, a doll on a shelf, or a leaf. just to fall back down and wait,

J4

MARKS IN LIBRARY BOOKS LIANA ROUX

are penciled hieroglyphs of asterisk and virgule. arrow and underline for an exam, metered out iambs or the lassoed lazy feet of dactyls. a line drawn for a sonnet's turn, marginalia unasked or unanswered, the Iabyrinrh of Donne and Dosroyevsky, question marks where no foornore or gloss explains, some reader forever in the dark about Clyremnescra: sometimes graffiti tags the ririe page, wishing Martha many happy returns, and sometimes J leave marks for you, penciled little thi.ngs so you can erase them, afrerward, so only the ghostlines, the shallow silhouettes or eraser shaVings in the spine remain, so when you turn them in you'd aJmosr never know we were there.

35

Even with Frida waiting, wound in red, there is praise

AGINKOTREE EN ROUTE

TOTI-IE MOMA GRACE MACNAIR

left for xanrhophylls, carotenes - gold bullions distilled from cold-sfUntcd chlorophyll.

Redbud, hickory, birch and witch hazel mint the same color, yet the gingko's veined fans diminutive in all but the smallest baby hands - had yellow shining through their outer coats of green like earlier versions of a painting.

FICTION A SPIDER CAN WALKONWATER, SUSANNAH LONG, 381 THE MOURNIN G PAPER, JENNA HALLA I / SAID THE FAIRY TO THE GIRL, SHANNON BEAMON 471 THE CITY, ZACH ARYVESTAL 551 TI-IE FIRE UNDERF001~MADELINE 57/MASK, MEREDITH JONES' 63

LlNECZ

37

RASKU-

A SPIDEI{ CAl WALK ON

TER

SUSANNAH LONG

I

na morel swimming pool, JUSt off the 1-10/51 interchange in Phoenix, Arizona, a spider is Roaring with legs splayed-s-a non-native star fish spinning slow circles in the arrificlal blue. It's the beginning of su~nmcr.:I dusty 99掳, and there are plenty of people purposely Hearing in swimming pools in Phoenix. Some hold cans of beer. Little ones have water wings. Even the: dogs don't hesitate to jump in, chasing a lobbed tennis baU. But the spider would JUSt as soon return ro the web she has spun on me gate at the mouth of the pool deck It's just a temporary thing. until she finds a way home, but still preferable ro having an errant gust snap her into an ocean-s-a vast, overwhelming, tepid ocean. She Rails her legs wildly, treading water in eight directions, wears herself out, and Hears listlessly on the surface for a while. She sees how long she can keep her head under before having to lift it for a bream.

The self-pity doesn't last. Ir can't. Spiders don't cry, so self-pity is boring. And the chlorine is starring to make her legs itch.

And anyway, she knows rhar a spider can walk 011 Water. If she's not so heavy and nor so clumsy and the wind isn't blOWing and there are no kids playing in me pool, she can balance herself on the acute blue jelly and only wobble a little bit.

Then she's got some figuring [Q do. She can shift her weight [Q JUSt seven legs and tap a tentative foot OUt towards the wall, but the skin of the water might puncture and she would slide right through. Or, keepi,ng her body rigid, she can shimmy from side to side, propelling herself forward in miniscule increments.

This might go on for twenty minures. She mighr ger impatient. She mighr rwisr harder, spin in her Own eddy, and ger sucked under.

In a room at char same morel, JUSt off the 1-10/51 imerchange in Phoenix, Arizona, a woman is taking off her earrings while her six-year-old son jumps on the bed. She takes stock of herself in the mirror: the lines around her mouth, curls mat wont stay in a barrette, low breasts, the thick, purple bruise around her neck. She Sighs.A week before, it had been a chair. She'd fallen on the floor and he'd kicked the chair at her head and she blacked out. That time, she'd sworn mat it would be the last time.

Th:n ~is time he choked her on the bed while he had sex with her, because shed said no. He breathed hot in her ear and called her "baby," bur kept his hand around her throat the whole time So she ,,_, d 路1 h 'd c..u I . warre uno . e rauen as eep 38

FICTION

and packedJoey into the van and they drove and drove until it was day and she needed to sleep. They've been at me motel by the freeway for twa days while she figuresOut what to do next. She unrolls the wad of cash in her make-up bag and counts it again. Enough for three more nights. She thinks there must be another way-she just can't think of it right now.

She leans her head out of the bathroom so she can see Joey, a blanket around his shoulders as a cape, springing towards the ceiling like he might take off at any moment. He sees her watching his game.

"Look, mom, 10okJ" He jumps to the other queen-sized bed and smiles at her, a little surprised that he made it across the gap. She applauds and comes over so that he can now jump into her arms. They twirl. He lays his head on her shoulder, sudden.lyexhausted from all the flying he's been doing.

"Can we go home now?" he asks, wrapping a piece of her hair around his finger.

"I want to go home."

Shekissesthe top of his head and suggests they go for a swim first. While he gets his trunks on, she dials her husband's cell phone twice, but hangs up before it can connect. She unplugs the phone from the wall. putting on her swimsuit in the bathroom, she thinks this will probably be the last time she ever goes swimming.

She putS on fresh lipstick.

Still Boating, the spider is repeating her mantra: a spider can walk on water. If it's not raining and the air is nice and dry and the surface is glassy,she can .rut her little feet to the surface and stand. Then it's just a matter of focus-of faIth. Shescans her horizon and makes a tiny idol of the drowned June bug, bobbing nearme concrete edge. She keeps her gaze steady and slowly gets to her feet. And steps.She is light. She steps again. TIle sun shines around like the grace of God. She steps again. The spider knows how the old scary goes, she will not look away and sink and drown.

Butthen, the motel pool is no Sea of Galilee. And when the boy from room 103 doesa cannonball, the only one watching is his mother. . . and eases Inro slow, e gets in more gradually man her son, one starr at a nrne, Sh dili th h J Y holds her shOllId ers Igenr laps from one end of me pool to e or. er. oe h and chants DIVE DNE DIVE until she takes a deep breath and sinks r emd 路ft rh the drain weightless an ere, near ' ba th ro the bottom of the pool. They dri

39

serene, before Joey flails and shoots co the surface, srreaming sizzling bubbles.

The woman warches him go and srays a while longer. suspended in the lukewarm concrete belly.

The End

4()

THE MOURNING PAPER JENNA HALL

G

race s{ea~ied the flashlight. Her soon_ro_be_ex_husband, Bill, knelt down beside the dead teenager in the Howerbed next [0 their porch.

Just for good measure, he searched for a pulse. He shook his head. "The

next time you murder a paperboy, leave me out of it."

Graceshivered in her sleeveless cocktail dress and surveyed the cul-de-sac for movemenr."Trn sorry, okay, I'm so sorry, but I didn't know what else to do."

BiUpulled his blackberry from his pocket. "5:30 in the morning. Nineteen missedcalls from you. Really, Grace? Please at least tell me the kids aren't home.

I can tellyou've been drinking."

"Listen,can we please move this inside? The sun'll be coming up soon."

"Thisis absolutely ludicrous, and I'm not going

to

have any part of it."

Grace clasped his wrist between bloody hands. "I'm not asking you please,help me get him out of the Rowerbed. I just need time to think"

to.

Just

"Crace-," "I laid down some plastic in the living room while I was wairing for you. Let's take him into the kitchen, okay? I'U get his feet. Just please be careful of the carpet."

They lugged him through the front door, through the foyer, the Jiving ro~m, and inro the kitchen. She cringed. They had just retited it last May. 111e Sight of blood in the grout combined with the pale, serene expression on the face of c fi 11 made her lose her th e teenager who had been their paperboy lor years na y composure. He looked completely taken by surprise. If it weren't for the woun~ in his neck leaking blood. he could almost have been sleeping. She crumple to the Boor beside him and sobbed into the bend ofber elbow. "We never even

knew his name."

Billshook his head.

"And kh th best paperboy anyone f\Jl he was such a good paperboy. I thin e wa~ e could have ever asked for. And I killed him." She smfHed.

41

taken your key back, I wouldn't have used my car key, or my house key,or me key to the storage freezer. or one of any number of keys Ihave?"

"This is ridiculous, I'm calling 911, jusr like you should have me minute this whole mess happened."

Grace narrowed her eyes. "1 called you

to

help me, not turn me in!"

"15that so? That would have been a good thing to think about beforeyou kicked me out of my own house so you could, how'd you put it? 'Find yourself.'WeU, is this stimulating enough for you, Grace? If you need help, maybe you should just call your friend Sheila with the cocktails, or some of the girls from the real estate office, or your yoga instructor, what's his name? Swen? BecauseI'm going to need to be employed to support our children after you get locked up forstabbing the paperboy!"

Grace rose to her feet. She thought about reaching into the cabinet behind her and smashing some of their wedding china for dramatic effect. Or maybe a framed picture-for some reason, she hadn't taken any of them down, Instead she hissed, "Bill that was an unbelievably cruel thing to say. and you knowit."

"Oh?" "You know that our chiJdeen have always been my very first priority. Youknow what kind of mother I am!"

"N 0, I k new what kind of mother you were. 1 don't know what New Grace th~nks about our kids, I don't know anything about New Grace at all. She'ssurprised me an awful lot so far." He turned to leave.

She called out

to

him. "Bi.ll?"

"What?"

Grace dropped her head into her hands. "I've surprised myself roo."

em

sniffed.

"M d a11.'~s y, I'm surprised by how I don't feel differently about the people I love31

Bill reached OUt k ft ed rc rue a strand of her hair behind her ear. His face SO en ' lsren,~~h~ I ~h.P~ ow w tat we need to do, Let me step out and call me ro Iet everyone kno I' . v ha,"e w m gOlllg to miss rounds this morning. No tricks. IOU

"L'

>

fiCTION

my word as the father of our children," He left her alone with the body. She gOt some washcloths mat didn't march the guest set from linen closet and cleaned up the paperboy's face. Like she was gerdng hlm ready for school. He had a squar little nose that turned up at the tip.

She scrubbed gently at the scraggly hair on his upper lip that he probably liked to think of as a moustache. She thought abour prison. She would probably get off on manslaughter,since she was in all other respects a model citizen. Her mother or Bill'smorher would keep the children while he was at work. She thought that maybewhen she got our in six or seven years, she could decide not co come back at all. Karla would be in high school by then, Brad would be off to college. They probably wouldn't know what to do with her if she came back. She remembered a story she saw on the news years ago about a husband-and-wife scuba diving team who faked their deaths at sea and were never seen or heard from again.

When the bills got steep and the kids kept them up all night, she and Bill used

me

to joke about doing the same thing.

When Bill was gone longer than she expected, the urge got the best pulled the key out of his throat, even though she knew Bill would be fresh blood ran from the wound. and she went for more washcloths. returned to the kitchen, she had it looking like just a hole in his neck.

of her. She mad. More \XIhen Bill simple and

dean. She offered him the bloody key.

"No going back now," she said. "You should go. I'll never tell anyone you were here for any of this."

Bill turned it over in his hands. "1 knew you would come around one day and giveme back my key."

She reached our cautiously a.nd touched his face. "You really should go. I was out of my mind bringing you into this. I think some small part of me was hoping you could save him." She wished he would take his hands out of his pockets so she could see whether or not he was still wearing his ring. He'd had it on every time he'd come to pick up the kids. In all the excitement, this was the first time she'd forgotten to check first thing.

"1can't let y?U get yourself in any trouble."

"Youknow I can afford a good lawyer."

"Do I ever," he almost smiled. "But you know rhar's not what I mean."

She tightened her jaw. "This is something maybe even need ro handle it."

45

that New Grace can handle. 1 think I

"But there's no need for that."

"I knew you would say that. Somehow after fifteen years you haven'tchangeda bit. It made me absolutely crazy, It made me need ro leave you. There aresome things you can't talk your way OUt of, and I've come to terms with that, right here in the kitchen," They sat cross legged on me floor, the paperboy's body between them.

"Grace, do you remember that time about a year after we got married, whenI found out (hat you'd never been camping before and r said I wanted to be the one to take you? It gOt cold that night, and I tried so hard to make the most impressive campfire of my life so you could sit beside ir and be happy. I guessit JUSt wasn't my night because no matter what I tried, I couldn't get it going beyonda few little flames, There wasn't even enough to roast a marshmallow" "I remember," "Well, do you remember how I kept telling you to take the car and go spendthe night in a motel? You were cold, and I was embarrassed and I beggedyou to go, But you wouldn't do it. You said you wanted to be where I was."

"J still want

to

be where you are."

Bill's eyes welled. "Then why are you doing this

to

me?"

She shrugged. "l think maybe I thought that the only way things would everbe any different was if l made them worse."

BiU got a pair of work boots Out of the box of gardening tools mat Grace had packed. He Still had a shovel Out in the shed. He buried the paperboy underthe kid' I use .III the backyard as the first Streaks of dawn stained the sky. When 5 P ayho he returned, Grace had opened a bottle of wine and made a fire in the fireplace.

She told Bill that if he hadn't been away for wee weeks, she never would have learned how to do that. "]'

,,"',

m raid we aren't finished yet," Bill said. "Our neighbors are going [Q neeu the morning paper." ~eYIWalked Out onto the front lawn hand-in-hand. Bill picked the paperboY'S tcyc e up off the curb. He straddled the seat as Grace serried herselfon the handlebars with fuj f I an arm 0 dew-covered papers.

46

SAID THE FAIRY TO THE GIRL SHANNON

BEAMON

y mother tied me [Q our laundry pole in the middle of the night because that's how you can tell if your child is a changeling. You have to look at her eyes at midnight under the light of a full moon, and if her eyesglow blue, she's not yours. $0 she secured my hands with a pair of shoestrings and my feer with an old belt and seeded down to wait for midnight

M

on the frost-crusted

dirt.

I didn'tstop her. I could have. At fourteen, I was nearly the same size she was, and if I'd started running. she couldn't have caught me anyway. Bur I thought if I JUSt stood mere, it would make her realize.

"It'sjust me," I wid her once, bur she didn't listen. She stared up at the moon, where it floated in the dear, crisp night, and hummed an old fiddler's song.

Midnight came and she stood up, brushed off her pants. tugged at her shirt. turned to me. Even in the dark J could see the pupils of her clear. grey eyes. I staredback and waited for her to say that I was still me, that I was no changeling, that Iwas hers. Her daughter. And she did.

"You'remine," she said. She untied the shoestrings. She undid the belt. Only she did it slowly and she said it sadly. and she didn't follow me back inside.

As I curled up in bed. 1 told myself that it was because she was happy for me, so happyshe couldn't express it. Itold myself that every mother made sure her child wasnot a changeling after what had happened to Anna Mae lasr winter, rhar this was just a check-up with no real meaning. I told myself that someone else had made her do it, maybe Mrs. Wilcox in town because she was always suspicious of me. Iraid myself other things. roo. Lots of things. It put me to sleep.

/1/ last winter, we found out Anna Mae was a changeling. She was a quiet girl who had suddenly gotten loud. She had started mocking the reacher and stealing penny sweets and dipping little girl's pigtails into sticky black ink after school.

So her morher tied her up one night, and saw the truth in her glowing eyes.an~ chased her back into the forest where all rhe miries are. The real Anna Mae didn r come back.

47

I thought about her foe days after it happened, and the one thing I couldn'tfigure our was how the fairies had slipped her away so easily. Anna Mae wasa big girl, not fat, but tall and solid. How could you take someone like mat without anybody noticing? WidlOut the bed sheets getting rumpled or some tablebeing overturned? "Fairy magic," the old women spar. "Fairies want children so that's what they get." But fairies don'r really care about stealing children. Theywouldn't leave changelings if that was all they wanted; they'd just steal the kids and be done with it. No, they're looking for something to entertain them, a chanceto laugh in the dark.

I II My mother was looking at the hourglass when I came down the next morning, the one she had bought from the general store a few days ago. She'd told me the sand in it was from a desert beyond the mcunrains. She never used it for anything; that wasn't the poinr. She just wanted to look. Eventually,she would get sick of it, and it would go into the chest under her bed with the mapsand the compasses, the aboriginal hand drum and the pieces of coral, and a hundred other trinkets from someplace else. No item lasted much longer than a week.She gor tired of being reminded of the places she couldn't go.

I stood at the bottom of the stairs and waited for her to tell me good morning,or ask me to sit, or to let me know that breakfast was on the stove.

to

She looked up from the hourglass. "What?"

And of COurse I couldn't "Nmhing."

say anything to that. She really didn't want me [0.

She looked back down at the hourglass. She had it sitting next and belt from the night before.

to

me shoestrings

I tried to think of something else to say, some legitimate reason to interrupther so she would look lip again, but it was tOOlate. The Silence had crept up; rhat wa~ what I had come to call it. When everything wenr still and the air well! sOI.ld and you couldn't speak if you wanted to. And as everything around megor qurerer and quieter, everything inside me gOt louder and louder, like all the noise that sho~d have been there had compressed into my chest. So before ir could collapse Into a me-sized black hole, I did what I always did. I went out door and ran into the forest.

me

The forest is where mothers tell their children not to go. It's dark and deepand

48

FICTION

downrightmange. The fairies live there in the darks and the hollows. Mothers tell their children that if they go in there, rhe fairies will swallow them up and nothing will be left but silence and shadow, Burthe mothers are wrong, and I'd found mat out long ago. My mother never told me nor fO go in there, so T went. The forest was never silence and shadow.

It squawkedand growled and creaked and groaned and rustled and settled all around.The farther I ran, the louder it gOt, and the louder it got outside, the quieterI got inside. It was where I went to escape silence.

As forthe fairies, you just had

to

be firm with them.

One of them found me as I stopped by a massive oak tree. He crouched on a limb and watched me with beady bird-eyes. "Wants rid of you," he said.

I ignoredhim. They're like little kids. If you show any weakness they'll rear you apart.

"I seen what she did co you." He continued. "Tied you up, tied you up. She wantsrid of you."

"Go away." I tried co keep my voice steady, but there must have been some wobblebecause he crept closer, rubbing his hands.

"Wamsto chase you into the forest, she does, she does."

"Goaway."

"Wantsco chase you into the forest like fairy baby. Wants rid of you."

Hesnickered,his gimpy wings, wings that couldn't possibly be any use for flyin,~' quiveringas he laughed. "Right now hoping you don't come out of the foresc.

"Not true," 1 said, except it came out as a shout and before I knew it, I was sprlndng back, my breath coming in heaves.

My mother looked up from the hourglass as 1 rushed in. 1 searched he~ eyes f~r somekind of relief, some satisfaction that 1 was back safe. But I couldn t find 1[, So I looked for what I dreaded to find. I found it in the downward curve at the Cornerof her mouth, that tight-lipped pucker you get when you eat some~ing mat tastes terrible, but that you swallow anyways because you're roo polite to spitit Out.

49

"Clean this up, will you?" She gestured ro the shoestrings and belt still table.

Oil

the

That night, 1had a hard time failing asleep. Every time I told myself matshewas jusr worn our, I thought Icould hear someone snickering in me dark.

III For a long rime after Anna Mae's disappearance, J comforted myself withthe thought char she didn't understand fairies. She'd never been in the foresr.noneol the other kids had, so she didn't know that fairies could only get you ifyou wert unsure of yourself. She jusr didn't know how to say 'no' to them, or 'go away.'

Later I remembered one of OUf essay readings. We were supposed to writeabom our fears. Anna Mae was scared of the dark. "Some things don't leaveyou alone when you tell them to," she said, "Some things you just can't ignore."LikeI said, it wasn't until larer char I thought about it. I wondered what in the world rnar had to do with rhe dark.

11/ 1 decided [Q stay our of the forest. I burned my hiking boors in a littlefireand snapped my hiking stick in two because otherwise it would have beentOOeasy to change my mind. I went inside and shut the door and washed rhedishesand mopped the Hoors. I had dinner waiting on the table when she camein.

"What's this?" she said.

"1 had some extra time on my hands," I replied.

She nodded and sat down with a small smile on her face. "It looksverynice."

The hourglass was still standing in the middle of the [able, a bowl of mashed p~tatoc.s now keeping it company. I hadn't moved it while I was cleaning.She PIcked It up and looked at it. Her eyes grew dim and distant.

"I

managed to burn the green beans," Isaid quickly.

Sfihe!ooked up like SOmeone startled our of sleep. "Oh. Well, I'm surecltey're ne,

"Yeah.lrwas)路ustth I h ubleand1 ki d at t te mas ed potatoes were giving me some [[0 51n of forgor about the green beans while 1 was making them." d re nodded, but her eyes were already back on the hourglass. I wished I h1

so

FICTION

moved it, "I tried some though, and they tasted fine. They just look funny."

Sheforkedgreen beans onto her plate. Eyes still down, still on that sand, funneling, funneling down. Hissss. T fdt like I was losing some game and I didn't even know the rules.

"If myeyes had glowed blue the other night, what would have happened?"

That made her look up. Across me small table, I could see her pupils refocusing.

Thesandin the hourglass slid by unnoticed. One point for the home ream.

"I would've chased you tnro the forest," she said. One thousand

points against.

Thesof hiss of sand stopped as the hourglass ran out. She picked it up, stared at it, into it. "I would've left this place." she said. Then she Ripped it over and set it on the cable and stared at it. Flip and watch, Rip and watch, Hip, watch, flip,watch, flip, watch. She never looked away. Not to look at me, not to look at her dinner.

And what was I supposed to say to that? My questions like, 'how was yOUt day' and 'what did you work on,' drained away with the sand in the hourglass. TIle Silencecrept up, everything around me getting quieter and quieter, and everything insideof me getting louder and louder until 1 was debating which shoes would survivea run through the forest now that my boots were a pile of ash.

I didn't go, J rold myself she didn't mean it, she didn't, and washed dishes instead.

That night, the fairy came to my room. He pried open the window with gnarled hands and sat on his knobby knees. I expected him to snicker, but he just watched, eyes like two blue gems in a deep, dark mine.

"Want you in the forest, you know," he said, "We want you."

I was surprised at the ache that sprouted in my chest at that. I was surprised at the tears on my cheeks.

UGo away," I told him, but I could hardly hear the whisper

of my own voice.

He len me alone anyway. I never fell asleep.

III They say no one can tell a changeling from a child except at midnight under a

SI

full moon, but I knew the day Anna Mae was switched. She left school one afternoon, quiet and sad. She came back the next, loud and angry. MaS( of me kids guessed what had happened by the end of the week. But her mother didn't notice for two months. There are some things we JUStreally want to believe.

I II The next morning, after my mother was gone, I went downstairs and watched the hourglass. I watched the sand pile up in a pyramid at the bottom and then I flipped it. And Ripped it again. I lost count of how many times. I kept saying that after the next Rip I would get up, I'd clean some more. [ had a whole lise of chores in my head. Soap the windows. Beat the rugs. Scrub the oven with a roorhbrush.

Bur I never gOt up. I told myself it was because I hadn't gotten enough sleep.

But I had no trouble staying awake as Istared at the hourglass. Just the wayshe had last night. Just the way she would tonight.

The sand piled up at the bottom again. Iflipped it.

J tried to see what she saw. The slope of a dune rippled by the wind. The silhouettes of men and camels sliding across cracked earth in the dark. A single mountain rising over a dry and sighing plain. The edge of a wasteland, golden sands d.isappearing into a sea no one has ever seen. Adventure. Newness. Beauty.

People wanted those things. My mother wanted those things. There was nothing wrong with that, Iraid myself Nothing wrong.

But my head had rwo voices in it now. One that made up reasons and one thar tore them apart. One from me and one from the fairy. Nothing wrong? Nothing wrong? that parr said. Whar do you see? I saw a handful of dust. Dirt dried out ~d pur in a borrle. Come. come, what do you see? I saw grains fallingdown In a steady stream, gravity having its way with them. Down, down, down, and scatter, sharrer. Theres more than that. What do you see? I saw what she wanted and it wasn't me.

It starred a fire in my belly, It turned my bones to coals.

Not you. not YOIl. not you.

Not me.

I took the hourglass Outside and threw it on the ground. It only bounced and rattled, the wooden edges and damp earth cushioning the shock. So I hoisted a Stone and dropped it straight down Onto the resilient little thing. There wasa

52

FiCTION

crack,a muffled tinkle. and I took another stone and dropped it. and another, and anomer,and another. until there was a whole mound of stones at my feet. likeme miniature cairn of some dead baby.

I knew hestood behind me without turning to look.

"Come,come," he called

to

me.

"Youdid this." I said. dragging in big breaths. "You did this."

Hemanagedto snicker and look offended at the same time. "No. No. You did it.

Sawit myself.She hate you now."

Andshewould. She would hate me so much. She would find the crushed glass and spilledsand and she would hate me. She hated you before that. Quit fooling yourself The world around me got quieter and quieter. and the world inside me got louderand louder. The air went solid and the Silence clogged my lungs.

"Come,come," he called, and the forest called with him. Run fast enough, it crooned,and I will help you breathe again. It occurred to me that Anna Mae couldhavedisappeared without a trace if she went willingly.

The fairycackled. "See now. see now? You come with me." His hand clasped around my wrist. His fingers were cold and rough. like granite in some dark crevicemat has never seen the sun. "We want you." he said. eyes glinting. smile wide."Wemake better," More gloadng than soothing.

"Liar."

He cackledagain. "Then play pretend with me." He tugged at my arm and I Stumbled.One step towards the forest. "We want you, we want you."

Butthat other voice was in my head again.

What doyou see? A lie. Another lie. What do you see, what do you see?

I seegreedyeyes and clasping hands.

Come now, what do

yOll

see?

I seewhat he wants. I see what she wants.

53

Not you. nat you. not YOlt.

Not me.

"No." I said.

"Stop that. We want you."

"No." "Come, come."

I yanked my ann from his fingers. "Not with you. Go away." And 1must have said it more firmly than J ever had before, because he disappeared.

My mother came home and when she Found the hourglass she yelled and she screamed. She took the broken glass and the spilled sand in her hands and waved them in my face. "What am I supposed to do now?" She asked me becauseI had crushed her bottle of dreams.

I shattered the Silence before it could form. "You'll live."

The next day

r bought

a new pair of boors.

The End

54

THE CITY ZACHARY VESTAL

me n vacant lot a block over, the green~thumbed councilman has turned the sprinkl;rs on. I guess the rain that's fallen every night these past rwo

I

weeks hasnr been enough.

An

extra dousing

won't

Stop the brick-lot

concert

pianist,who sits on a tire there and plays every night for the discrete kids with graycardigansand rectangular glasses who shout their own obscure names at h..imas they pass by on their way to beer and vinyl castings in the {amra teacher's basement. It's been a week since I napped by the property to whistle and whittle at irsPlexiglasstatues, bur I know nothing's changed. I hope-I fear-something has changed, down near Eastside.

There,the homeless. shoeless, and reckless sit with alderman-made begging for ambiance

and cheese. In better

less per block. Now, they, dressed-up red, sit judiciously

days there used

as bloodied

penguins

on the curb, one every ten feet,

cozy places along the routes of the taxied-billboards the promenades in the hopes that they might garner products. Vomit, the new dogshir, those unsobered

by

:or poignant points and plots, walk them lOgS.There, the hapless condom-salesman

ful today than

ejected

operator

just last week. Of course, people

per pound, People just rake their newborns shipping

them

from the horde of poets, looking

past storefrontS and apartment buildpeddles his product, more unsuccess-

quite some time ago in order to spare themselves up their belly-buttons.

their own little

making rheir way down some culture and hair-care

and spoken-word

he has ever been since the toll-booth

abolish the condom-tax

in black, white, and

guarding

litters the ground,

their cushy lives, Muralists

helium-signs.

be just one home-

to

finished his fight to

stopped

the expense;

to the post

off to Uganda

using condoms

stamps are cheaper

office with stamps to seal and Florida.

I hope these

fil~y things won't obstruct the newly-retired boxer who just recenrly donned priest-robes. He sells fishsricks to college kids at greatly inflated prices in order to keep {hem off rile streets;

he hates obstructions

so, And there, five blocks from

where I'm sitting, is where chis pugilistic priest came from, the digital seminary, filled with internet hookers and hookahs. Nuns walk in there. mistaking it for the elementary school.

limes are rough down there. where the priest is headed, c.igar-munching sailors crowd the vegetarians

down

on Eastside, M

out of their jobs down at the t~X-

tile plants on the waterfront and out of their apartments up on the fifth stories, more clerks and telephone sex operators realize that their lives don't fulfill rhe~ enough, choosing instead own. The vomit curator

to Rock to those homeless and appraiser

has a difficult

ss

curbs and don signs of rheir job listening

in on the cops

discussing the white whale at the low-fat yoghurt stand. Meanwhile, back up where I'm Sitting, a Strokes cover band plays at the Mexican restaurant across the street, where Easrside Taco Bell employees make their deliveries, which are prepackaged and sold to dumpy children for McDonald's rays and collectable Beanie Babies. People here still like rock-and-roll instruments glazed overwith a guilty film of electronica-urgings.

The guitarist bumps heads with a handjob model and vigorously apologizes.

She's noc the worst of them: waiters require happy-ending tips. You usuallyhave to get your own damn food. I used to be a doughnut server; I never gar any anion. Up here the restaurants charge you for seats: $2.56 for a rable, $3.14 for a booth, and $3.48 for a seat at the bar. I guess sitting alone always costs you more. Standing is still (and always was) free, but there's a four-drink-new-friend fee, a ten-drink-one-night-stand fee. On Thursdays, I think it's only eight drinks for ladies and golf-pros.

Here I sit at the bar ncar the window, waiting for her, rhe queen of cards.1don't know if she'll be coming. Feel free to Stop by, if you're willing to split the bar fee and pur up the obligatory story-acquaintance tax. Feel free, and know that, in this ciry, you could do worse. "Where is this city?" you might ask. Don't ask until all the fees and taxes have been squared away, because after you serdeyour stomach and hear me out, you'll see that you know the city, the people, and the bar already.

The End

56

THE FIRE UNDERFOOT MADELINE RA5KULINECZ

T

here had been a fire burning underneath the [Own of Sweetgrass, West Virginia since before Mason Delaney was born. but it wasn't until his senior year of high school that anyone found out abour it. Ir was down in the mines, feeding on anthracite coal, and it had been growing bigger and bigger for years without detection.

Everyoneat school got a big kick out of it. No one had ever heard of such a thing. How was it even possible? What kind of fire burns for years without seeingthe light of day? Doesn't a fire need oxygen? The Christian kids were the onlyones who had an answer: Hell. Hell was underneath Sweetgrass, West

Virginia,and if they weren't careful,

it

would gobble rhem all up.

MasonDelaneytried to imagine it bur couldn't. A fire in the mines. He couldn't ~icrurethosedark and winding shafts supporting a fire. He could only see a fire In a gapingcave, everywhere red and orange, and the Devil himself presiding froma throne of human skulls. Mason shut his eyes against the image, shrugged on hisbackpack and went home.

Drivinghome down Rome 61, he saw a crowd of men in white coats by me side of the road. He slowed down co peer at them. They were all crouching around somethingon the side of the road, staring at it intently, prodding it with differentinstruments, And then Mason saw it: a wisp of smoke coming from the ground,reachingup above the heads of the men and disappearing.

III M~n's father was already home when Mason pulled into the driveway. All the minershad been sent home pending further investigation.

-Always said these were the hottest mines in ill of West Virginia, twenryyears now Ibeen saying mat,"

didn't I? For

路Youhave."M ' , ason s mother agreed. He had always said that, for twenty years

now.

III Once the h I sc

00

grounds were given the OK by the men in the white coats,

57

Sweetgrass Senior High School settled back into its routine. Mason went to football practice every afternoon while his girlfriend Delilah waited for him in the stands. She always brought her homework to his football practice. She was planning rc go ro college Out of state, she'd (Old him, though she hadn't yet wid her parents. Mason hadn't given college a lot of thought himself.

Mer practice, Mason and Delilah hung out on the field. They kissed until their jaws ached and then sat and talked.

"Isn't it wild?" said Delilah.

"A great, big fire, right underneath

us."

Mason thought about it, rubbing his thumb in circles over the back of her hand.

"What do you think will happen?"

"They'll put it our, I'm sure. J can't believe it rook them so long to notice it."

"Do you think the mines will be okay?" Mason thought about his farner,who made his livelihood down in the mines, and his grandfather, whom he'd never met bur who had done the same. Mason had been to the mines before, with his father. Nor down in them, of course, but he'd gone to see. 'A long time ago, my dad brought me right here and showed me the mines,' his father had said (0 him. 'Maybe someday you'll show your son.'

"I don't think it much matters," Delilah said. "I read in a few years all the mining will be done by machines, anyway."

Mason dosed his eyes and lay down on the grass. The ground felt so warm against his palms and his cheek. He turned his head and pressed his lips to the ground, screwing his eyes tightly shut, and felt the warmth again, like the earth was alive underneath him. He half-expected co feel a heartbeat down there, and lay there waiting for it until Delilah asked him CO drive her home.

III His grandmother couldn't see small print anymore, so Mason wenr to her house every morning ro read her [he paper. For weeks all the news had been about the fire, which experts were now saying could keep going for a hundred more years, with all that anthracite coal to feed it. Efforts to put rhe fire our were so far unsuccessfuL Mason's grandmother shook her head in disbelief "Twenty years mat fire'sbeen going. How did we all miss it?"

Mason didn't know. He had walked and biked and driven down that stretch of

58

4 FICTION

Route 6\ a thousand times and had never seen a thing by the side of the road.

Sweetgrasswas nor a large rown, and he'd been there all his life. He'd thought he'd known Sweetgrass as well as anyone could know a place.

"Ihings sure have changed," she said after a while. "Used to be this town was calledSweetgrass for a reason. The grass was so sweet, you could eat it in handfiili likecandy. In the springtime the whole place would smell like the most

beautiful Rowers."

MaJOnW2S skeptical. He thought again about pressing his face to the grass, out in the football field, He hadn't smelled anything. He'd only felt that warmth on his cheeksand his lips. Even thinking about it now washed him over with a

senseofcalm.

III HalfwJy through the school year, the state of West Virgin!3 shut down the Swtetgr.w: mining operation.

They put up a sign our by where the ground washou" .. 路WARNING _ DANGER," it read. "UNDERGROUND MINE FIRE_ WAlKING OR DRfVlNG IN THIS AREA COULD RESULT IN SERIOUSINJURY OR DEATH." An expert explained [0 the newspaper that If theycculdn't pur the fire out before the end of the year dlCy would start evacuation procedures, on account of carbon monoxide.

-Howcan they shut down a whole town?" Mason said at d.inner. here: ~

Beam.

"People live

alreadyshut it down," said his father, well Into his third tumbler of Jim "No mining. no Sweetgrass."

1"" nIghIMason walked along ROUle 61, past the ltnle crack .hat still belched smoke. all the way to the sign out by the mines. He looked Ole it. and looked past it. The mines were still out of sight, and the sinkholes made it da.ng~r~us to &0 anyfarther by himself. He wondered what his father would do - rrunmg WitS theonly trade he knew. He thought about what Delilah had said, about nuchines. Maybe machines wouldn't mind the heat and the gas. 1hey could do all tht mining and at the end of the day they could go and live in the evacuated

howa, 100.

':k

stood there for a long lime. The place was already St2rting to .decerior.ue .una the diJcovcryof the fire. He could make out patches of yellow In the grus "~ing OUIon either side of the highway. Maybe the gtUS would smell~n as it burned. He closed his eyes and breawed deeply for Ol while. ~n .. halehe could smell [he asphalt cooking. and after a while he began 10 lmag>

~~z.

S9

he could hear it roo, making little pops and hisses.

When he made to rum back, he found that the rubber sales of his shoes had stuck rhernselves (Q the ground. He lurched unsuccessfully for a few minutes, before undoing the laces and walking home in his socks.

III "No mining, no Sweetgrass," he said co Delilah, OUton the football field.

"No Sweetgrass," she said, plucking up blades of grass. some colleges, Mason. It's not too late, you know."

"You should apply [Q

Delilah had already applied co six colleges, none of which were in the state of West Virginia. They hadn't yet talked abour continuing to see each other if she went very far away. He would wait for her to bring it up.

Mason smoothed his hand over the ground, feeling the warmth underneath. "I have to see what my dad's plans are. He might need me to stick around."

"WVU isn't too far," she said. Mason frowned. It was an hour away, craBlc willing. "And stick around for what? You said it yourself, Sweetgrass isa goner."

"Maybe not. Maybe they'll put our the fire."

She shook her head. "Mason, this town is worthless anyway. Let it burn."

His stomach began to hurt, hearing her say that. He wanted to get up and walk away from her - or rather, he wanted her to get up and leave, so he could sir in me warm grass and think things over without her pestering him ..

"I think I like the fire," he said, both palms Har in the grass. "It feelslike a heated blanket. " "Really?"

Delilah imitated him, Rattening her palms on the ground. "I don't feel anything."

III The day before Mason graduated from Sweetgrass Senior High School, rhe srare of "W.est ~irginia condemned the town of Sweetgrass. .As fur as most of the town s residenrs were concerned, the writing had been on the wall for months now. ?etiJah was going to college in California and didn't plan ro look back.

Mason s father had a relocation check in hand and an eye on Monongah, whose

60

FICTION

miningfacilitieswere still man-powered. thoughit was only one coumy over.

Mason had never been to Monongah,

Masonread me news to his grandmother in rhe morning, wary of an emotional reaction.She had lived in Sweetgrass her whole long life. Maybe she'd refuse to go; Mason had heard a couple of old folks talking about holding out.

Whenhe finished the ankle, she nodded her head. "1 guess that's no surprise."

"rou're gonoa leave?" he said.

Shespreadher arms to either side. "End of days is coming for this town, my boy.

I'veknown it for a long time, since the grass lost its sweetness. Soon the whole place'll go up in flames."

III The whole town turned up at graduation, because in a sense the whole town wasgraduating. Evacuation was urgent, said the state of West Virginia. Poisonousgasesseeped our of the earth, and despite every effort, the fire in the mines continuedto grow.

Mason'sgrandmother had decided to move with them to Monongah. Most of the miners were going there, or to Sago. Mason hadn't taken Delilah's advice andapplied to college; some things you just knew weren't for you. He tried to imaginehimself mining with his father up in Monongah but the sickly smell of burningasphalt seemed to follow him through his thoughts. What if the fire followedhim rhere? It was spreading, after all. It might eat up the whole state.

Therewere no parties after graduation; everyone had to get home and get on wlrh evacuating. While his parents packed up their house, Mason walked in hiscap and gown down Route 61 and watched the road change under his feet.

Theroad had baked and warped over the course of the year. Thin cracks in the asphaltled the way for him, growing larger and more spidery as he went until the roadwasnothing bur cracked and crooked plates settled over cop of one another.

He walked on the side of the road when the asphalt got roo imbalanced. The deadgrasscrunched under his nice graduation shoes, so he rook [hem off and let the brittle hot blades touch his feet.

He came upon the sign warning him away and, for the first time, walked past it.

It wasanother mile or so before he could see the fog on the horizon. He walked reward it forced to go slowly by the ground, which seemed to be changing to â&#x20AC;˘ . ch d b t he didn't think mush the farther he went. It was hor [ike bea san now, u . to put his nice shoes back on. The fog seemed to retreat with the horizon. never

61

ďż˝

coming mo.

closer,

until

he glanced

The fog had come

behind

chat his breath was coming and his graduation gown.

him, and only seeing

He swayed

from one foot

{Q

He swayed

methodically,

rhythmically, like a dancer,

out of the cracks smoke

and

that it was back there

him and realized

it now did he notice short and difficult. A layer of dust coated .fiisskin

up around

holes

the other

to avoid burning

in the ground

in his eyes sene tears streaming

either one for roo long. as pillars of smoke

and swelled

down his face, which

oozed

up around him. The cut clean lines in

me

ash on his cheeks. Squinting, he watched the billows of smoke swaywith him like ghosts, embracing him, inviting him (Q dance.

There allover.

was nothing

but

white

everywhere

The heat and the fog wrapped

that he had gone into the furnace

of nrc.

cut up his lungs like glass, and thought around

him was dead:

now, thick

around

wannrh

he could smell

the sweet grass, soft, intoxicating.

62

caressing his skin

so welcoming,

He inhaled

The End

..._-

him,

and he knew

deeply and felt the smoke it now, though everything

MASK MEREDITH JONES

he's turning

S

the key in the lock when she sees him sirring in the far corner

of the hallway. A naked marl. lanky, lightly furred, with neat brown hair and folded hands, which he places modestly in his lap as he notices her watching him. His face is covered by an enormous dragon mask, which quivers with each subtle movement of his head. It bears a vague resemblance (Q the masks at Chinese New Year celebrations.

Down the hall. a series of violent thumps presagesthe arrival of her landlady. Lucy pulls the key our of the lock and hurries down the stairs, rubber soles silent on the carpeted steps.

Lucy stares, but he says nothing.

At the hospital she forgets quite easily about the man in the hallway, She works quickly,moving from room to room, smiling. Nobody asks about her morning. The hospital is about other people's mornings; for instance, her first patient has had a morning involving an inconvenient door jamb and the vicious death throesof a parakeet.

The Streetlights have been burning for hours by the time Lucy returns [0 3B. The naked man sits at the top of the stairs. Lucy notes that he has beautiful posture.

"Excuseme," she says, edging past him. His head turns as she crests the stairs and she hears the faint sound of movement behind her. When she looks back, he's standing primly at her elbow, waiting for her to open the door. Lucy's shoulders tense. "Excuse me," she says again.

The man says nothing.

"Youhave [0 go away," she tells him. "If you don't I'll call the police."

The dragon's mobile eyelids droop over the painted eyes as he inclines his head, hue he doesn't move.

Lucy twists the key in the door and slips inside, shutting it behind her with a sharp noise. The man makes no attempt [0 follow her. Lucy closes her eyes and breathes through her nose, once, twice. Then she carries her bags into the kitchenette, deposits them onto the counter with a sudden clatter, and begins to put away soup cans two by two.

63

She checks the locks before she goes to sleep. Then she checks the peephole.The man is still standing in front of her door as if no time at all has passed.Lucy slips the chain into place and yanks open the door, startling him. The mask trembles, and he raises a hand towards the three-inch sliver of Lucy visible past the chain.

A long moment passes. The man's fingers hang motionless in the air, haifa breath away from Lucy's mourh.

At last, Lucy hisses, "Pur - some - cloches ~ on," and slams the door in hisface.

Then she goes

to

bed.

In the morning Lucy holds her breath before she opens the door. The hallway is empty.

On the landing Lucy hears a terrible scream. She follows it to an apartmenton the first floor. The door stands open.

"Mr. Garfield?" she calls.

There is a long silence, and then Mr. Garfield calls, "Come in, girl."

Lucy hurries past the doorway and follows the narrow path through the shelves that line the apartment. Each set of shelves overflows with Mr. Garfield's possessions, which are legion; Lucy passes boxing gloves, 'Iupperware containers, hundreds and hundreds of briefcases. She finds him in the bedroom, sittingon an overturned umbrella stand. The room reeks of shit.

"Oh," says Lucy. ~r. ~arfield's head comes up as if a string has been pulled. His eyesare sharp.

Don't call my son", he says. "0' on t you dare doir."

0 It. "I won't call y 0 ur son, " L"uey says. Can you tell me what happened?"

His h e hand flutters to th c 1·'P were suspenders meet trousers. " I can get th· em on, h e says "but l' ' can t rernem b er how you get them off again."

L~ey °bffers her arm. He hesitates before taking it. He tells her "'I apologiz.eif I d IStur ed you It c .

• .

was rrusrranng. It frustrated me."

"I understand» L I b 1 ,ucy says, rne atHoom whicl . b j f -wrucn rs scoc Ott cs a shampoo Wh t '1 k . en en 0 C oc and the m .

,

even though she doesn't really. Together rhey go to . d sl n with seventy-two rolls of toilet paper an uxree h ..

Iy s e emerges from her aparunem building, It Isnf3r th dr ere an 111 e agon mask is walking barefoot up the concr

k ed

64

FICTION

steps. His feet are gray with cold, and one of her landlady's

housedresses

is slip-

ping down over his bare shoulder.

"Hello," says the man in

me dragon

mask

Lucy is so surprised by this breach of silence that she says nothing seconds before demanding, "Did Rhoda give you that?"

for three long

He doesn'treply, but tugs self-consciously at die fallen sleeve on his shoulder.

Lucysteps doser. "Aren't you cold?" she asks. The painted eyes watch her blankly.

Lucynotices that passersby are beginning to stare at them. She takes the man

by the elbow and points him in the direction of the apartmem building. "Go inside," she tells him. "You're making a spectacle."

The man twists around, the mask's long, curving eyelashes brushing her forehead,as though checking her expression. She can sec where the elastic holding themask to his face bites into his skin. His ears are red.

"Goon," she says, giving him a push in the middle of his back. He stumbles forwardand then walks obediently to the door of the apartment building, opens it, and goesin. Lucy glances back at the street. Nobody is looking at her anymore.

On her way out to the car, Lucy turns to look again at the building. The bright redand gold of the mask glares back at her through the front window, distorted by the frosted glass.

me

At hospital, Lucy tends to four separate men whose X-rays reveal deep fraccuresin their knuckles. When asked, each one tells her he punched a wall.

Lucyascends the stairs to 3B in absolute silence. The man in the mask is sprawled acrossher mat, back to the door. The front pocket of her landlady's housedress is full of daffodils. As Lucy watches, he lifts the mask away from his face far enough to stuff a handful of petals into his mouth. The mask's eyelashes shiver ashe chews.

"Where did you get those?" Lucy asks. The man jumps to his feet as though he's been jabbed with a fork, sending daffodils tumbling to the floor. "1 know you can speak," she says. "You told me hello this morning."

The man says nothing. His back is as straight as a clock's hand.

"You'rehungry," Lucy says, opening her door. "You shouldn't eat Bowers rhar don't belong

to

you. Do you want soup or something?"

65

The man nods, but doesn't move ro go inside. His roes flex at the threshold.

"Come in," Lucy says, taking him by the sleeve. He steps inside at her slight pull, and Lucy shuts the door behind him. The mask swivels from side [Q side, sightless eyes taking in the spectacle of her apartmem. He makes his way around the space with great solemnity, touching her things: the rubber plant in the comer, the sharp edge of the television screen, the little velvet box on the windowsill.

There isn't much to touch. As Lucy begins to make soup, he sertles himselfinto the depths of her sofa. 'TIle television blinks awake and throws up an imageof a local car salesman.

"Smile!" says the car salesman. The man grips the remote in both hands resting on his knees. At intervals, he changes the channel. The advertisements seem to enthrall him.

"Soup," says Lucy at last. The man looks up. Lucy carries two bowls to rile living room and places them on the coffee table. She kneels beside them and looks up at the man, who mimics her, sliding to the floor, the housedress pooling around his knees.

"Do you ever take this offi" Lucy asks, touching the edge of the mask. He flinches. "I only mean it must be hard to eat with it on."

The man pulls the bottom of the mask a few inches away from his face and maneuvers a spoonful of soup into rhe space behind the dragon's teeth, as if in demonstration.

"If you say so," Lucy says.

It's nearly ten o'clock when Lucy stands to go to bed. The man in the mask gets his feer uncertainly and follows her for a few steps, coming to an abrupt halt when she turns and looks him up and down. to

"You should give that dress back to Rhoda," she says. "She'll miss it. And you should have real clothes."

"If you say so, " says the man, startling a laugh out of her.

Shh.erakes him to the bedroom and lifts the bed-skirt to reveal a blue valise.From t IS she draws out a pai f _,,_Sh I ale r 0 trousers, gray boxer shorts and a collared S1111l. e s 1 es the folds Out and places [hem gently on the bed.

"These were my husband's clothes," she rells him d . d ouse ress over his shoulders and lets it fall to the groun .

The man slips the h

66

FICTION

"Can you put these on?" Lucy asks. He shakes his head slowly. She helps him into the underwear, me trousers __"Right leg," she says, "now, left -" His fingers fumblewhh the buttons, and she shows him how to fasten each one properly.

The shin: he manages on his own. The clothes are slightly too big for him, and they look oddly formal against the riotous colors of the mask. but he seems pleasedwith the result. She leaves him standing before her mirror, pulling delightedly at the fabric covering his elbows.

Whenshecomesback from the bathroom, the man is waiting for her next bureau. Rhoda's housedress

to

her

sits. folded, on the chair.

"I made up the couch for you," she tells him. He follows her to the living room with quiet steps and lies fully domed upon the makeshift bed.

"Do you need anything else?" she asks. The mask stares up at her. After a minute, Lucyturns the light out and retreats to the bedroom. lucy wakes in the middle of the night to the man standing beside her bed. In the near-darkness the mask's teeth seem enormous. She makes a single, choked-off sound in the back of her throat. The man reaches for her hand, hesitating, opening his hands first to demonstrate his harmlessness. Lucy allows him to press her palm against his shoulder. She can feel him shivering through her husband's shirr.

"Areyou sick?" she asks. The man shakes his head. She tries to sit up, but he shakeshis head again and sits heavily on the Aoor beside her bed. Her hand is still on his shoulder. Gradually the shivering stOPS, and Lucy feels his breathing shift into the long, rocking rhythm of sleep.

She watches the back of his head, unable to sleep. His hair is straight, short, interrupted by the elastic band holding the mask to his face. She extends a finger to trace me band from ear to ear. Then she pulls her hand back and stares long and hard at the ceiling.

Lucywakes up to faint crashing noises from below. Her bedroom is full of light.

The man has disappeared. The housedress is gone from her chair.

She grabs her coat and hurries out of her apartment.

Rhoda thunders up the stairs as Lucy turns the key in the lock. She tells Lucy, as they pass each other, that there's absolutely no excuse for uprooting other people's daffodils.

"No,n Lucy agrees, "certainly not." She hurries on.

On the first floor, the crashing has stopped.

67

Lucy walks quickly towards

1C.

The door stands open, and inside the familiar maze greets her. She passessnow globes, phonographs, and a moth-eaten, taxidermied eagle. She rounds the last corner and sees the man in her husband's clothes standing barefoot amid a mppled pile of African masks. His shoulders tense at the sound of her approach,bur he does not turn away from the masks. He seems fascinated - or appalled- Lucy can't tell which.

"Is anybody there?" Mr. Garfield calls. The man jerks at the sound of his voice and follows Lucy inro the bathroom. Mr. Garfield stands naked by me sink,his clothing in a crumpled pile at his feet.

"Don't call my son," he tells her. Lucy doesn't know what to say.She stands frozen at the doorway. Mr. Garfield's body is weathered, his skin a size [00 large.

His pupils are huge and black. "Don't call my son," he says again, this time [Q the man in the mask.

The man brushes past Lucy and steps into the bathroom to pick up Mr. Garfield's trousers. With the other hand he takes off the mask. He has a niceface, Lucy thinks, watching. The man hands her the mask. She holds it carefullyby the elastic as he shakes me trousers out for Mr. Garfield.

"Right leg," he says. "Now, len:-" Lucy puts the mask on. She can't see anything.

The End

68

INTERVIEW CATHY SMITH BOWERS

MARIA CARLOS

I

was t hardly the time for things to go wrong, fifteenminutes before meeting Cathy Smith Bowers,State Poet Laureate of North Carolina.

Of COursethe parking lots were full. A handful of nickelsbut not a single quarter for the meter. 1 hate being late. And I'm almost always late. 1 refused to be lace for this.

But J wasn't. I was early. Needless to say 1 was flustered, nervous. Sitting in an office three feet from

Cathy, I wasn't sure how to begin-l felt that familiar anxiety settling over my mouth like a film. Luckily she swooped in and broke the ice: "Well I sure do like your earrings." Llifred a hand amomatically, remernbered chat missing white feather. She laughed. "The asymmetry is nice. lr creates tension,

like in a poem.

And every poem needs some tension, you know?"

Hours later I found a parking windshield wiper. I smirked,

ticket underneath

my

tossed it in the cup

holder of my car next to the voice recorder. After my afternoon with Cathy,

not even that obnoxious

low envelope could bring And besides-every

yel-

me down.

Story needs a llnle tension.

69

B\O: Cathy Smith Bowers was the poet~in~residence at Queens College in Charlotte for many years, and now teaches in their tow-residency MFA program. Her books of poetry include The Love That Ended

Yesterday in Texas (1992), A Book of Minutes (2004), and The Candle I Hold Up to See You (2009).

MARIA CARLOS; I want to begin with your title: Poet Laureate of North Carolina. Can you tell me about your responsibilities, your role in me poetry world?

CATHY SMITH BOWERS: One of the things I made sure to do when I was chosen for this position was to read all descriptions of me position. I paid close attention to that because I always thought it's kind of sad fat only poetry to have a laureate but it really says literature. It's lirerarure, not just poetry.

The poet laureate is supposed to be a kind of ambassador fat literature throughour the state. What I want to do is to shine a light on the many wonderful writers of all genres throughout North Carolina, and those who maybe haven't published. They too deserve a place to go and read their stuff and to have people listen to them and give them their undivided attention. I'm trying to make it a very democratic mingo I'm not here to glorify the writers who are already being glorified. Iwant to do that but Ialso want to shine a light on anybody who loves language and who is writing or who loves listening to what other people have written.

MC: I heard you have a radio show in Asheville, right? Is that one of your projects as poet laureate?

C S B: Yes, that's SOrtof my baby ... I have a friend who is the regular host of a weekly radio show in Asheville, an online radio show. You go to your computer on Sunday evenings from five to six and you go to the link to hear Wordplay.

It's through AshevilleFM online, so I asked him if! could have one Sunday a month. The Laureate's Hour. The firsr writers I invited were in [the Asheville] area, because it just made sense, and then Istarted thinking, well, I've got to spread this Out. So I starred getting some writers from Charlocre, and recently I had jim Clark who teaches at Barton College. I'm trying ro cover me whole state and they come, we do the radio show, then 1 take them out to dinner. It's nice.

The hour is divided Into three segments: we stan the show with music, we'll talk and read a.nd interview, and then have some more music. The delightful thing is that the author brings his or her own music so you get a flavorof what they're listening to. jim Clark, he's a poet but he's also sort of rediscovered this o~her poet who was at one paint considered up there with Robert Frase He dle~ when he was forty, his name was Byron Herbert Reece. His poems are son: of like ballads so Jim Clark, who is also a musician, has been putting Reece's poems to music. CDs of them. So not only was jim able to read his own poems but the music that we played were songs of this Byron Herbert Reece.

MC: A forgotten poet.

70

INTERVIEW

CS B:Yeah. a forgotten poet. It's just really exciting. I did have a person who teachesar UNC Charlotte who just pur his first book out, a memoir, and that was really neat. I'd even like to have playwrights, there are all kinds of wonderful playwrights in NC. So I'm really working to truly make it literature. Not JUSt poetry. 1 like my Laureate's Hour, I'm proud of that.

MC:You sound incredibly busy-how

do you find rime

to

write?

(5B: You know what! I don't. I don't get much time ro write. And it's very frustrating. Bur I feel so honored and I don't want co moan whole time and fed sorry for myself because I don't have time to write my own stuff. I don't want to look back and regret that I didn't really enjoy this time. So 1 just recendy had a little talk with myself and said, You know what? Just enjoy this.

Be me poet laureate. Teach your classes (I teach at Queens and Wofford and I alsotravel all over the U.S. and in Canada, teaching at writer's conferences and workshops). I think I'm going to try not to be roo nervous about the fact that I'm not getting a lot of time to write and JUStsay 1 will.

me

Youknow, 1 actually did JUStwrite two new poems. I couldn't believe it. couldn't.

MC: Felt good, didn't it?

CSB: 1 felt alive again. I felt that I was doing my work.

Iwent to Richmond, Virginia to teach last weekend and planned to stay two extra days just for my own writing. And I did it. And I got twO poems going.

And actually gOt them finished. If l'd gone straight back home, even if I'd had me two days there, I would've looked around and thought, Ob my god that ceiling's falling down over there. There's always something to do. So that's going to be my strategy and Ihope that Ican keep a hand in my own writing in that way.

MC: Before being poet laureate, did you have

to

set aside time like that? Did

you write every day?

C5B: I used to write every day, every morning. At one point, I would get up at 5:30 a.m. I'm tOOold for that now. But it was the only thing I could do because 1was working until eleven at night on my teaching. The only way I could write was to get up at 5:30 and write until 7:00, and I did it every morning-until

it almost did me in.

It was hard. It really was. And I'm just not willing to do that anymore, even for poetry. But I am willing-whenever I travel somewhere to teach-to stay two

71

extra days. I think I deserve it. That's what I'm telling myself. Find little nooks and crannies of time and it needs to be when I'm not at home because,likeI said, I live in an old house. Something is always wrong. I live by myselfand I JUStcan't concentrate. There's always something that needs to be done.

MC: So what were the early years like, becoming a writer?

C 5 B: WeU, I was born and grew up in a neighborhood that was on the wrong side of the tracks. Very poor. My parents weren't educated, and it was[usr wrong side of the tracks. I had no idea that you could write about things like the smokestacks blowing SOOtout, and it falling allover the clothes hangingon the line. Who would want to hear poems about stuff like that? In my literature books I read poets like Byron, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, Poe so I thought that's what poetry was. And so 1 tried to write like them.

me

When I was in college J rook two classes that really changed my life. One was called the Modern British Poetry and the other was Contemporary American Poetry. I read poets-especially in contemporary American poetry-like Phillip Levine. He has this poem about him and his twin brother working in the Detroit factories, one worked during the night and one worked during the day.

They were always rired and I thought, Man, this sounds like my life.lfhecan write poems about it then it gave me permission. I remember reading a poem

by W. S. Merwin (who is now poet laureate of the U.S. so he's stili goinghot and heavy) called "The Drunk in the Furnace." And I thought, Youcan write a poem about a drunk and a furnace? Man, I got a lot of drunks around my neighborhood, you know? And so yeah, it JUStchanged me. It just absolutely changed me. It gave me pennission to write about the things that I reallyhad experienced.

MC: So in A Book of Minutes, where you wrote the GO-syllable poems, what steered you towards that rigid form?

CSB:Well,

it was my brother's death.

Me: What did it give you that you couldn't get from free verse poetry?

CS B: I think free verse allowed me too much ernocional freedom. In the early stages of working on a free verse poem I am totally on the unconscious level.

I' I .

I .f m eumg t te unconscious do its work. But I was in such pain and such goe thor I felt allowi 109 th路e unconscious that much freedom was scary. ThiIS lird e form SOrt of presented itself at the time and I felt that it would keep me in borb places at the Sal' L .. ne time, you Know? I would be open emotionally in wnnng about very emotional subjects, like my brother's illness and his death. ButI would be a little rna bel d I ,. th because re anced, wouldn r give myself totally to at,

72

INTERVIEW

I also was thinking

about the structure

of it, and counting

the syllables. The

form kind of became a safe container.

For about six months

with me were

I didn't even want to write. The images that were abiding

of my brother

and my brother

dying. And I just couldn't do it. I

couldn't go there. I was scared to go there. To me. writing

light on a moment of intensity and in order

a poem is to shine a

do that. you've got to get back into that moment of intensity. And 1 didn't want to. I'd done it already and I couldn't go back there. Yet eventually I knew I would, I would have to.

I went back to my classes at Queens. then after graduation

to

I taught in a son of zombie-like

1 went out to teach at a conference

stayed out there several more days in hopes that 1 could

in Oklahoma

way and City. I

get back into writing.

And that's where I discovered that little form, and it helped me get back into poetry. I was just going to write in the form because the subjects that 1 needed to explore were images of my brother, and the form helped me balance out the emotional heaviness of the images. If I'm also having to count syllables ... it ...

MC: It becomes more calculative.

CSB: It does.

You know, I thought

I was going to use that little form to get back into writing

period and go right back to free verse. And then 1 started liking the poems. I thought, Do I dare send these out to journals? And they started snapping them up like that! The Atlantic Monthly, you know, all these fabulous journals. And four years later I was still writing in that form.

Right after that book came out, I was giving a reading once and I held up my first two books-my free verse books-and said, "This is Cathy's brain." And then I held up A Book of Minute! and said, "This is Cathy's brain on Prozac."

MC: I'm sure they went for the latter.

CSB: They sure did.

MC: So how do you go about writing free verse poems?

CS B: In free verse I start with the abiding image and then I do, as unconsciouslyas possible, a free write. I just start writing, and let it take me wherever weird place it's going to take me.

I believe that the abiding image-those images that hook us and won't let go--! think that there's more than meets the eye or the tongue or the ear or

73

the nose or the fingertips. Something metaphorical, something archetypal.And I have learned (Q UUSt that it's rhere beneath the surface and my job is to sit down with the surface image and JUStstart writing. 'TIle free-writing. It's like constant surprise.

MC: Something that intrigued me throughout all four collections was how you developed spirituality and religion, like your speaker was constantly bauling with this dissatisfaction with faith and an underlying desire to believein... something.

C S B: Absolutely.

MC: By the end it seemed like poetry became like her faith.

CS B: Absolutely. I think a poem is a kind of prayer. Working on a poem isa kind of prayer. It's paying attention to the things of this world. I lovethe quote by the French poet Paul Eluard, "There is another world and it is in this one."

There is another world and it is in this one. So 1 think the best way that I can be a reverent human being and show my gratitude is by looking closelyat the things of this world. And that's what I do in a poem, I look very closely, MC: It's unfortunate that fewer people actually read poetry, though. Not that many people want to look closely. And you have to look closely when readinga poem, You have to be patient.

C 5 B: What is the difference between prose and poetry? Well, I think it comes down to compression. Compression. Whereas in prose we're often told we need to read between the lines, in poetry we have (Q read between the words.

In order to read between the words you've got to work harder at it. You'vegot to give it more energy and more time than you would a paragraph. But people aren't wiJling to do that, YOU think that you read a poem one time and if it's. you know ...

MC: It doesn't make sense.

C 5 B: Yes, it doesn't make sense, therefore I'm nor going to go back and spend any effort on. it. Poems do take efforr. With my poems, I would hope that on the first reading of one of my poems there would be something that the reader would ~et, But I would hope that a reader would be willing to read it again , and again and again to see that even though I do like surface clarity, mar meres more beneath the surface clarity of the poem.

MC: Your poems almost always have a clear narrative strucrure.

74

INTERVIEW

(5B: They do. 1 struggle against that though. One of my goals is to try not to

reil a story.

MCWhy? CSB: I [usr wanr to challenge myself. Ellen Bryant Voigt has a book called The Flexible Lyric. It's a book about writing, about poetry. It's very dense prose, which is interesting because her poetry is not dense. But if you're willing to hang in there with it, it says some good interesting stuff.

One of the things she recounts is having a discussion

with the poet Stephen

Dobyns. They're talking about how Southern poers are traditionally poets. We just love

to

narrative

tell stories in the South. 'The lyric poet doesn't tell a story.

They say that every lyric poem implies a narrative

and every narrative poem

obscuresa lyric. Which I think is accurate. If you're thinking in terms of a lyric poem as being reflective, the narrative poem doesn't do the reflection.

Now the lyric poem, which is reflective, obscures a narrative because something had to have happened ro trigger the emotion. Dobyns divides poets into rwo categories:lyric poets and Southern poets. 1ÂŁ a lyric poet can learn to tell a story,then a Southern poet should be able not to tell a story. It kind of inspired me, Could I write a poem and not tell a story?

I don't know if you remember, in the fourth book, mat weird first section "Eight Names for God"? I deliberately set myself the goal to write lyric poems.

It's a strange little section, but 1 was trying to write a group oflyric poems instead of narrative. I couldn't do it though, Afrer about three poems I started telling stories again.

MC: But they don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive, do they? Can't you have a narrative poem with lyric qualities?

CS B:Actually one of the seminars 1 gave at Queens one semester in the MFA program was about lyric and narrative poetry and weaving the two together, which is really my goal. That's really what I want to do, Because I'm never going to stop telling stories, I don't want ro StOPtelling stories, but I do want to weave the twO together. I think Mark Dory does a wonderful job of that. He'll be telling a narrative, and then he'll stop and refiecr and go into the lyric mode.

And then he'll get back into the Story.

MC: I'd like to talk about your teaching experiences as well, How has teaching affected your writing? Have your students challenged or reinforced what you thought or felt about poetry?

75

C S 8: Teaching has forced me ro go through me whole process of writinga poem, even to the most minute, final tweaking. To write a poem is one thing, but when you're teaching students to write poems, you've gO( to be able to articulate that process. So it has really been an amazing opportunity for me to figure out what it is I'm actually doing. How did this poem come [Q go from here to here? I mean, I could do if. But then to start guiding other students(0 do that, I had to figure our how to articulate it. And that has been amazing.

JUSt absolutely amazing.

Every time I sit down 1 forget. I don't know how to write a poem. But now that Ihave been teaching this for years and yeats I say, Well, what did Itellmy students? What do J tell them the first day of class when I'm getting them going on their first poem? How am 1 having them do it? In my teaching themit reminds me that it can be done.

MC: Based on your early influences you starred writing more formal poerrybefore free verse. Do you do that with your students as well? Or do you let diem go straight to free verse?

CS B: In my inrro class they write eight poems and the first five poems haveto be free verse. They're not allowed to write in a form where there's a patternof rhyme Or merrics. They're not allowed. TIle huge misconception that students come to class with is that if it rhymes and if it has a meter, it's a poem. So first they have to understand the importance of other things, like imagery,all kinds of other things.

By the time they get it, then r introduce traditional forms to them and have them try a couple of those. But by thar time, yes, they're going to have to have ~hym~ and they're going to have to think about syllables. Bur what comesfirsr IS the Image and those Other things. The compression.

Choosing the perff(r word.

~f they've. written a sonnet for instance and we say, "This word is just nor workI~g her: In this line." they'll say, "Well, I can't change that, I needed a word [0 r yme. No no no no no no. Even in the sonnet, if you're rhyming, thisstill. has to be the perfect word for that Spot. You can't use that as a defense,thatIt rhymes with another word. By the time they are actually trying those forms they need to have learned the importance of diction. Word choice. Of the im.~ge. "TIle sounds. llley've learned that. And all of that is crucial (Q poem,It Just ~o happens that this form asks that it also has fourteen lines, ten syllables per line, and rhymes And f h _, . . one 0 r e most amazing poems to show war IS {a.Jne~Wright's "Saint Judas." Study that poem. That poem knocked meourrhe belr time I read it, and after about the five hundredth time of reading it and emg knocked Out I said Oh ., , my god It s a Sonnet. Oh my god.

me

76

INTERVIEW

See,that's the way it should be. You should realize that there's something going on here, structurally, but the form is carrying or supporting, not leading, the subjectand the theme of the poem. One of my publishers actually said one time that he thought people should write a long time in form before they allow themselves to do free verse. 1 don't think so.

Me I'vebeen told that ally they help

so many rimes. Strict meter and strict rhyme ... Evencu-

free verse, the musicality of it.

(58: I think that's where a lor of free verse poems go short. How clever, how brilliant,and this is really dramatic subject and theme, but where's the music?

And so I'm going back.. My last two poems were a villanelle and a pantoum.

MC:Oh my god.

(5B: I'm hungry for music. So I'm doing it, I'm doing it because there's pleasurein it and I think we've gone (00 far with free verse. And then there's the prosepoem. Forget about musk.

MC: You'renot a fan of the prose poem?

CSB: Okay, to me, a prose poem is more compressed than a short story or an essayor Rashfiction, but not as compressed as a poem. So it's right in there.

And 1 do think there is a place for that, but again it's just another step away fromthe music. And yet Ihave read some beautiful prose poems. They're more likelittle vignettes, Ithink.

Bur you know how I fell in love with poetry? Gerard Manley Hopkins.

MC: That makes so much sense.

CSB: That is how I fell in love with poetry. The music of it. I didn't care what Hopkins was saying, Ihad no idea what he was talking about, but I didn't care.

That's what hooked me, in a superficial reading of Hopkins. After reciting and memorizing those poems, Istarted looking up words and oh my god, they mean a lot.

But it was the music. And that's why I say I find myself hungering for that music again.

77

CONTRIBUTORS APPELBAUM,JESSICA is a freshman from Aurora, Co. BANK, EMILY is a junior English major & creative writing minor from Brooklyn, NY. BEAMON, SHANNON

is a junior

English major & creative writing minor from Currituck. NC.

CARLSTROM, DENVER is a senior philosophy major & creative writing minor rom Hinckley,IL COULTER, SEANNIE is a sophomore

geology major from Wilmington,

NC.

DEHMER, NOAH is a senior English major & creative writing minor from Chapel Hill HALL,JENNA HALLORAN.

is a sophomore

English major" from Henderson.

GREGORY is a sophomore

studio art major & music minor from Raleigh,NC.

HOANG, JENNIE is a junior- biology/studio

art major & chemistry

HOLMES, REBECCA is a senior physics major' & creative writing HUTCHESON,

NC.

minor from Chapel Hill minor from Washington DC

DAVID is a senior English major & creative writing minor from Rocky Mount NC

JONES, MEREDITH is a first year history major from High Point, NC. LONG, SUSANNAH

is a senior English major & creative writing minor from Walnut Creek CA

MACNAIR, GRACE is a senior inter-disciplinary major & creative writing minor from Fairview,NC MISHRA, SHWETA is a junior anthropology

major & creative writing minor from Chapel Hill

RASKULINECZ, MADELINE is a junior EnglishlFrenchmajor & creative Vv'Iitingminor from TakomaPark.MD ROSE. EVAN is a classics/economics major & creative writing minor from New York. NY. RaUX

LIANA is a junior English/anthropology

SOROSIAK, CARLIE is a junior American TALLEY, LAUREN is a senior studio-art

major & creative writing minor from fa~tteVI1Ie,NC.

studies & English major from Chapel Hill major & creative writing minor from Albemarle, NC

VESTAL. ZACHARY is a sophomore

art major & Italian minor from Clemmons. NC.

WAINER, MICHELLE is a sophomore

studio art & advertising major from Cary, NC.

78

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