dislocate 8: ERASE / DISCLOSE

erase / disclose summer 2012 I issue 8

erase / disclose summer 2012 I issue 8

dislocate University of Minnesota Department of English 1 Lind Hall 207 Church Street SE Minneapolis, MN 55455 dislocate is a literary journal operated by the graduate students in the English Department at the University of Minnesota.

Copyright © 2012 Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the Regents of the University of Minnesota.

Publication of dislocate is made possible by the generous support of the Lerner Foundation; we thank the Foundation for their continued involvement.

We are also grateful to the following organizations and individuals for their assistance: the Edelstein-Keller Endowment, the Regents of the University of Minnesota, the Department of English at the University of Minnesota, the Creative Writing Program at the University of Minnesota, Ellen MesserDavidow, Kathleen Glasgow, Julie Schumacher, SUA, and all of the ghosts of dislocate’s past.

For submission guidelines, please visit our website: dislocate.umn.edu.

The Edelstein- Keller Endowment The Creative Writing Program owes the inception of its MFA degree and its stellar roster of visiting writers to the Edelstein-Keller Endowment and the generosity of Ruth Easton (née Ruth Edelstein). Ms. Easton was born in North Branch, Minnesota, attended the University of Minnesota for one year, and finished her education at Macalester College and the Cumnock School. She then began a successful career as an actress. She appeared on radio and on Broadway with Walter Huston, Lionel Barrymore, Clark Gable, Eddie Cantor, and Al Jolson.

In 1985, Kenneth H. Keller, then president of the University of Minnesota, discussed with Ms. Easton his plan to launch the University’s first capital gifts campaign — in particular, his hope that the first major endowment specifically benefit the Department of English. As a result of this discussion, Ms. Easton made a significant gift which President Keller arranged to match with an equal sum from University resources, and the Edelstein-Keller Endowment was born.

Ms. Easton named the endowment in honor of her brother, David E. Edelstein, and his closest friend, Thomas A. Keller, Jr. (no relation to President Keller).

The first Edelstein-Keller Endowment visiting writer was Isaac Bashevis Singer, who visited the Twin Cities campus in May 1985. Subsequent visitors have included Grace Paley, Adrienne Rich, Edward P. Jones, Yusef Komunyakaa, J.M. Coetzee, Sam Shepard, Colson Whitehead, Vivian Gornick, Tobias Wolff, and the current writer-in-residence, Charles Baxter. The Edelstein-Keller Endowment made possible the conversion of of the MA in English and Professional Writing to the MFA in Creative Writing in 1996. The result of Ruth Easton’s generosity and President Keller’s vision is a graduate writing program with a national reputation that continues to attract the finest established and emerging writers in the country. Please visit the Creative Writing Program’s website at http:// creativewriting.umn.edu.

contents contents

8

hide and seek Translated

’

by Toshiya Kamei

Ana Garcia Bergua

11

Do Not Touch the Dust Bunny Kate Renee

12

The Collection

13

My Pink Room In Kindergarten On the Bike Trail

Erica Williams

Kathleen McGookey

14 15 16 17

Terraqueous from Moby Dick Chris Taylor

untitled Ivan de monbrison

what? ellen hughes

AUTOPSY OF A MANTA RAY Paul Cunningham

18

THE BARD WOLF VS. THE TAXIDERMIST Paul Cunningham

23

last guardian Erica Williams

24

Colony Collapse Erin Lyndal Martin

25

Emerge erica williams

26

My Story by Andy Chen, Third Grade, English Class, Teacher Joy, Spring Semester Dennis James Sweeney

31

quid asia ward

32

Walter Edgewater Creates a Facebook Profile Kevin Shea

34

lamb asia ward

36

Galileo’s Sidereal Messenger, Abridged Letter from Charles Darwin to Botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker June 27, 1573, Abridged Erin Murphy

38

pledge of reluctance Kristoffer West Johnson

39

Stag Country, No. 1 J. A. Tyler

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42 43 44

What wasn’t said Kevin McLellan

zebra ellen Hughes

chapter 1. loomings from Overwhelming Idea Whale Jason Lester

46

Flying horse

46

bullshit Headlines Pastoral Insomniac Spree

asia ward

phoebe reeves

48 54

Exposure: Notes from the Underworld Ashley Strosnider

cross stitch samplers women’s stitchery lisa mccool-grime

60

when the problem is you

65

ogre

66

me as a monster yeti loves bigfoot

luke rieter jennifer davis

Kate Renee.

68 70 75 76

untitled simon perchik

THERE IS SUCH A THING AS AWESOME Scott F. Parker

bear jennifer davis

The Unclassifiable Love Stories of Jenny Boully: An Interview Victoria Scher and Scott F. Parker

78

MY DOUBLE EMPTY NEXT SYNDROME FLAT LAND PANTOUM with

Allison Titus

Paula Cisewski

80

an interview with philip gourevitch aaron apps and kathleen johnston

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contributor notes

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dislocate staff

7

Hide and Seek Hide and Seek

’

written by Ana Garcia Bergua Translated by Toshiya Kamei

On her way to the kitchen, Concha, in apartment 7, decided to hide herself. During one of those intermissions in bed, she said, I’ll have a glass of water. Do you want it?

Well, Luis said, and waited naked between the sheets, staring at the lamp. She served water and suddenly, on her way back to the bedroom, decided to stay behind the bathroom door. He heard the clink of glasses and a pitcher, a few footsteps, and then nothing. He thought she had gone to the bathroom, imagined her lying with her back to him, and hummed a song. Then he turned on the stereo, put a CD on, and made sure the blinds were tightly shut, because there was sun outside; below him, the super was sweeping the sidewalk, and a woman was taking her dog for a walk.

Then he wondered why Concha hadn’t come back. He stepped into the corridor, saw the bathroom door open, and walked through the living room, the dining room, the office, and the kitchen.

“Concha?”

Then he heard muffled laughter from behind the bathroom door. He smiled, found her hiding, cornered her there, and they made love like savages, against the wall.

Over the next few days, she didn’t forget how she had felt while hiding, alone in the semi-darkness. She told Luis she had returned to her childhood for a moment. And his approaching, looking for her, and sniffing at her had turned her on immensely. Luis felt the same. In their subsequent trysts she kept playing hide and seek. Concha used up the closets, doors, and spaces behind furniture. Each time she became more ingenious at hiding herself. It was like hunting.

He searched for her slowly, even when he guessed where she was, or when he heard her laughter, and caught her suddenly. This excited them both. One day Concha said she didn’t know which she liked better: the feeling of lying in the semi-dark while waiting for Luis to find her, the moment when she felt him near her and her heart beat fast, or when he finally appeared and held her as if to devour her.

After a few months, Luis began to get bored. Their oft-repeated game wasn’t fun anymore. Besides, he had a feeling that Concha was becoming obsessed with waiting alone in the dark, hiding among the clothes in the closet or bottles in the bar, and that she forgot he was looking for her.

Each time it took him longer to find her, and she didn’t give any signs like before: she didn’t laugh, nor did she scratch the wall, as if she didn’t really want to be found. He, too, took his time, and even used the time to do something else,

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make a phone call, choose the shirt he would wear that angry, she would get over it and come home soon. Concha day, or turn on the coffee pot. In any case, he thought, he wasn’t the type to hold a grudge. What they needed was a would have to find something else or switch their roles. He trip, a vacation, maybe to start a family. planned to talk to her about it at breakfast, or when they That night, when he went out to get some ham and both returned from work, but he always forgot about it or cheese at the shop on the corner, it crossed his mind that something more important came up. And the next time they she might want to keep playing hide and seek: should he started to kiss, she ran to hide herself. start calling her parents, her girlfriends? But even though The last time he looked for her, he immediately found he wanted to fight off the inertia that plagued him, the most out where she was – on the top shelf of the linen closet – convenient thing was to calm down and wait for her to come because he caught a glimpse of the door closing. He began back. Besides, how was he going to explain the matter like always, a bit bored already, to walk around the house, without embarrassing himself and others terribly? What kind calling her, but that time he didn’t even take his clothes off; of story would he have to make up? How could he bring up he pretended not to know where she was. He went on like that Concha had hidden herself in the closet? They would that for a little while, and as she didn’t give any signs, went think she was hiding from him, that he was hitting her or around the house a couple of times and ended up leaving something like that, and he wasn’t ready to share intimate the apartment, as if to look for her outside. He walked into details. He was overwhelmed with an immense fatigue. He the café on the corner and ordered an espresso and cake. didn’t love her like he used to, so he wasn’t making any He stayed seated at the bar for about an hour, reading a effort to find her. In any case, he would have to face the newspaper and trying to keep himself from thinking about possibility of breaking up with her if she ever came back. what to do, what to say, when he got home. After all, things But her absence made him anxious. He slipped into bed to had been rather strained lately, since they had taken to watch a movie, and despite his anxiety and precaution, fell playing hide and seek. Luis perused the newspaper, paying asleep. special attention to the obituaries and cars for sale ads.

Luis woke up at eight thirty the next morning, expecting Then he began to head home, expecting that she would to find Concha beside him, but no one was there. He have left the closet by now. walked into the kitchen, made “Concha?” himself coffee, as he did every The refrigerator and the morning, and turned on the And the next time water pump hummed inside radio to listen to the news. the apartment. Everything was With a cup of coffee in his exactly the same. Perhaps hand, he kept looking at the they started to kiss, Concha had fallen asleep while closet where he was sure hiding; it would be then the Concha had hidden herself she ran to hide herself. before disappearing. Not only perfect moment to talk about the matter, put an end to the had he heard the door shut, game, and move on to betterW but he had seen it close. A things. But when he opened the linen closet, Concha wasn’t chair that was usually never there was put aside – proof that there. Sheets, tablecloths, and towels were stacked neatly Concha had used it to climb up into the closet. He pulled up on the shelves. Above, as always, where Luis expected the chair and followed suit. Even though there wasn’t much to find her, a suitcase lay. He looked everywhere for her room, he could fit beside the suitcase, sitting with his knees like the previous times, but he was tired, saying that was bent. Then Concha would fit perfectly, because she was enough. He thought she might be angry over – it’d be shorter than he was. He pulled the door shut and stayed natural – leaving her alone. He stepped out into the corridor, there for a moment, trying to feel what Concha talked about went around the block, returned to the café – it was a place so much, the pleasure of lying in the dark, far away from the both of them liked – and went home, a bit disconcerted. world, invisible. Soon he got bored and opened the door.

He sat down to translate for a while, waiting for Concha to As he turned to uncurl his legs, he hit his shoulder against come home or at least give him a call. He called her on her the back of the closet, which sounded hollow. It wasn’t a cell phone and left a long message explaining why he had wall, as he had imagined, but a loose board, a sliding door. left the house and hadn’t gone to look for her. If she was He nudged it open and found another suitcase – a red one

“

‘‘

9

Hide and Seek against a black background with something like a mirror.

When he heard noises on the other side, he shut the door quickly.

Luis couldn’t stand his next-door neighbor – a fiftysomething architect who thought himself very attractive, like a leading man of old movies, reeking of cologne, swathed in gold chains, and always looked down on him, with the arrogance of someone who owns silk shirts and the latest model pickup. One day Luis told Concha he was sure their neighbor was gay, but she denied it. Don’t be silly! she exclaimed. Then she added that Sr. Pando left very early in the morning on weekends with large black boxes and pigeon cages in his pickup. Sr. Pando – how did Concha know his name? He kept staring at the closet, intrigued. Then he thought it was absurd. It had to be a construction error. Later he would talk to the apartment owner.

In the afternoon he met his friend Pablo for coffee. They got together every Tuesday and talked about their respective translations, which both of them were very particular about.

Luis thought of telling his friend that Concha was gone, explaining the gist of the situation: the game of hide and seek, minus the sliding door at the back of the closet. But on second thought, he changed his mind. Pablo would laugh him off – it was a lovers’ game, a private matter between two

10

people. Later he went home, expecting at least a message from Concha, but there was nothing. Everything was the same as he had left it – no one had entered the house, no one had called. When he went to the bathroom, however, he noticed that a few things were missing: Concha’s toothbrush, her creams, her deodorant. So she was leaving him. Living apart for a while didn’t seem like such a bad idea, because he was a bit fed up with everything. He went out again to give her a chance to take what she needed. After dining and reading at Sanborns, he went to the movies.

When he arrived home that night, none of Concha’s belongings remained in the house: her books, her clothes, and accessories were all gone. He found a bra lying at the foot of the linen closet and placed it in the suitcase compartment, so that she could take it if she needed it. Early Saturday morning he saw Concha arm in arm with Sr. Pando, both dragging some black mirrored boxes, pigeon cages, and rabbit cages.

Bombay the Magician, said a silver-plated sign on one of the boxes. Luis saw her leave with the magician: he imagined him making her appear and disappear, or sawing her in half.

Concha would be happy. He only wished that once in a while she would escape the magician and appear in his apartment.

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Do Not Touch the Dust Bunny Kate ReneeÂ

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The Collection

The Collection Erica Williams

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Kathleen McGookey

In My Pink Room I lean into my mirror and it swallows me up. A real girl! they yell and rush to touch me, almost sincerely. Feather boas snake around my ankles. A shadowy girl hands me a mask on a stick and some crayons. Isn’t my blood perfect?, I whisper and show her my gouged ankle. Night falls in my pink room. I watch my mother smooth the covers around the doll baby in my bed.

In Kindergarten Fernando yanks my braid and it breaks off right in his dirty hand. My teacher’s mouth opens and closes. Breeze from the classroom window jostles paper spiders on the ceiling.

Busy with glue sticks, my friends fill their work papers with glistening pictures of ham. Billy talks about weenies.

Sweating, Fernando throws my braid under our table, then steals an eraser from the girl on his other side. I peek under the table; my braid, like a determined blond caterpillar, inches back to me.

On the Bike Trail After I ride over the yellow jackets’ nest, the swarm drags me and my bike underground. What do you have to say for yourself? My mind empties: allthose stingers! Are you trying to make this difficult? They sentence me to dig tunnels; for how long, they will not say. A drowsy hum surrounds me, but I surprise them by being excellent at my job. Each day, more show up to watch me work. They admire the dirt I push around. They stroke my arms and shoulders and their light, dry touch gives me the creeps.

They swarm my bike, climb the spokes, slowly turn the wheels. I should sell tickets. I should grow wings.

13

Terraqueous

Terraqueous from Moby Dick

Chris Taylor

!

"

" "

# "

Take your map.

A real corner; how it stands lonely, the lighthouse. Mere hillock of background.

Sand as paper. Gamesome, tell weeds they don't grow. Import Canada to a spile. Leak oil,

pieces of wood, carried true. Toadstools before houses. Under one blade: oasis. In a day's walk, wear

$ % quicksand snowshoes. Shut up about every utter island, the ocean, very small

clams. Found no Illinois.

Look, this island was settled. The legend times swooped and carried his lament. Borne, the &

wide waters.

Perilous, the found skeleton. '

&

Wonder, born on a beach: take. First quohogs, bolder with boats, captured at last. A great watery belt.() *

In all seasons, everlasting war has survived: flood, salt-sea, unconscious. Panic,

his malicious assaults. #

+

Thus naked hermits, their ant-hill overrun and watery, parcel out powers. Let America pile

,

upon their blazing banner. This terraqueous globe is through. Ships are but highwaymen, they

land without seeking the bottomless. He resides and riots alone, down to ploughing his home.

A Noah's flood lives on, as prairie hides among the Alps. He knows at last, it smells like the

moon. The landless gull folds her billows. The land sails to his rest under herds of walruses and whales.

+

,

- .

&

/

!

&

$

/

0

&

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untitled Ivan de monbrison

15

what?

what? ellen hughes 16

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AUTOPSY OF A MANTA RAY Paul Cunningham

i have heard so much about our ruined ocean of manta rays pillaged phrases capitalistic language dadaist amputations gliding, gliding, contrariant amputations gliding, gliding the blue where the last manta dwells whitegarbed against floors of deformed coral—a collection of twitching cephalic lobes (slowing movements)

art art, with and without its ruined sex-parts withering cavernous mouth upholstery chomps the oceanfuture plankton-empty the task of the false and final manta one last cavernous mouth (and stomach) exhausted, the contents: soft segmented bodies social forces of the epoch swallowed inside a veined magician’s cape (slowing movements)

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THE BARD WOLF VS. THE TAXIDERMIST THE BARD WOLF VS. THE TAXIDERMIST Paul Cunningham

THE TAXIDERMIST: I hear your fabric whimper.

ME: I will not continue this pattern of silence.

THE TAXIDERMIST: I cannot tear myself away from you. I must, your sweet fabric.

ME: This fabric has seen nothing you will love. Run quickly to your shadows!

THE TAXIDERMIST: All I have are my shadows! Vomit— ME: Will paint you a death of painful caresses!

THE TAXIDERMIST: All I have is my pain! Vomit— ME: Will paint you the victim of repeated loneliness!

THE TAXIDERMIST: All I have is my loneliness! Vomit— THE BARD WOLF: Can you not love? Can nothing rush through your heart’s pipes or fatness? Can your instruments not shriek the efficiencies of love?

THE TAXIDERMIST: A machine most inefficient. Your fabric whimpers on. I hold myself and my pig emerges.

THE BARD WOLF: Your pig is a poem of man’s hair. Hair that falls from your fatness and into the saddest of dreams! I am sick of such dreams! I am sick of such dreams!

THE TAXIDERMIST: I collect you now.

THE BARD WOLF: I refuse. You will collect only your shadows, your pain, and your loneliness!

THE TAXIDERMIST: I collect you now.

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CAPING, knifed backwards the animal from its nose part / a pulling / saw one body one soul shut off / ripped memory from its bone rip-turned snout from its once-cries and again its unhappy bone protrudes into my eyes my life the animal from its nose / a pulling / ripped deer from its antlered skull ripped memory from its bone rip-turned snout from its oncecries and then its unhappy bone protrudes into the blooded haze of the room its face slides into my hands / a pulling / saw two bodies two souls shut off / ripped memory from their bone mounds a carpet peeled from still-lifes / a pulling / thick pouring grizzly torn from its nighttime fur memories ripped from its bone rip-turned snout from its oncecries and then its unhappy bone protrudes against my warm hand / a pulling / hands, we worked together my sadness blade / a pulling / deaf and blind, dried blood raccoon lowest incisions ripped memory from its bone / a pulling / saw three bodies three souls shut off Pulling, lips and eyes away from those faces / furs surrounding my waist curving into bloodstains and clothing grotesque this furred shaping / bedroom menagerie

I found the body of a wolf in the forest behind my home. The wet marble eyes reminded me of a former lover’s. I sat beside the furred corpse for almost an hour. Eventually I took off my sweater and wrapped it around the animal. I carried him back and there were moments that I swear I could still feel him trying to breathe. Making an attempt. I could feel him clinging to me.

[He slips, she pushes. He slips, she pushes. Does not cling. Has stopped clinging. Has stopped breathing . . . ]

I want to dream.

I want to dream.

I want to dream.

I want to dream.

I want to dream.

I want to dream.

I return to the forest in my dream. I smell a system of hearts. I smell a forest of squirrels.

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THE BARD WOLF VS. THE TAXIDERMIST THE TAXIDERMIST: I have removed your fabric.

THE BARD WOLF: You will not remove my soul.

THE TAXIDERMIST: Your soul is of no concern. Your fabric must be preserved. My pig desires only your exterior!

THE GHOSTS OF THE UNMOVING SQUIRRELS: Fear the Bard Wolf’s soul!

Fear the Bard Wolf’s soul!

Fear the Bard Wolf’s soul!

Fear the Bard Wolf’s soul!

THE TAXIDERMIST: This forest is an unhappy one . . .

THE BARD WOLF: You are lost to this forest! You are lost!

THE GHOSTS OF THE UNMOVING SQUIRRELS: You are lost! You are lost!

You are lost! You are lost!

You are lost! You are lost!

You are lost! You are lost!

i showed my father nature’s tendered wolf i measured the body portions dragged out the animal pulled it into an empty tub home’s river split pink

FLESHING, i brought wolf’s death-costume to fabricless body mine wire frame with my own hands / a pushing / no hello whines from new body i pressed / pressed half-life to metal pressed shards of de-boned wolf to skeleton without any muscles / a pushing / my hands traveled over to form furred limbs fabric reversing all openings / a pushing / proof of oncewolf taking shape / scratched my body into wolf watched wolf sleep until it broke open / a pushing / i lay on that beach with you wolf / beach where ghosts still believe they deserve power

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flood-copse of violence / pushing / pushing BARD, i named my wolf / i can honestly say i know what it feels like to be constantly spilling myself into the dead / pulling / i realize that kissing a living boy and kissing my oncewolf on its forehead is sometimes without much difference / pushing / i find a bird with no heartbeat left / i cut her from her forever perch / pulling pushing / i affix her to the top of my wolf’s head / we appear content together / we sit in my bedroom wired frames fully robed / pulling /

i feel like my father thinks i murdered those neighborhood boys (odd monsters of stillness and hair) /pushing/ (his car narrowing along the beachside road / seizing up, falling toward the ocean / the bodies of boys, buoyant / slackjawed, their kiss-tongues hanging)

/pulling/ i long for the day when violence moves no more /pushing/

/pulling/

/pushing/

/pulling/

/pushing/

/pulling/

21

THE BARD WOLF VS. THE TAXIDERMIST THE TAXIDERMIST: My body’s pig has eaten my victim’s fabric.

THE TAXIDERMIST: My body’s pig has chewed itself away from me.

THE TAXIDERMIST: I have murdered myself! Shadows! Pain! Loneliness!

THE TAXIDERMIST: Cruel! My Bard Wolf victim survives me!

THE TAXIDERMIST: Hungry, she refuses to chew! She refuses!

THE TAXIDERMIST: She stares at me. Knows I am weak. Knows I am too disgusting!

THE TAXIDERMIST: Nothing will devour me! Not even this bad dream’s forest!

THE GHOSTS OF THE UNMOVING SQUIRRELS: Not even! Not even!

Not even! Not even!

Not even! Not even!

Not even! Not even!

(Laughter) (Laughter)

(Laughter)

(Laughter)

(Laughter)

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last guardian Erica Williams

23

Colony Collapse Colony Collapse Erin Lyndal Martin

Colony Collapse—Loners You can tell me the bees are dying, but what about the bee in the bees?

And how has my skin stretched and known to go on without you, to go on knowing you died alone, a gun in your hand, a gun which must have fallen from your hand as you crumpled on the stairs of Memorial Church? I guess I'm just too much of a loner, you said the first time you took yourself from me. The last thing you said—I don't remember. What comes back are the words I read about the bees: She will die long before her offspring emerge as adults, mate with one another, and prepare for the coming winter. Clearly, most bees are loners. I will die before I know exactly what to name the thing we grew, impermanence or child or simple orchid. I have heard the body called skeleton lines. I have heard your body called the body.

Colony Collapse—Black Bees in a Hospital Room You can tell me the bees are dying, but from here all I can see is the old church, the one with plywood piers all clad in tartan print. In the white and shiny of the hospital room, no one has brought me flowers. The first day, I had a visitor: a married man who kissed me and asked if I minded. Then my friends came and brought me the books I'd left behind. Morphineladen, I flounced onto my belly and made the words crawl the page like black bees. I put my hands all over the pages and let the bees trail up my fingers. The bees had worn off by the time the doctor announced they were going to cut me open. It was as if the anesthesia didn't work. I was waiting for them to put my organs back in. I was waiting for the bees to come back.

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Colony Collapse—White Sheets Look, the photographs say, this is what it's like. This is what war does. And that, that is what it does, too. War tears, rends. War rips open, eviscerates.

War scorches. War dismembers. War ruins.

-Susan Sontag

If I want to take a picture, I take it no matter what.

-Nan Goldin

You can tell me the bees are dying, but where are the white sheets to cover their bodies? In photographs from Oslo, white sheets litter the youth camp in Norway where over 90 were killed. In a photograph from Cambridge, a white sheet covers Mitch's body. I wonder if it would be less stark to see what lies beneath the white sheets. Is a body always and only a body? I can't believe I said body. What could be so alarming about a body that we would need a white sheet? In the hospital, I lie beneath a white sheet as surgeons cut me open. I can't see it, I don't know if there is a white sheet, why would there be a white sheet what—? The surgeons reassemble my insides. Under the white sheet I am the one of the lucky ones.

Emerge erica williams 25

Joy, Spring Semester My Story by Andy Chen, Third Grade, English Class, Teacher Joy, Spring Semester

By Dennis James Sweeney A note from the author: I found this story on the floor of my classroom in the English cram-school (“buxiban”) where I taught in Taiwan. Half of it was handwritten in painstakingly precise letters; the other half consisted of additions scribbled in a much more casual hand between each paragraph’s sentences. I inquired as to the presence of an Andy Chen in our school and was informed that there was none and, what is more, never had been. I therefore took the occasion to publish the crumpled story into my own hands. If I have done so in my own name, forgive me: the byway of the adult is the only way to lend legitimacy to the work of a child, however brilliant.

You may read this story with or without the peculiar additions, which I have rendered in italics. I, frankly, think it is better without. Nonetheless I have produced the text in full so that the reader can make his or her own judgment on the matter.

Sarah and I play a trick on Tommy because Tommy is easy to play tricks on. We are so much more and less than we think. We put his backpack in a tree.

He tries to get his backpack out of the tree. The invisible fallout floating with his books. He hops up and down like a kangaroo in the desert. Scorpions and heat beneath its toes. He misses the bus. It growls and rolls territorially away.

Sarah and I are on the bus. The floors free of spots. We look out the window at the kangaroo. Orange and energetic and translucent. It has fingerprints on it.

When we are in the principal’s office we call Tommy. The phone is connected to its base by a whimsical curly cord. He is sad at home. His cats dislike him. The principal asks if I did it and I say no I didn’t do it. The fear in my eyes as good as a confession. The principal tells Sarah to be more honest. She nods with genuineness, trueness, so much it makes you want to convert to the moral code of a samurai. Sarah says yes she did it. It was a fit of passion, the momentary devil in each of us. She says it was only her. She takes the rap. I want to say I helped. I want to be guilty if she is guilty. The principal says I had my chance. Her switch from Sarah to me is sharp like a hermit crab in a shell on an old beach. Sarah says sorry to Tommy on the phone. Her whole face changes, even though he is far away. She says to ask his mom if they can play. / We are back in class. The windows are irrelevant. Chet likes to sing the one about the farmer. About grass, about pigs, the sorts of things none of us has ever seen. The class tells him not to sing because they are doing their homework.

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He stops singing, affronted. Chet does his homework. Writing quickly, thoroughly, as if. He whispers musical notes. Some people must be heard in order to be assured that they exist.

Marissa tells Chet to be quiet. To cease existing. Chet is angry at Marissa. You can see him summon what rage he knows how to have. She turns red because he says something in her ear. Her anger is television anger. She hits him on the neck.

Like a person is a doll. Chet cries.

Teacher Joy takes them out of class. Hands on their shoulders as if they don’t know where to walk. We can hear her in the hallway. The valleys of her speech evade us and the arcs we can’t ignore. They come back after ten minutes.

Six hundred clicks. Their faces are wet. Like they have been sprayed with a hose. The teacher says to do our homework.

In it there is baseball. Not the ragged stitches of the ball, the splinters of the bat, but the contour of tradition, the perfected amalgamation of a century of images. I do the homework fast because I watch American baseball on television. The concentrated energies of thousands boxed and redelivered to a single staring kid in a land of different sunlight.

My favorite team is NYY. / In the afternoon Betty and Sally are at the clothes shop.

Racks and racks and racks like little shelters. Betty’s mom and Sally’s mom are there too. Somewhere, at least, in the miragestate department stores inspire. Betty tries on a boy’s suit for working. Though of course what boy works? Sally makes a face. Her nose crinkled, her tongue out. She thinks Betty looks like a clown. The staggering incongruity. Betty thinks she looks handsome.

Sally tries on a dress with flowers. Flowers of all colors known to man. She twirls in front of the mirror. The dress’ bottom expanding into the sloped frills of a cupcake cup.

Betty is not there. A lonesome joy is an acquired taste. Her mom is looking at underwear. Her fingers sort through the higher racks. She says don’t bother her.

Sally goes to find Betty. Breathlessly, her eyes casting about and then alighting. She shows her the sun dress.

Flowers from her neck to her knees. Betty says she found shoes with purple shoelaces. Barney the dinosaur, necklaces, shells. They are better than the green ones. Moss, sweaters, politics. Sally asks about the dress. The pleasure of the air on her thighs when she twirls. Betty says she doesn’t like flowers.

Matter of factly, shrugging, blinking. Sally cries. Expansive tears meant to echo through the department store. She finds her mom with the underwear.

Sally’s mom asks where are her clothes. Already defeated. Sally says she threw them away. They have receded to the end of the universe. She wants the sundress.

A renewed solar flare. Sally has to sit on the counter so her mom can buy it. Her kicks thud against speckled Formica. The woman at the register has to scan her bottom. She does not laugh but is the worst of all things: inconvenienced. They take an hour to get out of the department store. It is a labyrinth of joys. There are eleven escalators. Silver swords stabbing every floor at a cruel angle. For Sally the light off the jewelry stands is sun for her dress. / Chet sits on a swing. He lets the wind rock him. His feet don’t like the rubber parts on the ground. They are partial, all of them, unwhole. He kicks them. The force of a god. They make a small storm. Boulders of rubber crushing others and landing geologically. The swings chains are red. Rusty and evil and tetanus-giving. Chet can hear the cars on the road. Souls hosted above crammed-in butts. A car door shuts. The mafia or a family tree. Marissa and her mom walk past the stone mushrooms.

Marissa sits on a swing next to Chet. Its rubber is cracked and redding. Both of them look at the ground. It is a black, particulate sea. Chet kicks the rubber parts again. They are a sea of shards of ice. He says sorry. They are a sea without Vikings. Their moms sit on a bench and chat.

Chet stands up. He wants motion, all little boys want motion, they say. He pushes Marissa on her swing. His fingers try not to get caught between the chain. She goes higher and higher. Her stomach is a part of her, then not, then again.

Chet is strong. He gives her his strength like a gift. Marissa screams. Tiny crimped cords in her neck. She sounds like a bird falling from a branch. A bird who has learned only to communicate. At the last second it soars. The fulfillment of the greatest hope only possible at the apex of the bad. She smiles at the highest place in the air.

Chet slows her swing down. His face bunched up in a knot. She giggles when he takes the chains. He is nearly powerless against the momentum he has created. He asks if she can do him now. Love is regardless of reciprocation but in it reciprocation must happen. She says no. Because he asked, because she is in a mood, or because it is not love? He starts to turn red. A tomato naked. Then she says let’s play on the bars.

They run over to the bars. They aren’t rusty, they are coated in synthetic rubber. Sally hangs upside down with her knees. The best shape of her whole long life. Chet laughs.

Possibly his first true laugh. He can see her underwear. /

27

Teacher Joy, Spring Semester Kids make fun of Sally for her new dress. Laughing is feet of film-ready material. She has a spoon in her other hand. worse than words. She cries. The tears keep escaping from Holding it like a knife. She asks are you ok. Whether it is a the well at the bottom of her eye. Teacher Joy walks her out of rhetorical question means whether you truly care. Betty does the classroom. Shuffle. She goes to the phone and calls her not know. mom. The whimsical curly cord bored now. Her mom is tired.

They hug. The first-ever hugs of reconciliation. Betty still She needs more sleep than normal people. She says ok. She has her hand on her eye. She has forgotten it is there. They does not bother to pull the phone away for her monumental say they love each other very much. Plastic food encircles sigh. She is sorry. them. They are sorry.

Teacher Joy brings Sally back into class. Shuffle. She still In the kitchen that is not plastic they drink hot tea. The cries. Her cheeks have two discernible rivers on them, the Tigris hulking mugs next to their fragile hands. Betty’s cat hops and Euphrates of the muck of sadness. Teacher Joy yells at us. on the table. Infinite motion then stillness. Marissa yelps.

There was never anything but silence. She says that Sally cries Privately. The cat only yawns. Cats at their most threatening because she thinks we don’t like her new dress. Its flowers so when they yawn with their fangs on display as ancient many, its complete ignorance of the concept of subtlety. Teacher tribal weapons plunked into the gums of a living breathing Joy’s eyes don’t blink. She is a casualty of education. She says animal. They smile at each other. Click. Marissa is allergic we laughed because we like the dress. to cats. They make her sneeze like Its flowers so playful we burst in joy. She a pirate. She does not care. She is asks isn’t that right. There was never an autonomous individual. She likes anything but yes. We nod. Black gray them.

He wants me to talk. matter. Chet whispers in Marissa’s ear. / Hot breath on her cochlea. They laugh and they nod. Publicly. I think they are Tommy and I wait for the bus Anything. lying. A person can even only stand and after school. The bus stop shelter still be lying if they don’t believe what laughably shelterless. The air smells they are doing themselves. Betty is next like grease. The buildings look like I do not talk. to Marissa. A lily pad among drowning grease. The bus stops. The squeak of lotuses. She wears sweatpants and a giant bat. We get on. It rumbles as sneakers. Bunched up stylessly at the soon as our feet are inside. Tommy ankles. I can’t see her socks. I bet they are pink with hearts. Her talks about when he missed the bus. Despite bygones. He nod is not a lie. says his backpack was in a tree. One of the few. He stops Sarah never lies either. Publicly. She is at home sick. Part talking. Like leaving an old woman in the middle of the street. of me has to be too. Sometimes I don’t like Sarah. Proximity He looks at me. That was you you bastard but I forgive you if as the downfall of sibling love. In class I miss her. you will only pretend it was out of friendship. He wants me to talk. Anything. I do not talk. / Sally sits down in the seat in front of us. She stares out the window at her reflection. Tommy says her new dress is Marissa plays at Betty’s house. The rug’s loops are tight pretty. Its flowers are surges of sincere life. She tells him to and dark and hard on bare feet. They play with dolls and a shut up. Her arms crossed in a harrumph. He says he is not plastic kitchen with food. The dolls sit in the sink like a hot tub. kidding. She is cooked. She turns shrimp pink.

Marissa holds a waffle. It is perfect and inedible. She says The bus stops at my building. It sighs as it lowers toward how Chet pushed her so high in the swing. Holding his breath the street. I don’t want to get out. The events a person may at each push so he wouldn’t grunt with effort. She thinks he is miss! I get out. I press seven. Mom has milk tea for me. Why strong. He wears basketball jerseys. Betty says he is stupid. does she meet me at the door with it? I ask her how Sarah Marissa throws the waffle at Betty. She is stunned at is. Her long hair and her effortless good grades. She is sick her accuracy. It hits her in the eye. Marissa has never thrown again. She is never sick. Mom worries about Sarah. something and hit what she was throwing at before. She thinks she is blind. Her eyes are closed. She asks if the blood is on the carpet. The definite article. Marissa runs to her. Three /

28

“

“

summer 2012

dislocate

Chet’s mom calls. My mom talks to her business-like. In two days I go to Chet’s house. It has picture windows and a balcony. It has white carpets. With pockets of yellow and gray. We sit on them and play with building sets. The atoms of imagination. Chet is good at building. His blocks are profuse and their angles are sharp. I want to help him. The diligent engineer. I want to build the tallest building. High enough so we cannot see the top. We can name it after us. The Chet and Andy Best Tower. Chet doesn’t think we can build the tallest building. He is the son of Zen. I tell him yes. Caring is quality.

I put some blocks on the ground. Gasoline in the overloaded motorcycle’s tank. He puts some on top. He puts his hands around my stomach. Then he asks what do I think about Marissa.

I say I think she is pretty. Like a distraction from the business of life. I keep putting blocks on the stack. Amazing how when all the angles are right. I say this is not the tallest.

Immediate gratification is its own lack of reward. It is a plan. It is a living blueprint, Borges’ map that smothers the country it charts. I want to build the tallest another time. Transcendent success requires both hard work and patience. Chet wants to know is that all. Because I love her. I say she is funny too.

Funny ha-ha. He asks if I want to play video games. The chalet of imagination. I say no.

Chet goes to the living room to play video games.

Coldness to warmth and warmth to coldness. I build the plan until it falls down. All plans must fail before they can be put into practice. I can hear the guns in the play room. Russian yells cut short. I join Chet on the couch. Which sinks elusively.

It is black and my legs stick to it.

I ask is it ok if I play on the next game. We are stationary.

Chet looks at the television. You can see its cross-stitching, the black lines under which the colors vibrate. He says yes.

The delay of a million miles of whimsical curly cord between us. It takes him a long time to die.

Then we play. A united focus on a separate thing. Chet kills me fourteen times. He riddles me with an endless storm of holes and blood drips down my half of the screen. I kill him one time. He says I am lucky. He knows where all the guns are. You only have to run over top of them to pick them up. I do not know the buttons. X, triangle, square, circle. When I die the controller rumbles. My grip goes loose each time. It makes my hands feel like a thunderstorm. / Teacher Joy makes us sit in a circle. Nature’s patterns.

She says we will play a game called telephone. Nature’s

games. She whispers banana in Chet’s ear. A banana. Chet whispers nanana in Marissa’s ear. A banana running with its tongue out away from opponents in tag. Marissa whispers now now now in Sally’s ear. A banana’s eyes wide to the prospect of life. Sally whispers no no no in Tommy’s ear.

A banana sighing at the approach of the serrated edge.

Tommy whispers penguin in my ear. A bird slipping comically, moments away from the rupture of its spine. I say penguin.

Into our heads leaps the tuxedoed bird, waddling. The class laughs.

Teacher Joy says I do not understand the game. She shakes her head like she is disappointed even if it is with herself. She says you do not make up your own words. You cannot just jump into the pile of leaves. You say the same thing to everyone and you see how it changes. People. She says it teaches about people. / In the afternoon Marissa and Betty visit Sarah. They stand at the door like they expect something. I sit and watch them.

They are a bad television talk show. Her room is very cold.

Weather. Marissa and Betty pretend that they are not cold.

They comment on atmospherics. I see goose pimples on their arms. Pointed mounds of vestigial fright. The wallpaper is yellow. Or is it paint? I think it is yellower every day.

Sarah tells Marissa and Betty a story about a fox that jumps over a fence. What it chases has shifted to the other side. They laugh. Ha ha ha ha ha! They think she is very funny.

Mom brings them tea. Spoons clinking on the platter as she walks. Marissa says no. She waves her arm like our mother is a waitress. She does not like tea. An unhiding grimace. Betty drinks the tea. Her lips look elsewhere. I do not think she likes it either. Alas. That is ok. At a certain point you gain sight into what matters. Sarah smiles. Past the tea and goose pimples. She likes it when people visit her.

Betty asks when is she coming back to school. A painting missing even the tiniest parts is incomplete. Sarah says her mom will tell her. She wonders who will tell her mom. She is bored in her yellow room. The ceiling fan fwoops. She is finished with all the books in the house. Hardback books with identical spines meant not to be read but to match. She says she has learned a lot. About various human situations. Marissa and Betty laugh again.

They leave. Our mother sees them out. I tell Sarah I think she will be better soon. She will sprint from bed through the sprinkler into the street, kilometers and kilometers to the coast. She thinks Betty is nice. How can we tell these things?

29

Teacher Joy, Spring Semester I think Betty is nice too. Images of her bounce in me like windstruck leaves. I have to do my homework. More baseball and I have never seen the dust that bursts from a base when it is hit by a cleat. I kiss Sarah on the cheek. It is wet and salty.

She is a good sister. / Sally and Tommy play at Tommy’s house. They are inwardly nude. They throw a ball in the living room. They are thoughtless in their joie. They break a vase that is expensive.

Tommy’s mom comes home. Makeup can only last so long. She is very mad. Her face is a smoldering black mess.

She makes them dinner. The wok sizzles for less time than usual. She asks what did they do today.

They say they read a book about streams. The sorts of things you want to find in back of your house but nobody has houses or backyards, this is a moral education. Tommy’s mom asks what is a stream. She wants them to say nothing. They say it is a small river. Wadeable were one to know what it is to wade. There are tadpoles in it. Giant sperm. Then the tadpoles have legs. Fanciful Olm-like things. After a long time they are frogs. The duration being unclear. They start out as eggs.

Tommy’s mom says she didn’t know that. Her eyes can’t see the grains on the table, of wood or rice, nor the bowl, nor what is in it, nor the chopsticks. She does not eat her fried rice. / Sarah gets a card from Tommy and his mom and dad.

Neatly printed letters like telegraph-bringers. It has a kitten with a balloon on the front. Its big eyes versus its humanish pose. It says to float to health. Upward through clouds that themselves resemble bunnies. Sarah and I don’t know what that means. Infinitely good intentions. Sally signed it too.

Sarah says kittens make her tired. Fuzzy ones. She closes her eyes. Beneath them she blinks anyway. That means she wants me to leave.

This time I stay. If only the wicker chair were made for sitting. It takes a long time for her to fall asleep. You can nearly pinpoint the moment. When she does I am happy. A lion who won’t have to eat for a month. Her mouth smiles when she sleeps. / At school Chet and Marissa talk about the stream. An ecosystem of cartoon words. I ask Betty if she knows about frogs and tadpoles. Their currents of sex. She says she does.

A textbook knowledge peppered with visions. She says they

30

are like butterflies. Which some people fear they are so like bats. She likes butterflies better than frogs. Throw beauty to the frogs. Betty is very smart.

I ask Betty why butterflies are better. Her breath stays within her. Teacher Joy yells at me. Fiercely. She says do not talk at the same time she talks. She wishes we hadn’t vocal cords. I say that we want to talk about frogs and butterflies.

Metamorphoses. She makes me stand up. My legs stretch as they never have at this time in this place. She puts my forehead on the wall. It is damp and somehow soft. I can hear the class but I can only see the wall. Its grooves and its dimples. I am there for one hour.

The teacher talks about rocks. Her eyelids are like rocks.

I do not like rocks. Their conclusions are foregone. I think why Betty did not get in trouble. Is fairness so important? The wall is very dirty. The streaks are not black but yellowish. There is a bug crawling on it. Its legs are bigger than its whole body.

I move my hand to smash it. It flies lethargically upward.

Teacher Joy yells at me again. Her voice digs furrows in hard mud, having never seen soft. I put my hand down. My fingers feel waterless. I want to be asleep. / The building is tall. It reaches toward the living room’s sun. Chet thinks about Marissa. Her hair, her toes. He almost knocks the building over two times. A wavering elephant saved by its huge feet. I tell him to build. For the sake of the engineer. I put blocks on top.

Chet goes to the bathroom. He walks like his legs are broken. I am hungry. The hunger of a painter painting a mortified cow. I build and build. The chief architect remarks on my contribution to the others at the helm of the building’s design. Chet comes back after twenty minutes. A king regarding his concubine. He eats something. His teeth are punctuated with the tendons of beef jerky. He asks if I want some food. Cool dryness for the gurgle within me. I say no.

I want to make the building the tallest. Piles and piles of cured wood atop one another into the clouds of the living room. Chet watches television. Superheroes save women and everyone screams in exaltation. I build / I sit on Sarah’s bed. She is wreathed in the altitude of sickness and the pilots won’t let her down. Her room is yellow.

Bananas too sick to be attacked by rot. Her covers are blue.

Robin’s egg birth crinkled. I tell her about the bus. The old bus. It is boring now. I yawn like a chameleon. Tommy and Sally sleep. Their eyes shut with the knotty peace of the willfully undernourished. Trees go by. Their leaves cannot be summer 2012

dislocate

quid asia ward

seen to rustle. There are no tricks.

In school we do homework. Lines and lines and lines of pencil that will fade. Teacher Joy is mad every day. She is the opposite of Dante’s Satan, the origin of gravity not fixed at her belly but all about her, exerting a force that asks not for implbut explosion. I do not think she likes me. Her belly button is a void. She yells when I talk. The opposite of matter. She does not yell at Tommy and Sally and Marissa and Chet.

I tell Sarah about butterflies. All different colored ones flapping frantically. She says she likes frogs better. Even those without the cute protruding eyeballs. I say I am the same.

I tell her about the building. The building of buildings. I ask if she wants some blocks. Colors, wood-grain, thin, thick,

I don’t care, I promise, I don’t. She yawns. Her eyelids pulse.

I say we can play with them together. Her from her bed and me on my knees. She says yes. Yes. She closes her eyes and curls under her covers. Like a tiny, white bear. She is tired. A tiny, white bear with a fat seal next to it that is too big to eat. I think how I am too.

31

creates a Facebook Profile Walter Edgewater Creates a Facebook Profile Kevin Shea Basic Information

Networks:

Imagine jamming, sticking all sorts of things in your nervous system—

Sex:

Rachel Mayes & I smoke cigarettes

outside of The Magician, storefront patrons draw crude boobs & fat dicks on steamy windows.

***

Let’s leave our genitals out of this, okay?

Current City:

We need this, the disaster, children’s parks made of concrete & steel, disarray, the shock

of something unexpected right behind you at all times: a man dying on the sidewalk,

bar with neon pink FAT

BABY on the front window.

Don’t you ever let anyone tell you

that you need to know the colors of what’s inside. The test is over.

Birthday: I am alive in the most unmiraculous time.

Hometown:

Jagged remnants of piers lay waiting in the River Charles.

Relationship Status: & if my lover loses

her hands, or hair, then I leave the bitch.

Interested In:

I try to throw peanuts at the podium poets

Looking For: Just come on, come with me

while I write this. I could use some company—yours.

Political Views: I am Walter, warrior ruler!

32

Religious Views:

I have become terrified of unmade memories. The split-

lipped God is on the radio broadcasting silly silver promises. summer 2012

dislocate

Likes and Interests

Activities:

Unlock the dead bolt, stomp onto the deck, nearly slip, plunk into the weather-

beaten patio chair. Light a cigarette. Take a drag, burp a little burp. Tastes like Nutter Butter Bites. This is all wrong— I just took that over-the-counter Prilosec. That should’ve done

the trick. Wait—I’m a writer. Well, I used to be.

Interests:

I drink coffee in my leopard print robe.

Favorite Music:

The pace of the baroque adagio races my chest.

Favorite TV Shows:

Stop smiling & dust yourself off. You’ve been made too real. How did you do it, you brain-float barracuda?

Favorite Movies: Tarantula Man starring

Clint Eastwood & directed

by Noir Ellí. It hasn’t been made

yet, but will be soon. I’m sure of it.

Of made movies, my favorite is The Hustler. Or Jaws!

Favorite Books:

Do you have any idea how hard it is

to constantly write your life into a poem?

Favorite Quotations:

We’re all going home alone—you don’t have to flaunt it.

***

we’ll be asleep for some time, & then for some time, we’ll finish living.

About Me:

I am not the Americana.

I am not the Polyanna.

I am not the русский я.

I am not the Laframboise.

I am the petit bourgeois.

I am the Louisiana.

I am the vox humana.

I am the top banana.

I am Oh, Susanna,

won’t you cry for me?

33

creates a Facebook Profile Contact Information

Email:

I write dead letters to the disappearance.

Current City:

You walk the streets hoping you will find something, a sign that you’re going the right way.

Earlier, you knew the way to the bar without even checking a map.

AIM:

just focused on my hand, twisting balled

scrap paper nervously.

Education and Work

Grad School:

No one talks to no one, that is, no one is really a stranger to me.

I tried everywhere but everything was closed.

College: Something done got messed up in my brain.

High School:

He thinks briefly of his first love, she of the crying by the kitchen table,

& then he’s driving through the graveyard,

Zeek at the wheel, tumbling tombstones, ravine-bound.

Employer: Barely Legal Biscuits. It’s our new literary journal.

Position: I’m the captain until you abandon ship— Time Period:

long, bare

thread, tired & gold

Location: Such germination along the Hudson— Description:

It’s 8:52am & I’m just getting up

for my 9-5.

34

summer 2012

dislocate

lamb asia ward

35

Messenger, Abridged Galileo’s Sidereal Messenger, Abridged Erin Murphy NOTE: The following erasure poems are comprised of words taken from the noted texts. The words are in order and have not been altered.

With this instrument of our senses, behold the moon, naked and rough as a philosopher wandering in Paris or at sea.

Forsake caution — let ABCD be a cloud, a face, a hand, the sun as shadows lose their blackness and become one.

36

summer 2012

dislocate

Letter from Charles Darwin to Botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker June 27, 1573, Abridged

The pretense that science is objective, apolitical and value-neutral is profoundly political because it obscures the political role that science and technology play in underwriting the existing distribution of power in society. –Ruth Hubbard

My

wife:

like

gales

of wind, less

and

less

with

endurable,

highness

eclectic

&

Men,

supreme,

and

not

lowness, clear.

are

the highest

mature,

form,

the

having

organs

most

important

&

ideas.

37

Stag Country, No. 1

Kristoffer West Johnson

pledge of reluctance

38

summer 2012

dislocate

J. A. Tyler

Stag Country, No. 1

Magpie seeped oil. His shoulders ran. The machinery of the grind spoke broken coal from black walls. There was no symmetry. Dovetail slept in the corner, an ooze of white humming from her skin. There was candle glow, and Magpie’s coyote in the dim. Cold hung in the lines between. Magpie shifted another pelt higher in Dovetail’s bedding, the baby only settling deeper towards the floor. Every father in the grind had a son, every man a coyote. It was peaceful brutality in the mines and Magpie an uninvited shine in its darkness. Twice a year the men left the mountains. Twice a year there was a stirring in these hollows. Twice a year Magpie and all of the grind men reached down in the valley and plucked until their hands were raw. The first was on the coldest day, when even the grind iced over with doubt, when the men were at their weakest, when the tally was upended and there was the next need for the next wave of men, for the flooding of the mountains with another blight of semen. On this the coldest day the men traveled the slopes toward sunrise, afraid of catching ice in their lungs, or the look of snow on peaks so intimate that it would stiffen their hearts into forever callouses, unforgiving knots that grind men can’t undo. Everyone knows that this is how you kill a grind man, to tangle his heart when the sun is ripe. And down the sides the men would travel, a winter fully bloomed around them, heading to the valley, to the trove of women there, to the knitters of snow and ice, their knitting needles resounding an avalanche of clicking from the ranges the grind men wore on their shoulders. The women of the valley would hear them coming, days in advance, but there was no defense. Once, they set fire to their village. Once, they stopped their hearts to pretend death. Once they ran and once they built weapons and once they all stood naked on the breach, devastatingly open to the men of the grind.

Nothing changed. The coldest day of the year was a day that the valley women, the snow-knitters, had to look upon with their eyes open. The men would arrive at the highest point of the village, snow-tinged caps and layers of snow beneath, the women either crying or screaming or running or hiding, each woman only attempting the impossible: to break a perpetual cycle of monstrosity and rot, to balance a keeling ship in steadfast icy waters. And the men would tear their clothing, and the men would penetrate their bodies, and the men, with coal hands and blackened chests

would hump and heave and clatter-throw their slickness down into the valley, into the women, where a boy or girl would grow, where a coal miner would take room, where either another snowy daughter would blossom only to be drawn and quartered, or a man would root, a boy to be born for the blackest work, for the stall and grudge of pulling dark from dark, raised on glinting oil and pitch, the holler of upturned metal and the sledge of men’s voices pounding in the mountaintops.

Only the boys survived, only the sons. The daughters were always burned, always dropped from the world’s edge, always strapped to the trees and set upon by the coyotes, until nothing of daughters were left, until the sons were washed clean of their sister-forms, until the men of the grind felt safe again in a nearly womanless world. This was on the second day. This first day, when the mountain men stepped out of the mines and out of the grind and down to the valley, this was the day of raping – this was the coldest day of the year and the men had only the strength left in their oilskinned bodies to hold down beneath them every woman of the valley until every woman of the valley was brimming with wet coal, until every woman had been attacked and held and hollered and spent, until every woman felt every last drop of womanhood forged on the inseam of her thighs by the darkness of hands, by the men of the mountains, by the only danger set upon them in this forest-world where they knitted snow and ice, where they drank root tea, where they loved their sister-wives as if the sun was a star set so close to their faces that snow didn’t matter. And it was on the second day, the second time of the year, nine months later, when the grind would once again halt, when the men of the mountains, of the mines and the coal rubies, would descend into the valley again to reap what they had sown.

The men would oil up their backs and their broad chests, their gnarled thighs from perpetually lifted loads, and walk black down the mountain, stains on the snow, to take from the women of the valley the brood that they had fathered. Nine months to the day, from the coldest of days when the women became unwanted mothers, and those who gave birth early sometimes fled with the child and sometimes stuffed their angel wings into the child’s mouth until it gasped and sputtered, until it rang with silence.

And sometimes these early mother-women held their new babies in their arms and drowned themselves in the river, or leapt from the seat of the world, their feminine arms spread to the sky, their snow hair tumbling, their dangling children so taken by the flight that their breath left them before the darkness could swallow their baby-faces. And some women, those who birthed early, they only held their babies in their arms until the coal-men returned. And then, if the baby was a girl, it was killed. And then, if the baby was a boy, it was taken by the men, carried away and into the mountains, to the grind, to return one day to the valley, to where their fathers first

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Stag Country, No. 1 raped, and rape again in the low-spots of this world, where there were only mothers and aunts, and the great tearing open of clothes. This is in the valley of always, where every daughter was killed but women always remained. These snow-knitting women, these women of the valley, some would kill themselves and some would be burst during birthing and some simply lost one another in the valley, in the trees or in the bellies of coyotes, yet on the coldest day of the year, the day nine months before the men would return again, there

only then towards the mountain, the immaculate conception of coal-rape, of black lust, of oil-fathers, of men who take and take, who trudge bone-ice feet back up again to the grind, leaving behind their children to stretch bold and large in victims’ seething insides, waiting out the second day, nine months later, when they would return to the child harvest. And the new women, only soaking the story to their hilts, until they flooded with coal-hate and mountain fear, snapping eyes at any twig-break on the approach to the village. The valley and the women and the snow they knitted falling down in lace. Only Magpie then, inadvertently against the system, a daughter

were always women to scream and fight off their attackers, to wield fingers as claws and mouths as knives, to be flayed open on snowy boulders in the valley of this winter, where new men always came. named and resting in the Women appeared. It would corner of his hovel, the be an evening between the outside freeze working inward.

This is the valley of always, first and the second day, Only Magpie, cradling a baby the valley women, some he named Dovetail, watching growing boys and some where every daughter was killed her sleep beneath coyote girls and some as vacant pelts, the slight linger of fuel and blank as paper, and on on her baby lips, the same oil but women always remained. the startled treeline a new and pitch that fed all the sons woman would appear, or from all the father-hands. And hundreds of them, from the Dovetail cooing when she deepness of nothing, from the recesses where the women ate, and Magpie forgetting that a mountain goes upward, and the valley resides below, and all daughters are for the cliffs or wanted to hide but never found cover . All these perfect the coyotes or the drawing and quartering. Only Magpie, not women, quietly entering the village, watching the valley with forgetting, but remembering a mother when he quick eyes, women who seemed to know a secret but then only picked up the knitting needles set before them and took, gripped this baby’s small bones, her tender frame. Only as all the other women of the valley, to knitting snow and ice, Magpie, who said he would take another daughter to another duplicating the individual uniqueness of every longing flake, end, and walking with other men from the grind, other notto have it pile on their feet and atop the mountains where the fathers with other not-sons in their oil-clad hands, some men of coal came from, where their grind constantly rattled, shaking with the anger of failure and some at the promise of where they worked killing, some as tightly fisted as the first day, when they came to chase their woman from the crowd, when they caught their the bodies made of oil, bodies these women had birthed woman and danced her across blades of and those coal-men had raised, stubborn wrongness twisted into every muscle, every limb, every cell. The new women their shoulders, then oil heads catching sunrise as they took would appear and the former women would offer them their a woman back to her tent, as they wrapped black arms over knitting needles and their root tea, would offer their wrists white skin and rampaged her again and again, hoping to to the foreheads of these new women, to feel in them the make a man from her burning cross, longing to be a father, to temperature drop from forest cover to this valley village, the bring another son back to the honeycomb hovels of the grind, change from ghosts of women to other kinds the sludge and the slick of always coal from always mines, the scars of pitted earth collapsing and the scars of black of ghosts of women. And the new women would drink the burned into the landscape, ever covered offered tea and knit snow, knit ice, see around them the soon distending bellies of pregnant women, ask of their men and in snow and then re-covered in coal dust and the blackened all the angel-white fingers pointing upwards as if to the sky, men of the mines. Magpie walked with these men, attempted

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to think what they were thinking, but he’d committed the sin, the looking into a daughter’s eyes, and all was unbalanced.

Fathers have always told sons, fathers and fathers, there is not ever a reason big enough to look into a daughter’s eyes, and it will tangle your heart, and a tangled heart is the death of you son. Fathers on fathers, and all the noise of the grind welling underneath their father and son feet. Only Magpie walking with a then unnamed babe in his hands, gripping her ankle, holding her upside down as all men did with all of these daughters, because ending an upside down world was the same as being merciful, and these coal men, these black faces atop frozen hearts, they needed always ever reasons to keep killing this world. Magpie walked with these men and Magpie talked with these men and his words like their words were gravel and pits, the deepness of mines and how these daughters are the rot of the land. Only Magpie’s baby, head towards the freezing dirt and baby lips bluing, Magpie’s baby was so silent he thought she’d already died, and he was happy for the prospect, the bitter love for throwing something already dead off the cliffs at the edge of the world. The other mine-men, their babies were wailing in sync, a cry of daughter-locusts somehow knowing that at the edge of the world there wouldn’t be clouds and sun but wind and spite and loss. All but Magpie’s daughter, who was silent. The world sometimes how it shifts. Fathers on fathers said never look in a daughter’s eyes, sons on sons knew, but because Magpie was holding the only quiet baby, because she was silent and the oil of Magpie’s brain needed reassurance, because Magpie had a strain of white snow that had infected his heart, he looked. Magpie looked into his daughter’s eyes. In the eyes of Magpie’s daughter, in the split world where he did what he shouldn’t have, when Magpie denied the soot and oil of his veins, Magpie saw: a lone ship with a billowing white sail. It was on the ocean. And the ocean was beneath the cliffs. And the single ship with its upright mast was still in the waves, anchored to a static point though the sails longed to project it into the horizon, a place where the oil-men had never gone, a place their coal-history proclaimed dead and sinking. A ship on those waves in that ocean. And Magpie saw, in that second of his daughter’s eyes, himself, on the bow of that ship, a daughter in his hands, in his arms, and a snowcleaned sun in the sky, and what it would be to look up at those cliffs instead of down from them, how it would be on a sailed boat, with a living daughter against his chest, standing on the other side of the

edge of the world. And Magpie’s heart, at that moment, was a tangle. Fathers on fathers, sons on sons, and Magpie looking into a daughter’s eyes. The men continued walking and Magpie with them, but there was a difference in the depth of his coal-covered skin, and he felt what felt like oil tears, and his face flush with wanting. The men walked and the edge of the world neared. Magpie had his daughter and the oil men on his sides and to his front, they all had theirs and none but Magpie had looked towards their faces. They held them by the ankles, blue faces pumping angry air through baby lungs. The sons would be already back at the mines, out from the freeze-snap of wind, mouths quieted by the sludge fed to them on fathers’ fingers, the oil quieting their throats, baby son fingers opening closing on oil-daddy bears. The sons would be a soothed pack, coyotes nestled at their family pairs, father and son, while these daughters, every daughter from every women who gave birth to a daughter, they were screaming in near unison, the world’s edge approaching, the cliff’s smooth face to dark waters beneath like a sky to their newborn upside-down daughters. The women of the village, in the valley, they never saw this cliff unless they were throwing themselves from it, and even then only new women would appear from the treeline, to pick up their resting knitting needles, to go back to the making of snow and ice, the raping by oiled men, and the loss of every son and every daughter.

And the men of the mine too, they did not see the cliffs unless their rape birthed a child, and the child was a daughter, and their oil rules and coal heads bade them stand on the cliff, baby daughter ankles in hand, and hurl them to the rocks and water below. As Magpie was standing there now, the last in the row of men who in this year of oil, in this season of coal rape and nine months brooding, in this instance of mine mentality, had made and now were poised to destroy the snow daughters in hand. One after another, down the line, the screams of dying sounding exactly as the calls of life, except that they moved downward, until the water on the shore, on the rocks below, it ate the existence of every daughter, of all female form outside of the valley village. Only Magpie at the end of the line, and no noise coming from where his daughter’s upside-down face had been, and no sound left except for the clatter of waves, and the stillness of burned up coal men, and Dovetail against a father’s chest.

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What wasn’t said What wasn’t said Kevin McLellan

1.

Madame Graft

Can’t you see me as anything other than compromised gums & shame? I am more than Gauloise. I could brush up on my French but, I’ll never be able to sing like The Sparrow.

2. Betrayer This Belleville ideal has been abandoned and you aren’t welcome to my lair (not liar).

In other words, yes, fuck off.

3.

Monsieur X

Due to our gaze-surprise, say this time at Le Gerny, the shadow of desire we glance away from because the mouth, my mouth is the most dangerous place.

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ellen Hughes

zebra

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chapter 1. loomings chapter 1. loomings from Overwhelming Idea Whale Jason Lester

Author note: In Overwhelming Idea Whale, I take Herman Melville's Moby-Dick – one of the most lexicographically diverse texts in English – and excise every instance of every word in the text after its initial usage. Channeling the single-minded mania of Ahab, I have indiscriminately hunted the vocabulary of MobyDick to the brink of extinction. By distilling the text to its barest essence – that of its own rich and effusive vocabulary – I hope to reveal how the original text is charged with energy even at the level of its diction, while simultaneously allowing for a reading of this canonical text that crackles with new possibilities forged from chance interactions within the text's own vocabulary.

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago -- never mind how long precisely -- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest on shore, I thought would sail about a see the watery part of world. It is way have driving off spleen, regulating circulation. Whenever find myself growing grim mouth; damp, drizzly November soul; involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, bringing up rear every funeral meet; especially hypos get such an upper hand, that requires strong moral principle prevent deliberately stepping into street, methodically knocking people's hats -- then, account high time sea as soon can. This substitute for pistol ball. With philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; quietly take ship. There surprising. If they but knew, almost all men their degree, other, cherish very nearly same feelings towards ocean. now your insular city Manhattoes, belted round by wharves Indian isles coral reefs -- commerce surrounds her surf. Right left, streets you waterward. Its extreme down-town battery, where noble mole washed waves, cooled breezes, which few hours previous were out sight land. Look at crowds-gazers.

Circumambulate dreamy Sabbath afternoon. from Corlears Hook Coenties Slip, thence, Whitehall northward. What do?

-- Posted like silent sentinels around town, stand thousands mortal fixed reveries. leaning against spiles; seated pierheads; looking over bulwarks ships China; aloft rigging, striving still better seaward peep. These are landsmen; week days pent lath plaster -- tied counters, nailed benches, clinched desks? Green fields gone? Here? ! come more, pacing straight water, seemingly bound dive.

Strange! will content them extremest limit; loitering under shady lee yonder not suffice. Must just nigh possibly without falling. -- miles -- leagues. Inlanders, lanes alleys, avenues,

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-- north, east, south, west. Yet unite. Tell, does magnetic virtue needles compasses those attract thither?

Once. Say, country; lakes. any path please, ten one carries down dale, leaves pool stream. magic. Let most absentminded be plunged deepest -- man legs, set feetgoing, he infallibly lead, region. Should ever athirst great American desert, try experiment, caravan happen supplied metaphysical professor. Yes, knows, meditation wedded. artist. desires paint dreamiest, shadiest, quietest, enchanting bit romantic landscape valley Saco. chief element employs? trees, each hollow trunk, hermit crucifix within; sleeps meadow, sleep cattle; cottage goes sleepy smoke.

Deep distant woodlands winds mazy, reaching overlapping spurs mountains bathed hill-side blue. though picture lies thus tranced, pine-tree shakes sighs shepherd's head, vain, unless eye him. visit Prairies June, when scores wade knee among Tiger-lilies -- charm wanting? -- drop! Niagara cataract sand, travel thousand?

Why did poor poet Tennessee, suddenly receiving two handfuls silver, deliberate whether buy coat, sadly needed, invest pedestrian trip Rockaway Beach? robust healthy boy, crazy? first voyage passenger, yourself feel mystical vibration, told? old Persians hold holy? Greeks give separate deity, own brother Jove? Surely meaning. deeper story Narcissus, who because could grasp tormenting, mild image saw fountain, was drowned. we ourselves rivers oceans. ungraspable phantom life; key. am habit going begin grow hazy eyes, conscious lungs, mean inferred. needs, rag something. Besides, passengerssick -- quarrelsome -- don't nights -- enjoy themselves much, general thing; nor, salt, Commodore, Captain, Cook. abandon glory distinction offices. abominate honorable respectable toils, trials, tribulations kind whatsoever. quite care, taking, barques, brigs, schooners, confess considerable, being sort officer-board -- somehow, fancied broiling fowls; broiled, judiciously buttered, judgmatically salted peppered, speak respectfully, reverentially, fowl than. Idolatrous dotings Egyptians ibis roasted river horse, mummies creatures huge bake-houses pyramids. simple sailor, mast, plumb forecastle, royal. True, rather order, make jump spar, grasshopper May. unpleasant enough. touches one's sense honor, particularly established family, van Rensselaers, Randolphs, Hardicanutes. putting tar-pot, been lording schoolmaster, making tallest boys awe. transition keen, assure, decoction Seneca Stoics enable grin bear. even wears.

hunks-captain orders broom sweep decks? indignity amount, weighed, scales New Testament? think archangel Gabriel thinks anything less, promptly obey instance? aint slave? Well, however captains -- thump punch, satisfaction knowing; everybody else served -- either physical point view; so universal passed, hands rub other's shoulder-blades. gain, always, paying trouble, whereas pay single penny heard. contrary. Difference between paid. act perhaps uncomfortable infliction orchard thieves entailed us. compare? urbane activity receives really marvellous, considering earnestly believe root earthly ills, monied enter heaven. Ah! cheerfully consign perdition!

Finally, wholesome exercise pure deck. prevalent astern (violate Pythagorean maxim), quarter-deck gets atmosphere second sailors. breathes; commonalty leaders many things, suspect. wherefore after repeatedly smelt merchant, whaling; invisible police officer Fates, has constant surveillance, secretly dogs, influences unaccountable -- answer. doubtless, formed grand programme Providence drawn. came brief interlude solo extensive performances. bill run: Contested Election Presidency United States

'BLOODY BATTLE AFFGHANISTAN' cannot exactly stage managers, put shabby, others magnificent parts tragedies, short easy genteel comedies, jolly farces -- recall circumstances, springs motives cunningly presented various disguises, induced performing, cajoling delusion choice resulting unbiased freewill discriminating judgment. overwhelming idea whale. portentous mysterious monster roused curiosity. wild distant seas rolled island bulk; undeliverable, nameless perils; attending marvels Patagonian sights sounds, helped sway wish, inducements; tormented everlasting itch remote. love forbidden seas, barbarous coasts. ignoring good, quick perceive horror, social -- since friendly terms inmates place lodges. reason, welcome; flood-gates wonder-world swung open, wild conceits swayed purpose, floated inmost, endless processions, mid, hooded, snow hill.

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bullshit Flying horse asia ward

phoebe reeves

bullshit I’d like to reclaim certain words and sing Leonard Cohen songs as if they were sung by women and not men who always want to fuck women in the most romantic or nostalgic manner, to use poetry like a strap-on and ease their bully way into it with a wet metaphor. She bells the rein. They like the way. Just a shrine, a shriven man at his holy archway, the terrifying sacrament of the cunt.

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Pastoral Insomniac Spree What do aspens have to tell you can’t figure out from crying?

Their quizzical pauses and rushes, a serrated tipsy wave down a gorge.

Sunlight runs through wine gushing from a split cask. Crisp and deliberate lines on a map show where the watershed begins.

You should have slept well in the rain.

Headlines Oil spills in the bay— slick black on slushy white.

How many Bicknell’s thrushes in the park?

How many governors on house arrest?

Maybe we can all have ankle bracelets someday.

These neighborhoods where everyone over 35 has a cancer. Lung cancer in apartment #92. Leukemia in 88. Makes it hard to get angry when they take up two spaces, park in the one we shoveled out.

The schedule of destruction—spelunkers digging for tin in ancient garbage dumps, black-sealed bags heaved up past stench into—what? light? smog?

New headlines, anyway. So transient.

Bugs on water. The Grenville Orogeny.

Big Ice Age. Little Ice Age. Dried grass I’ve kept in a tin box for years.

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Exposure: Notes from the Und Exposure: Notes from the Underworld Ashley Strosnider

“Some caved naked for fear of contaminating the water they mean to study.” –Joni Tevis On February 2, 1925, a bundled-up picnicker in Central Kentucky might’ve dropped a sandwich down a hole in the ground to world-renowned cave explorer Floyd Collins, on his third day stuck in Sand Cave with a rock on his leg. If only she’d known that the roof would cave the next day, rendering all contact but voice impossible, she would’ve made him fifty sandwiches or more, flung them down like manna from heaven.

Leo Lambert of Tennessee loved Lookout Mountain Cave, loved it so much that he bought land on the side of the mountain just to drill down into it an easier path so more people could visit. (So they could pay him to do it, to walk on his steps, so he could buy his wife a nice new dress). But after just a bit of drilling, a brand new shaft opened up into another chamber no one had even known was there.

I’ve known what a geode is since my younger brother taught me on a weekend camping trip to the Land Between the Lakes. Dad pulls the boat into a cove, and I’m annoyed because I want to waterski (two parallel planes tied together at the toes to help me stand), and Dad wants to comb the beach for arrowheads but my brother won’t join him. He wants to search for crystals, while my dad insinuates that he should take me with him then. My brother finds specimen after specimen of round crusty rocks. These, he stuffs into socks when we get home to Henderson, and on the driveway near the azalea bush, we pound them with hammers.

The pieces crumble inside the cotton, and we pull out even halves. Set on their backs like upturned turtles, their insides sparkle under the sun.

5 August 2010, Mina San Jose, Copiapo, Chile, South America: A rock-fall at the mine, located in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, traps 33 gold and copper miners 2,300 feet below ground. Seventeen days later, a drill entered a space accessible to the workers, and came back to the surface with a note: “Estamos bien en el refugio, los 33.” We are well in the shelter, the 33.

We are born out of claustrophobia. I imagine, curled up safe inside our mothers, none of us wanted to leave. We all cried when she pushed us out; tiny little sinkholes on our bellies remind us what was lost.

The Song of Snowdon: Or, Merlin Becomes a Man (A Tale Told in Four Voices) From deep inside the earth, a voice complains: “These stacks of stones piled upon my back keep falling; thus, the walls remain undone.

The king suspects poor workmanship, but I know the men are trying, and I even hold my breath. Despite this unrest, I hesitate to shake an honest attempt at progress— but I must, at times, gasp in earnest, forcefully. Something rumbles in my gut which I, for all my embarrassment, cannot subdue. This guilt gnaws, growing both teeth and claws, to scale.”

30th Annual Cave Sing December 6. I take a road trip north from Nashville to meet a couple of summer camp friends at Mammoth Cave National Park. We link elbows and follow the crowd into the mouth of the cave, past the old mining operation where gunpowder was made, past

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a handbell choir playing Silver Bells, and into the Rotunda Room featuring the Glasgow Brass Quintet. The air inside the cave is warmer than Kentucky winter; the cave holds constant at 54 degrees Fahrenheit. I unzip my coat, fill my lungs, and open my mouth.

Trevor Strosnider updated his current city to Idaho Springs, Colorado.

Trevor Strosnider added Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold to his work.

Trevor Strosnider added Roland Deschain and Manfred von Richthofen to his profile.

Pwyll Mar in Blaenavon, Torfaen, South Wales, was opened to visitors in 1980 as project of the National Museum Wales. A working coal mine from 1860 to 1980, the site is now dedicated to the preservation of the Welsh heritage of coal mining—a prosperous source of family pride from the Industrial Revolution right up till Margaret Thatcher sank her teeth into Great Britain.

Tom and Becky in the Cave: Chapter 30 At Sunday morning service, the two are nowhere to be found. To everyone’s horror, the realization dawns that Tom and Becky must still be in the cave. After a day of searching, the words “BECKY & TOM,” scrawled on the cave wall in lantern soot, are the only trace to be found. Meanwhile, Becky folds up into herself, cries in terror—“Tom, how could you? How could you have gotten us so lost just to slake your own taste for adventure?”

Leonard Cohen wrote The Sweetest Little Song: “You go your way/ I’ll go your way too.”

The king laments, alone: “But what, indeed, am I to do? I have begun in defeat, repeatedly. My designs proposed in blue, clean lines, concrete—yet all attempts at implementation tumble down as if cursed. Here I stand, impotent.”

1077 22nd Avenue SE, Minneapolis, MN I rent my first subterranean room, a summer sublet, in May 2011. A tiny peace lily almost survives in the sliver of sunlight through my egress window. It’s larger than requirements dictate, a source of pride, but there are no fire alarms on either level of the house. Nothing to warn us if it’s time to crawl out and run for our lives.

My brother earns his Bachelor of Science degree in geology at the University of Kentucky.

Before he is done with his last remaining field camp credit, he has landed an entry-level geology job at a mine that shares its name with our hometown, where he’ll earn three times more than a writer with an MFA can hope to make. He comes home for two days, spends one with each of our quarreling parents, packs up his stuff and his girl, and drives back west to make his own. She decorates their bedroom.

The King’s Council, in chorus:

Who, we? We blame the spirit, but

A bastard’s blood will cure it.

Such a death as retribution

Seems to us a fine solution!

“Look, Ruby,” says Leo to his trembling little wife, as they step into a pitch black room. He lifts the lantern and they crane their necks to gaze up at a giant stream of water jetting out of the rock 145 feet up, falling down right at their feet. “I’ll name it after you,” he promises, honest, and kisses her true.

“My daughter, my daughter,” the harvest goddess cries, hands smoothing the pretty girl’s dusty hair. “Please tell me you didn’t eat anything down there?”

Those next few days, what could Floyd do, thirsty and hungry, a rock on his shoes? America tuned in after dinner each night to hear the next installation of the rescue team’s progress as they dug a tunnel toward where he was trapped.

The wise man built his house upon the rock The wise man built his house upon the rock

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Exposure: Notes from the Und The wise man built his house upon the rock And the rain came tumbling down

The whole earth is concave when mapped onto paper, fat and happy where it bulges in the middle. If you set a turtle on his back and push him down a slide, he falls off the end and lands on his back, pedaling the air, slow motion kicking, kicking.

Lady Earth cries: “They comb my tangled hair and from within my sticks and stones—yes, from my bosom, pry a trusted son, my own, who once inside me writhed as this new mystery now moves. He is heir unto my truths. His ear draws close up to my lips; I impart slow whispers, mist. He is quiet, near, as ancient secrets slip like molten tears from my hot heart to his soft hands. We forge a plan from the fire of my womb. Though sophists’ minds will claim to know divine truth, demand death.”

While the Chilean government undertook its large-scale rescue mission, involving international drill-rigs and the US NASA program among others, numerous foreign leaders contacted Chile’s ~ President Pinera to congratulate him. Solidarity flowed in from Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, South Africa, Poland, the UK, Spain, Ireland, Mexico, and the United States. Pope Benedict XVI sent a video message of his prayer for the rescue’s success, in Spanish.

What must my orthodontist have seen? Calcium deposit stalactites and stalagmites framing the cavern yawned open on his chair, my palette (which we strove to rapidly expand via a nightly turn of the key) a pinkish flowstone drapery.

Johnny Cash promises: “If you wait your turn, you’ll see Ruby fall.”

He knew he wasn’t the only one who’d tried and failed, but he had fallen in love with her nonetheless. He consulted the gods, and all-knowing Zeus gave it to him straight. “You’re going to have to steal her. You know they won’t just give her away.”

Megan and Matt take me home to Adair County with them on a weekend off from camp. On Friday night, we meet their former high-school English teacher in a cow pasture down the road.

My hair is wrapped in a bandana, cheap kneepads around my ankles till it’s time; he’s wearing overalls and a hard-hat. His last name is Reliford—no Mr. He’s more than six feet tall and grinning ear to ear. We climb under a fence, but Megan assures me the farmer’s given them permission. They have decent gear, a year’s worth of college credits in geology and geography between them, and the farmer’s relatively confident they won’t have a reason to sue him.

Reliford and I crack jokes about Mark Twain and stick close to our guides.

Floyd had found something big, really big—a whole new chamber in Sand Cave—but his lamp was too low to explore it. Knowing the time he had left to navigate out safely was growing slim, and so he sped things up. Haste makes mistakes, and he got himself stuck, knocked over his lamp, dislodged a rock from the ceiling, pinned his leg. But did he curse, or did he cry?

Enter an adolescent orphan: “Forgive my speaking boldly, King, but nothing they have told to you is true. My blood will not do a thing. It is a war deep within the earth that has halted the birth of your castle. Your foundation cannot stand upon a land whose immaculate torso heaves so in the labors of war.

But this submerged hostility wrecks your affairs with a blind eye. It is dark down there, and you are not a thought, forgive my frankness. Sir, underneath her skin crawl dragons— I speak the truth as she herself has told— creatures brawling in a whirl of pink. This war of theirs uproots your bulwarks. But once they’re set free, the serpent white as heaven’s clouds— or your own beard, if I may, lord!— will fall under blows from the blood red claws of the one whose hide shines scarlet.”

When I move to South Carolina, I discover the town is half dirt and half sand, situated right on the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line, where the Piedmont Plateau and the Coastal Plain Province meet. Flip-flops in the muggy summer kick the sand up against my calves, the floorboards in

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my car always sandy. My friends spend their holidays at the seaside. I wake up in his parents’ beach house on New Year’s Day knowing I am barely above sea level, wondering if we’ll sink or float. mine. (pronoun) 1. a form of the possessive case of I used as a predicate adjective: The “Cavers Rescue Spelunkers” t-shirt is not mine.

2. something that belongs to me: My mother, my brother, and I all drive white cars. Mine is the smallest.

3. Archaic. my (used before a word beginning with a vowel or a silent h, or following a noun): mine own brother.

SEE RUBY FALLS on a dozen—a hundred?—billboards and barn roofs on I-75 in Tennessee in the 70s, and still so many today. How many times can a single white car drive right by and remain un-mesmerized?

The Henderson molybdenum mine in Clear Creek County, Colorado, has produced molybdenum since 1976. The mine was discovered in 1964 and named after a mining engineer. Incidentally, Freeport-McMoRan, which operates the mine and employs my only brother, is the largest taxpayer to the Indonesian government.

The first lesson at Waterski Camp: When you fall, let go of the rope, hold your ski tips up as high as you can so boats can see you. Lean back, and float, and wait. Your driver will come back for you. This is a metaphor for Jesus.

He died of exposure. Floyd’s remains were left in the cave, a funeral service at the surface.

Two months later, his brother wasn’t satisfied, reopened the shaft they’d closed over him. April 26, 1925, Floyd was laid to rest on the family farm. Two years later, his grieving father sold the family land, the cave along with it.

Rolling Stone magazine called 1964: The Tribute “Number One Beatles tribute band on Earth.”

When I was fifteen, my dad took me one county over to Owensboro, where my orthodontist lived, to see their show in a hotel lounge.

Trevor Strosnider ...200 miles of tunnels, 19 levels, 1000 gallons of water per minute. Woooo working in Moria!

Trevor Strosnider's mine belt and brass tags jingle when he walks...and the sound is not unlike that of bells on a kitten.

Trevor Strosnider Yeah. My job. My metaphorical collar is white...with blue stripes.

June 13, 1927, the new landowner moved Floyd into a glass-faced coffin, on display in Crystal Cave for years—until the night of March 18, when someone stole him away. Soon, Floyd came home, left leg missing. They chained his casket to the ground.

We rode the elevator down, squished together in the corner behind a couple reeking of weed.

As we wandered through, they oohed and ahhed and touched and snickered. Meanwhile I wondered why no one had made it illegal to bolt name plates to the formations. We approached Ruby Falls to a soundtrack of timpani crashes, a strobing red light throwing itself at the water, again, again.

The Fate of Injun Joe: Chapter 33 After Tom and Becky make it back in one piece, the judge seals up the cave door to prevent anyone else’s getting lost inside. When Tom wakes up to the news after a week’s convalescence, he rushes to tell the judge he locked Injun Joe inside. And he’s right. They find Joe’s body, starved to death, just on the other side.

Merlin continues: “Trapped as they are within this hill, the scope is limited, the contest suspended in incessant attempts to scar one another’s hides—such as: to see whose spine, when pinned up against a mountain’s insides, can cause a castle to crumble.”

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Exposure: Notes from the Und cave. (verb) 1. to explore caves, especially as a support or hobby.

2. to fall in or drown, especially from being undermined—usually used with in.

3. to cease to resist: submit—usually used with in.

The prettiest girl you’ve ever seen is picking flowers—or they’re giving themselves willingly into her hands, depending on your take on whether or not a pie enjoys being eaten. She pulls gently and as the roots yield, Hades himself bursts up through a cleft in the earth, wraps his arms around her waist, a hand across her mouth. He pulls her down.

Leaned back on the couch around midnight, my lover is talking to me and I’m mining his mouth for words he isn’t saying. I marvel at his eyes, his lips, his perfect teeth, the slant then arch toward the roof of his mouth, stretching up into a grand chamber. I tilt my head back and he examines mine. His finger tickles. Later, we’ll discuss how I manage to open mine so wide.

The foolish man built his house upon the sand The foolish man built his house upon the sand The foolish man built his house upon the sand And the rain came tumbling down Merlin proposes a plan: “My lord, the only way to forge ahead is simply to force them out. You need not choose sides. Their battle will run its course, but they require the sky to decide. Place your bet with me instead, sir; know I bear the land’s own request. Dig deep within her. You will find the serpents. Though your wisest may disagree, their schemings are not justified, and if I have lied, then kill me.”

After 69 days underground, all 32 Chilean miners and one Bolivian one were brought safely to the surface over a period of nearly 24 hours, on 13 October 2010. Nineteen days earlier, on their 50th day, they broke the record for longest length of time spent underground.

There are all sorts of ways to kick off teambuilding activities—from a blind walk where partners trade bandanas to a team carry-all where no one walks all the way there on his own, no matter how heavy the brother. Once participants arrive at the low elements course, partners take turns standing on a big fallen log and take turns pulling each other off and then attempt to pull the other up. I could drive the tractor, back the boat off the ramp, send participants off a 40 foot high swing without anyone checking to make sure I’d put the right clips in the right place, send them backwards off a cliff face in similar fashion, but the low elements teambuilding course is the only activity I never got checked off on, so my authority on the log stand may be shaky. Nevertheless, I believe the moral of the story was this: it’s infinitely easier to drag someone down with you than it is to pick her back up again.

Oh, the rain came down And the floods came up The rain came down And the floods came up The rain came down And the floods came up And the wise man's house stood firm.

The king again considers: “These things he claims to understand—that he speaks so well can be no accident. And yet to save his own life, couldn’t any man? I have little at risk but time. So we’ll dig! And no harm done, even if he’s lying. He’s already dying, as things stand.”

But surely you jest, king!

Is this a test, king?

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“Then this: if the boy presents a truer case, resolution earned under his direction, your blood shall be spilled in his stead. The weight of your counsel will rest on your heads, and its truth will determine my favor. Each proposition equally ridiculous— sacrifices and serpent wars, both wholly inconceivable.”

Humans have a six-thousand year old relationship with Mammoth Cave. Most Native American mummies present examples of intentional burial, evidence of funerary practice. The exception: Lost John, a pre-Colombian miner discovered in 1935 beneath a large boulder.

You could see him well into the 1970s, have a look at death square in the face.

He says her name instead of mine. It echoes, echoes, echoes, echoes.

They call the ore muck, and a modified version of a front end loader brings it up to the surface.

My brother calls it a mucker, some miners call it a bogger. Everyone agrees they’re really LHD’s, short for Load Haul Dump units.

Trevor Strosnider: it’s fast and its bucket holds ten tons. Splat.

As it goes, so she says: “These conspiring men wedge me open at the seams, this, my baring, shameful flash of pink.

Inside, the white and red roll teeth over tail, I am moaning, shaking, frail; yet by these pains, my labor proves my son the truest prophet. He is to live.”

Pwyll Mar was redeveloped in 2003, still purposefully preserved as an operational attraction.

Big Pit is not a sanitized theme park; the steel bands and props are not decorative, but integral in holding up the mine roof. Water flowing through the tunnel is real, but it has been redirected to flow down a channel instead of across tourist’s feet, like the miners had it. In the gift shop, I buy my brother a tiny charcoal dragon who lies in my hand and looks up through heavy eyelashes—wide-eyed, docile, submissive.

But the fates have rules, too. She who eats of the underworld is marked. It was a trick, those seeds, but she’ll serve a month for each. Down she goes, and the flowers wither.

In 1961, Mammoth Cave National Park purchased Crystal Cave and closed it to public access.

At the Collins family’s request, Floyd and his casket were reinterred in Flint Ridge Cemetery on March 24, 1989. It took a team of fifteen men nearly three days to drag it up.

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cross stitch samplers cross stitch samplers lisa mccool-grime women’s stitchery To cross. To double cross. Such are the things taught only to little girls who grow into women who block out their days crossing and double crossing. Only the double dutch and hopscotch, of all childish things, are put away. Yet from even these games, women’s stitchery takes a silliness and vanity as exemplified by the girlhood songs sung on the playgrounds everywhere. Consider:

I know a girl names Sarah Sarah I know a girl or two I know a girl names Cindy Cindy Wish I had their shoes

They strolled on down to Orleans Orleans To the swamps, strolled down They strolled on down to Old Man Johnny’s Took that old man’s crown

He laughed so hard he keeled straight over Laughed so hard he died He laughed so hard to see that party “Girls are king,” he cried

While one sees the wisdom in the old man’s laughter (and perhaps in his departure from a world gone so daft), the primary seed within the songs such as these flowers at maturity into women’s obsession with ornamentation from footwear and headdress to empty titles, each to be giggled over as the needle weaves in and out of linen much like the pointed feet of a girl skipping two ropes when one should be enough.

There are those who argue that these needlewomen preform a moral task both by keeping their hands from idleness and by stitching (among embroidered herbs, hearts and homes) verses from Epistles and Psalms to be hung on walls or slept on as a pillow, ever present reminders of He who truly maketh and leadeth and restoreth our souls. Again one should consider the rhythms from which these same women nursed as children:

Hillary put on her pantsuit Michelle put on her dress And what they spoke of, nobody knows But only one was looking her best

Here one sees that words, in women’s poorly nourished minds, have no power next to finery.

The craft of stitchery reduces words and the morals for which they stand to mere ornaments, pretty charms for petty witches whose spelling is all in vain.

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Cross Stitch Sampler

all texts from respective speeches made at 2008 national political conventions

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And this convention celebrates a special and exceptiona XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXl

XXXX From XXXXXX the beginning of time, no XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX matter how accomplished in other fields, women XXXXXXXXXXXX have always sought XXXXXXXXX a husband with an eye XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX to what kind of father that man would be. Well, I hit a home run with John McCain. And XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX let’s not be confused: These are perilous times, not just for XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX America, but for freedom itself. It’s going XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX to take someone of unusual strength and XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX character, someone exactly like my husband, toX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX lead us through the reefs XXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXX and currents that lieX ahead.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX I know John. You can trust his hand at the wheel.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX But you know something?

What I’ve always thought, it’s a good idea to have X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX a woman’s hand on the wheel. So XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX how about that Governor Sarah Palin?

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

rights, dignity, and equality for all people.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

for freedom, and our party arose from a great battle XXXXXXn XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX for huma

Abraham Lincoln. Our country was born amidst the struggl XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXe

America

in

you

of

all

bless

We all to have work together,XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXX build consensus, the way John has X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX done all of his life. His leadership inspires, and empowers, and X places ultimate success in all of our hands.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Ronald Reagan was fond X of saying, “With freedom goes responsibility, a responsibility that X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX can only be XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX met by the individual himself.” I have been witness to great service and sacrifice, to lives XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX lived with humility and grace. In X World War II, my father’s B-17 was shot downX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I was XXXX XXXXX born and XXXXXXXXXXX raised in the American West, and I will alXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ways see the world through XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX the prism of XXXXXXXXXXXX its values. My father XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX was a true Western gentleman. He rose XXm fro hardscrabble roots XXXXXXXXXXXXX to realize the American XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX dream. With only a few borrowed dollars in his pocket, and a strong back and a can-do spirit, he XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX built a great life for his family. John has XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXX a XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX picked reform-minded, hockey- mom-ming,X basketball-shooting, moose-hunting, salmonXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXpistol- packing mother XXXXXXXXXX fishing, of five for viceX president.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX The stakes were never more clear to me than the morning I watched X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX my son, Jimmy, strap on his weapons XXXXXXXXXXXXX and board a bus headed for harm’s way.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXX It’s not — it’s notXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX our natural instinct to rally to them, to lift them up with our prayers,XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX to come to their aid. It’s also our X duty as a country. That duty is what brings me before you tonight, and it’s a much larger, more important than John or me X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX or any of us. It’s the work of this great country calling us XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX together, and there’s no greater duty than that, no more essential X May task for our generation right now. That’s been very much on my mind these last few months as I’ve traveled our country. X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Each day, after the XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX bands packed up, and the speeches were done, and the camera lights darkened, I always came back to XXX God how blessed and honored I was to be a part of our national conversation.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Republican Party. The hand we feel o our shoulder belongs to XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXn

did

I

so

and

home

them

take

could

I

cross stitch samplers cindy in buttercup

summer 2012

To create

To promote

tXo us all.XX

inspiration to me andX XXXXXXXXXXXX

she was an XXX

of uncommon grace XXXXXXXX

her beliefs, a fighterX XXXXXXXXXXXX

better. Steadfast inX XXXXXXXXXXX

smarter, stronger andX XXXXXXXXXXXX

America fairer andX XXXXXXXXXXX

her quest XXXXX to makeX

who nev gave up XXXXXer XXX

courageous leader

Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going. Even in the darkest of moments, ordinary Americans have found the faith to keep

XXXX them?

?

hillary in mango

XXXXXXX That is our duty,XXXXXXXX to build that bright XXXXXXXXXXXXXX future, and to teach our X children that in America XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX there is no chasm too deep, noX barrier too great - and no ceiling too high - for all who work X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX hard, never back down, always keep going, have faith in X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX God,XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX in our country, and in each other. Thank you so much. X God bless America XX and Godspeed XXXX

Most of all,XXXX I ran to stand

To restore

feel XXXXXXXXXXXXXX invisible

Were you in itX loving mother and XXXXXXXXXXXX the minimum wage ? XXXXXXXXX XXX for all the people in this country whoX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Were you in itX XXXXXXXXXXXX and others like him ? XXXXXXXXX for that mom struggling with cancerX Jones, XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXX a dear friend Were you in itX while raising her kids ? XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXX to many of us, aX XXXXXXXXX for that boy and his mom surviving onX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Stephanie TubbsX XXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX you in this campaign just for me ? Or XXX Congre XXXXX sswoman were you in it for that young MarineX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I want you to ask yourselves: WereX And XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

And to join

To make To bring

To fight

To create

And a proud XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXX supporter of Barack Obama.

mother.XA proud XXXXXXXX Democrat. A proud American

I am honored XXXX XXXXXXXXXXXnight. to be here to XXX A proud

XXXX And so dawned XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX a struggle for the right toX vote that would last 72 years handed XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, XXh her bald head wit down by mother to daughter to painted with my granddaughter XXXXXXXXXXXX - and a few sons andX grandsons along the way. These womenX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX name XXX on it and XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX and men looked into their daughters' eyes,X imagined a fairer and freer world, andX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX asked me to figh XXX t found the strength to fight. To rally and XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXX e ridicule and harassment for health care picket.XTo endur XXXXXX To brav XXXe violence and jail.XXXXXXXX And after soX XXXXXXXXXXX This is the story ofX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX many decades - 88 years ago on this veryX day - the 19th amendment guaranteeingX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXX America.

How d XXXXo women the right to vote would be foreverX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX enshrined in our Constitution.XXXXXXXX My motherX we give this XXXXXXX XXXXXXX was born before women XXXXXXXXX could vote. ButX in this election my daughter got to voteX country back toX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX for her mother for President.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

she greeted me XXXXXXXX

had cancer. But XXXXXXXXX

discovered sh XX e

insurance andX XXXXXXXX

didn't have health XXXXXXXXXX

kids with autism XXXXXXXXX

had adopted two XXXXXXXXX

single mom who XXXX

remember the

I will always XXXXXXX

If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If they're shouting after you, keep going. Don't ever stop.

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cross stitch samplers michelle in turquoise

It was strong enough XX to bring XXXXXX hope to the mother he met worried XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX about her child in Iraq; hope XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX to the man who's unemployed, but can't afXXXXXXXXXXXX ford gas to find XXXXXXXXXX a job; hope XXXXXXX XXXX to the

XX It' s the story of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX men and women gathered in churches and unionX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX halls, in town squares and high school gyms. The military familiesX who say grace each night with an empty seat at the table. XXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX He neverX stopped smiling and laughing - even whil e struggling to button his XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX shirt,XXXXXXX even while using two canes to XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX get himself across the room toX give my Mom a kiss. People like Hillary Clinton, who put those 18 X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXX millio n cracksXX in the glas XXX s ceiling,XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX so that our daughters - and sons -X can dream a little bigger and aim a little higher XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

That is the thread that connects our hearts

That is the thread that runs through our journey I comeXXXXXXX here tonight as a sister,XX

blessed XXXXXXXXXXXXXX with a brother who is my mentor,XXX my protector and m XX y lifelong friend.XXXXXXXX I come here as a wife XXXXXXXXXXXXX who loves my husband XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX and believes he will be an extraordinary president. I come here as a Mom XXXXXXXX whose girls are the heart of my heart and the centerXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX of my world - they're the first thing I think about when I wake u in the morning,Xand XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXp the last thing I think about when I go to bed at night.XXXXXXXXXXXX Their future - and all our children's future - is my stake in this election. And I come here as a daughter XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX – raised on the South Side of Chicago by a father who was a blue collar city worker,Xand a mother XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX who stayed at XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX home with my brother and me. My mother's love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, he XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XX r compassion, and he XXr intelligence XXXXXX reflected in my ownXXXXX daughters. My Dad was our rock.XX XXXXXXXXXXXX

He knows that thread that connects us And in the end,XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXX after all that's happened these past 19 months, the X Barack Obama I know today is the same man I fell in love with 19 X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX years ago. He's the same man who drove me XXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX and our new babyX daughter home from XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX the hospital ten years ago this summer,X inching along at a snail's pace,XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX peering anxiously at us in the rearview mirror,XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX feeling the whole weight of her future in his X hands, determined to give her everything he'd struggled so hardX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX for himself, determined to give her what he never had: the XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXX affirming embrace of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX a father's love.

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God bless you God bless America XXXXX student working XXXXXX XXXXXXX nights to pay XXXXXXXX for her sister's health care, sleeping just XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX a few hours a day. And it was XXXXXXXXXXX strong enough XXXXXXXXX to bring hope to people who came out XXXXXXXXXXXXXX on a cold Iowa night XXXXXXXXXXXXX and became the XXXXXXXXXX first voices XXXXXXX XXXX in this

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sarah in oyster As the story is told,XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX "When McCain shuffled back from torturous interrogations, he would X turn toward Moe's door and flash a grin and thumbs up" - as if to say, "We're going to pull X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX through this." My fellow Americans, that is the kind of man America needs to see us X XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX through XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX these next four years.

It's the XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XX journey of an upright and honorable man - the kind of fellow XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX whose name you will findX on war memorials in small towns XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX across this country, only he was among those who came home.X To the most powerful office on earth, he would bring XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX the compassion that comes from havingX once been powerless ... the wisdom that comes even to the captives,XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX by the grace of God ...

XX the special confidence of those who have seen evil, and XXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX seen how evil iXs overcome.XXXXXXXXXXXXX A fellow prisoner ofX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX war, a man named Tom Moe of Lancaster, Ohio, recalls looking through a pin-hole XXXXXXXXXXX in his cell door asX Lieutenant Commander John McCain was led down the hallway, by the guards, day after day.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

There is only one man iXn XXXXX this election who has eve XXXXXXXXXXXXXXr

It's a long wayX XXXXXXXXX

really fought for you ... in XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XXm the XXXXd fro fear an

places where winningX XXXXXXXXXXXXX means survival and defeat XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX means death ... and thatX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

pain and squalor XXXXXXXXX XXa six-by-four of cell in Hanoi toX XXXXXXXXX

man is John McCain. InX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

the Oval Office.

XXXXXXXXX our day, politicians haveX XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXX B ut if SenatorX readily shared much XXXX X lesser tales of adversityX XXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXthe nightmare world than in which this man, andX XXXXXXXXXXXXX others equally brave,X XXXXXXXXXXXX served and suffered forX XXXXXXXXXXXXX

McCain isX XXXXXX XXXXX elected president,XXXX that is the journey he XXXXXXX will have made.X XXXXX

And as the XXX mother oXf one of XXXX XXXe thos troops, tha XXXXXXt is exactly XXXXX the kind of XXXXXX XXXI want man as com XXXXmander i XXXXXn chief. I'm XXXXX just one X of XXXy man XXXs mom who'll sa XXXXXy an extr XXXXa prayer each night XXXXXX for ou XXr sons and XXXXX XXXXXs daughter going int XXXXXo harm's way.X

For a season words

For a lifetime deeds

God bless America

their country.

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when the problem is you when the problem is you luke reiter

1. How to belong This first point is critical, so if you come away with nothing else pay attention to this: you can be as crackpot, moonstruck, off-your-head insane as you need to be and get away with i! if you know what the normals are thinking. It doesn't matter if you disagree as long as you play by their rules while they're watching you.

Admittedly this is easier in principle than in practice. You can know every intricacy of the normals' perception but when the urge hits you, and I mean physically hits you––when every tendon in your neck pulls taut and your fingers curl into lumps and you get that dense feeling in your gut like you're a collapsing star about to be sucked inside-out and your belly button is the event horizon of the black hole you will become––well, it's tough to hide it.

Now in the literature they'll tell you it's all about tolerating the anxiety until it goes away, and that's half true. You really do have to tolerate it, ignore the dense feeling and feign composure as best you can while you're among the normals. The untrue part is the "until it goes away," because it never really does. It just compresses and comes to rest somewhere inside you, maybe as a kidney stone or a polyp, and you know after after a decade or so you're going to be full up.

Perhaps you recall the story of the Spartan boy who stole the fox. The preface to this fable, remember, is that thievery was encouraged among young Spartans––provided they could pull it off. To be caught, however, meant a swift beating and a lasting shame. So one sunny afternoon in Sparta a young boy steals a fox for dinner, slips it into his shirt and heads home. Along the way the boy bumps into someone––a teacher, a solider, a townswoman, depending on the version––and this person asks the boy what he's up to. While the boy wheedles, the fox comes to its senses and decides to get the hell out of there. It begins to dig its way through the boy, clawing into the soft tissue, burrowing between sinews and gnawing on tangles of ileum. And of course the brave young Spartan never winces, just keeps on chatting about the weather and fishing on the Eurotas until finally he drops dead with a fox-sized hole in his gut.

Typically this narrative is whittled down to a moral, something along the lines of, "If the Sparta kid could handle that, you can eat the damn spinach." But no one ever questions the story. For example, who the hell eats fox meat? And what kind of fabric was the Spartan boy wearing that no one noticed a blood-soaked animal gyrating underneath? It's taken for granted that the boy's resolve came from the Spartan ethos already so deeply ingrained. But bear in mind this was a child, not yet capable of subscribing to an abstract concept like honor. So what really compelled him to endure such agony? Clearly it wasn't threats––if he could handle a fox chewing on his intestines it seems likely he could absorb a few knocks upside the head. The conflict had to come from that other consequence, the lasting shame.

Worse than bruises is the prospect of never being touched. It seems even a Spartan wants to belong.

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2. How to plan your day The next point is purely practical. In the pantheon of literature dedicated to obsessive compulsive disorder there are plenty of warnings about how time consuming this life can be, but the authors do you a disservice in not following these warnings to the practical conclusion: if you're going to take the time to be crazy, you'll need to revise your schedule.

5 a.m. The alarm goes off. You will lie in bed for another ten minutes to recall your dreams. Did you fuck anyone? Get fucked? Did you kill someone? Did you watch a loved one get eaten by bear? You can still appreciate the unreality of these events, but you can't be sure they don't bely some abhorrent desires. Never forget you are judged on intent.

Even if you don't think of anything, you'll still cycle through the basic poses you could have assumed while sleeping––left side, back, right side, stomach, moving slowly to avoid waking your wife––and pray in each position.

5:12 a.m. Pause outside the shower. This will be your last chance to recall dreams that require specific attention. (You can't touch the bed after showering because of your aversion to bodily detritus.) In the shower, turn up the heat until the mirrors fog and let your chin slump against your chest. No one is waiting. Nothing is expected from you. Wipe the errant streams of water from your eyes, inhale the steam. This will be your most peaceful moment of the day.

5:30 a.m. In the closet you ponder how to re-arrange the articles of clothing deemed clean and safe to wear. There are only so many permutations possible, but buying more clothes won't fix anything.

5:45 a.m. This is a coffee-making day. You will learn to make enough coffee to last for two days to limit your time grinding beans and shuffling through filters. The more steps in a process the more chances there are for your thoughts to derail, so streamlining is essential.

But today is a coffee-making day. As you fill the pot from the faucet you will notice shapes in the ripples of the water––fragments of circles that end in obscene little points. Stop. Pray for protection.

5:59 a.m. You sit down at the table with a cup of coffee, a bowl of oatmeal and the newspaper. In the forty minutes between sitting down and the moment your wife gets up, you will make it halfway through the front page of the paper. Each page is a gauntlet in which you must dodge forbidden words, outpace the thoughts that well up as your eyes weave through letters that flare and bend and thrust like the teeth of a trap. Sometimes you'll arrive at the bottom of the page and realize you missed the ideas represented by all those shapes. Start again.

7 a.m. Your wife will be waiting for you. You have been up for two hours and she has been up for twenty minutes, and now she stands by the door, dangling her purse like a pendulum, ticking away the minutes you waste. You will stand over your shoes, staring down, praying for atonement.

3. On the subject of God Odds are you never spent much time exploring the concept of blasphemy. That's to your advantage, because you'll need to start from scratch now. Actually, you won't require a definition, because incidents will be evaluated case-by-case. Some of your sins will seem forthright, others will be ambiguous or even dubious, but all will require you to pray for forgiveness, just to be safe.

You hear people talk about laying their troubles at the feet of Christ and the peace that passes understanding. These people talk of a God who frets when a sparrow falls to earth, who guides his followers through tragedies, career changes, realty transactions, relationships, medical procedures and so on––a beneficent God infinitely interested in the quotidian.

Yours is more of an Old Testament God––a jealous God who burns with rage, who reveals himself in plagues and decrees that a man who steals should be stoned with his children, donkeys and cows for good measure. Yours is a God who wants to be feared, a God of ceremonial cleansing and sacrifice.

You will learn to pray again. Prayer is now a furtive process, one that must be done almost without you knowing. Otherwise, the corrupted parts of you might insert some

61

when the problem is you horrific request or obscenity into the prayer, and you would be left responsible for the consequences. How would you be judged if you lost control? More importantly, how many more prayers would it take to atone?

That's why you'll need a system: a fixed set of words you know better than your name that you can slip between the gaps of thought. Tapping your index finger and blinking is a great way to signal the end of a prayer, since it's impossible to suppress the mental noise long enough to say amen.

Of course, your system can add its own problems.

Suppose you press your thumb and index finger together too firmly and the conformation creates a shape that you associate with something profane. (Your mind can associate any shape with something profane) Because you are mid-prayer this is considered an egregious offense, and requires a new series of prayers to atone.

Suppose you time your blink poorly, and your eyes focus on an individual or object as you recite your words. This is regarded as drawing the object or person into the prayer, and will require you to pray for the safety of that person or thing before you return to the initial prayer.

Then there's the matter of location. To leave the place from which you erred before praying for atonement indicates a lack of contrition, and without contrition how can you be forgiven?

Say you're walking down the sidewalk and you see an old woman who makes you think of your grandmother––your dear old grandmother who sits alone in that cavernous split-level with only a fat red tabby nearly as ancient as she is to keep her company. You think of how you never call her, how the little time you have left with her is precious. You wonder how her health is; you wonder if she wer" to pass on and that cavernous split-level went to market, would your share be enough to pay off your student loans?

Stop. Go back. Even if every logical fiber in your being dismisses the notion that God would make this wicked thought come true, you cannot shake the guilt. If you stopped sharply in front of someone, or if you notice the panhandler on the corner watching you, you can pretend you're going back for a coin on the pavement or to glance in a window. They won't believe you, but you'll never see them again and it's a moment of embarrassment you're resolved to live with.

In some lucid corner of your mind you will sense that all the tapping, twitching, blinking and mumbling are only anesthetic. You might wish for the sort of fulfilling faith you hear others describe, instead of your self-imposed system of rules and recitations that have no greater purpose than to grant you an illusory sense of control in the uncontrollable world in which you live. But then maybe that’s all that anyone’s getting out of religion––they just seem to enjoy it more.

Is doubt a form of blasphemy?

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Some will include tips for self-management (e.g. wait 15 minutes before giving into your compulsion, or touch something else when you feel your hands are dirty). Others will motivate you with mantras: "It's not me––it's my OCD!" Many pieces will tell of other people's eventual relief through therapy, as if you'd want to read that. You've got your own story and that's plenty.

Then there's the lists of solutions, which are all written by normals who understand the fissures in your mind the same way people understand that curved wings are hereditary in fruit flies. You will see phrases such as "generally speaking," or, "early studies have been promising," or "in some cases showed notable improvement"––in some cases. Not in your case.

The booklets the therapists hand out are the worst. The cover designs are indistinct images cast in cold colors like the drapes in a funeral parlor, the titles no-nonsense declarations such as, "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: A Guide." They look like owner's manuals, but don't bother checking for the return policy. It's been more than 90 days now anyway.

What you'll find instead is advice on electroconvulsive therapy, which is generally reserved for an obsessive-compulsive person in the throes of extreme depression. ("Some temporary memory problems and interference with learning may occur with ECT, although other side effects and complications are uncommon.") Neurosurgery is described as "dramatically effective" with intractable cases of OCD, helping as much as 80 percent of patients whose symptoms were resilient to other options. You are assured that surgeons are so much more precise nowadays that it almost unfair to call the procedure by the betterknown term "lobotomy."

5. How to let go You aren't going to like this last part but you need to be aware: not all your relationships will survive this. You can't fault anyone else, because they don't mean to hurt you. Most of the time they don't even deliberately disconnect, it's just that they don't know what to say.

Or maybe you break the ties, because you know this person has seen you do the same shit too many times to pretend it's nothing, and you're too ashamed to tell the truth and too embarrassed to ignore it.

Maybe you get sick of friends asking why you tap your fingers, why your eyes flicker–are you prone to seizures? You get too many of the tight-lipped, subtle smiles that are supposed to say I know there's a secret––you can trust me. What they really tell you is I've got you pe$ed, inside and out. More than anything, you don't want to be pegged.

Maybe you just get sick of friends who don't know saying they're super OCD about organizing contact lists (or about using this one brand of lip balm, or keeping air fresheners in the car). You want to tell them you're super OCD about gauche remarks, but then you think about the last time you joked about not finding your keys because you're too blind, or how you must be deaf because you didn't hear someone knocking, or how you can't get up to answer the phone because you're crippled, and so you don't tell them anything.

Maybe you get sick of the people who do know offering fixes: support groups, self-help books, vitamin regimens, herbal remedies, psychologists, cognitive behavioral therapy,

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when the problem is you antidepressants, sedatives, clinical studies, deep brain stimulation, spiritual healing centers, meditation, prayer (of the conventional variety, not yours), more exercise, more fruits and vegetables, more Christian music, more sleep, more willpower, less stress, less alcohol, fewer violent movies.

There is no fix when the problem is you. And no matter how much assurance you receive, no matter how many pledges of patience and undying love, you know your kind of crazy has enough rough edges to wear through all bonds in time, and you can be left in the abyss, cut off from the world outside your head.

It goes like this: one day you and your beloved will go out walking at the lake. It will start out well––maybe it will be springtime and the weeping willows will sway with languid satisfaction and the birds will herald a new season, and you think you'll be different today.

But after a few minutes you'll feel yourself clouding up. The anxiety will begin to accrete in your gut, and though you scream inside your head and recite nursery rhymes to drown out all other thoughts, you'll bog down. Stop. Go back. Try again. Stop. Again.

After you walk in your fifteenth, twentieth or fiftieth loop you'll look up at your beloved and know you've reached your limit.

"Come back to me, babe," she'll whisper.

She'll be sweet at first.

But she can't stand watching you twitch and blink and mumble, and she can't stand watching the mothers swerving strollers around you and the junior high kids giggling to each other and the shriveled old Hmong women in headscarfs who stare at you with morbid curiosity as they pass and glance back over their shoulders as they hurry away. She can't stand the hold this has over you––how it takes precedence over logic, over your pride, over her.

"Come on," she'll hiss through clenched teeth.

This time you won't make eye contact, only whimper something about needing one more second. She'll turn with a huff––you'll hear her shoe grind the concrete as it twists from you in disgust––and then she'll walk away. Your first instinct will be to try harder, but your mind is like quicksand and you only sink in. At the moment you realize exactly how stuck you are you'll look up, just in time to see your beloved crest the hill ahead and vanish beyond a curtain of willow dendrites.

Push, dammit, push. Maybe you'll take a few steps but it won't be any good and you'll end up going back. Weak, weak! The by-passers will keep coming, keep gawking, but hating them is no help to you. Then you feel a new fear, a different kind––your lungs pump but the air won't come out because on top of everything else you're thinking that when you tap just so and time the blink just righ! and recite all the words precisely and you feel your soothing shower of absolution, when at last you break free and follow your beloved over the hill and past the willows, she might not be there.

Stay positive. Maybe you'll get over that hill and she'll be sitting in grass beside the path, smiling, puffing at hoary dandelions and telling you she didn't mean to lose her temper––I can't say. But I can promise you that even if she waits like so many times before, that new pang won't fade. From this day forward, your breath will always catch when you see her go over the hill, around the corner, past the willows. As long as you remain unchanged, you could never blame her for walking on alone. There is nothing you can promise her, except that when you're able, you will follow.

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jennifer davis

ogre

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me as a monster Kate ReneeÂ

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simon perchik * Not just for winter the sky carries off everything in its path –place to place broken off as if these small stones are sure the dead will wait for them though they remember only distances with no one to look through the ice at the birds frozen midair still expecting your arms to loosen inch by inch from among the others. * Always more –stepping-stones scented with the slow bend in a river burning itself out –they tire easily are lying on the grass winding things up though sometime the sound comes from the small rocks breaking off for the dead then left where snow is expected from your shoulder and hers –there is so little room and she is just one person turning back a long time without anything to lose. * You approach from above expect the sun at your back, the sink blinded by spray the way every stream is born knowing how scrapes bottom till its stones ignite explode into oceans then islands broken apart for the skies still following a rain that’s not here

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–you’re used to this –the same cracked cup rinsed till its glaze cools and it’s safe to dry your arms the floor, the walls.

* This dirt still mimics sweat lies down alongside, unsure your lips would quiet it

though the finger that is familiar probably is yours –could be enough has already learned to point –in time it will silence even your shadow without pulling it back down

as sunsets passing by no longer some shoreline unable to stop for these pebbles

struggling to rise together, take you by the hand and without a sound recognize the gesture.

* With each glove almost the same You look face to face For a place to jump –you don’t see the bridge though these weeds are used to winter slip from your fingers the way this sky no longer has room and each raindrop suddenly white, already stone grown huge :each floe inscribed and with a single name warms this hillside midair, brings these dead a river that flows again filled as if its shoreline is pulling you down, shows you where.

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such a thing as awesome Scott F. Parker

THERE IS SUCH A THING AS AWESOME

We’ve seen what they have to offer.

It’s great.

It’s beautiful.

And it is not nearly enough. (“REACH”)

Marks in Your Brainstem There is such a thing as awesome, and Guante isn’t going anywhere till you taste it, till you know from the hair standing up on your forearm or the breath you forgot to take that a performance is an opportunity for a rare and profound human connection. He means to disrupt your life. Other rappers might settle for your bobbing head, your bent-at-the-elbow arm raised overhead pumping along to the synthesized 4/4 rhythm, your enjoyment, your respect. But Guante isn’t overly interested in being the soundtrack to your Good Time, and he’s not at all interested in eliciting your smiles; just as the singer in his ars poetica, “REACH,” he “wants to dig / into the wet, / gray wilderness / behind them.”

And for the past decade that’s what he’s done. First in Madison, now in the Twin Cities, Guante has established himself as a leading figure in indie hip hop. He’s a two-time National Poetry Slam champion with St. Paul’s Soap-Boxing team, a City Pages “Artist of the Year”; he’s shared stages with some of the most respected rappers working, including Atmosphere, Brother Ali, dead prez, and Talib Kweli; he has two full-length albums out on his Tru Ruts label (with another forthcoming this year), not to mention his hard-tofind debut release, Vanishing Points, and a constant stream of EPs, mixtapes, and free downloads that would spark envy in anyone this side of Lil Wayne. (Note, though, that qualitywise, Weezy wants nothing of this vis-a-vis.)

But it’s not how Guante has succeeded within hip hop that makes him compelling, it’s the ways he bucks trends, not how he fits in but how he doesn’t. Working in rap and spoken word—forms that value a confessional, identity-focused mode and, in rap’s case, hyper-masculine posturing as well—Guante’s topical focus on activism, love, and righteous anger (not to forget the occasional zombie apocalypse) puts him in the minority. And unlike other rappers, who when they do go at these themes too often settle for trite platitudes, Guante pushes beneath the superficial insight. Best example

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here is in contrast with Common, the archetypal “conscious MC,” who once rapped with self-satisfaction, “In my mind it occurred / what if God was a her? / Would I treat her the same? / Would I still be running game?” (“Faithful”), to which Guante (presumably) responds: “fellas, remember this / calling God a woman does not make you a feminist” (“Scratching the Surface with a Sledgehammer”). Social awareness and— where this is all headed—social change are more to Guante than content for pop songs or poems; rather, he puts his work as well as himself to the service of challenging systemic, as well as overt, discrimination and oppression wherever they manifest. But as admirable as his politics and integrity may be as he speaks and performs at Occupy MN or at the Trayvon Martin rally, make no confusion, it’s only because of how good Guante is at what he does that this profile has been written.

45 Minutes of Our Lives to Connect The first few rows of chairs up front in the Rapsom Hall auditorium at the University of Minnesota are filled with anxiously enthusiastic young aspiring poets, but the stadium seats rising behind them in this lecture hall are mostly empty.

Guante sits alone off to one side reviewing some notes.

He’s sporting his standard getup: black beanie, dark shortsleeved button-up, forearm tattoos exposed, baggy but not too baggy jeans, and a barely concealed scowl. Seclusion comes naturally for Guante—Kyle Tran Myhre offstage—who is uncomfortable with small-talky social situations and tends to isolate himself from groups. But here there is an air of respect and awe surrounding Guante, and it’s this as much as his severity that keeps the younger poets at a distance.

Everyone in the room knows exactly how good he is. The student-poets are here because Guante and other poets of his caliber have sincerely and emphatically inspired them to emulation, and there’s nothing they could say to him in person that would express their appreciation better than getting up on stage and delivering a momentous performance. The

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slam part of tonight’s event will feature six undergraduate students competing to represent the UM at college nationals, where last year they finished third. They are boisterous and theatrical, these young poets, hugging, shouting, and more than anything performing away their nervous anticipation.

Notice me, notice something in me, they scream over one another. Meanwhile, Guante, the evening’s headliner, sits silently, waiting.

When the performance commences it quickly becomes clear that some of the UM students, such as Michael Lee, are good and some are not; Guante pays them rapt attention regardless. About his concentration, he says, “Some spoken word is so bad that it literally makes me feel ill, but sometimes you can tell that a writer is just starting out and is still in the process of finding his or her own voice, and that can be fun to watch. You get to see someone bloom in real time. You can learn something from everyone. I think it’s important to listen to other artists, especially those who aren’t much like you.”

There’s plenty of opportunity for learning when Guante takes the stage. He begins by offering advice, urging these kids not to be intimidated, to recognize that the small audience doesn’t matter. “What matters is, we’re sharing our art with one another.” And then, more practically, he emphasizes the distinction between recitation and performance. Performance is the reason spoken word tends not to hold up on the page: it’s not meant to; it’s meant to be performed, and a performance, one gathers, goes like this— and Guante launches into “REACH,” “Family Business,” and a few others from his repertoire. He is fully present, and his presence is large. The poet in his performance is unbounded.

At some lines he jumps up and down with excitement; at others he darts sideways and then swoops stage-forward in a decelerating curve that highlights by understatement some of his most climactic lines—these are cocky postures, of course, and part of Guante’s performance (a carryover from rap, perhaps) involves boastfully calling attention to that cockiness at the same time as he flat-out earns the right to it. You can hear the confidence in his voice, which he modulates tonally and volumely at facile will, returning periodically to a reliable growl that reaches right up to the rear wall and echoes back down converging on each pair of ears as if from everywhere.

Michele Bachmann of the game / Get on the mic, spit somethin’ insane Is there an origin story for a force like Guante? Where does he come from? Wisconsin, it turns out. Kyle moved around the state as a kid before matriculating at the University of Wisconsin. It was in Madison that he got his start in rap and spoken word. “It’s kind of cliché,” he says, “but I didn’t choose it; it chose me.” Kyle had long been a hip hop head when he was randomly assigned a rap producer for a college roommate. “From there, it was a natural, organic transition from writing poetry, to messing around

with rapping, to seriously rapping. I had a long way to go, but I got the fundamentals (rhythm, multi-syllable rhyme, punchline techniques, etc.) naturally. And when you’re good at something, and happen to have a supportive community around you, it’s hard to not want to do that.”

Almost immediately (probably too quickly, he thinks, in retrospect), under the influence of Lauryn Hill, Saul Williams, Outkast, Bruce Springsteen, and most of all Goodie Mob’s Cee-Lo, and with the support of his roommate and other friends, Kyle began performing under his stage name El Guante [“El” later dropped].

The move into spoken word was coincident. A creative writing major at UW, he was uninspired by the lit mag scene: “I saw the path that was before me: write, submit to journals, try to get published, get rejected, get published so that other people who are trying to get published can read your work. That did not appeal to me.” If he was going to really reach people as a poet, spoken word was the way to do it.

“The revolutionary thing about the modern incarnation of spoken word is that it brings poetry to people who don’t already have a relationship with poetry—I perform in high schools and colleges and rallies and community centers and rap shows and all over, and the value of that should not be underestimated.”

The two forms quickly diverged for Guante. Writing rap according to its formal rules—meter, sixteen-bar structure, etc.—has had the effect of pushing Guante’s spoken word pieces in the opposite direction: monologue-style free verse.

The respective form and context also shape his content.

“Rapping is usually done in a loud club, with music blaring, people talking, things happening all around, whereas spoken word is usually done in a quieter space like a theater, jazz club, or coffee shop, with the audience’s undivided attention.”

Playing to each form’s strengths, Guante sticks his more complex material in poems, and is more literal in his raps. “It’s nice to have both forms to play with,” he says, “It’s like being ambidextrous.”

In 2008, when he left Madison for the deeper waters of the Twin Cities—one of the country’s top spots for independent hip hop and spoken word—Guante’s stage persona was a fully realized artistic creation. He’s comfortable on stage, relaxed (like he knows he deserves the attention) but edgy too (looking sometimes like he can barely contain the arrogance lurking beneath his surface, a charged disdain toward the audience, which seems borne out of a frustration that they might give him anything less than his due). It’s a potent mixture, and his intensity in holding these two aspects of himself in balance is palpable. That’s not what you’d expect from the reticent, unassuming, slightly nerdy guy he is in person, but something happens when Guante takes the stage. The artist just explodes into being. He likens it (and it’s worth mentioning here that all of Guante’s communiques for

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such a thing as awesome this piece came over email) to method acting: “You have to fully embody the character that you’re portraying, even if that character is you. I think that’s why I’ve had more success than some poets who are objectively better poets than I am. I don’t always hit the mark, but that’s the goal: to really connect with a hundred people.”

Given his offstage demeanor, there might be a temptation here to read Guante’s artistic privileging of meaningful human connection through art as a lack of same in his personal life, like he channels all of his pent-up need for intimacy into these passionate and transformative bursts of like radiant soul touching, as if his persona emerges from a profound psychological need. And up to a point he’ll support this reading: “I think it’s less about two different people than tapping into another part of my own identity. I’m a really shy, introverted person. And when I’m on stage, it’s not that Guante takes over; it’s more like I allow myself to unleash the bottled-up energy that comes with being shy and introverted.

And when performing specific pieces about specific subjects, I try to tap into parts of my own history and memory that will allow me to access those emotions.”

So it isn’t that Guante doesn’t come out of Kyle’s psyche but that Guante’s raison d’etre is not primarily cathartic.

It’s a matter of emphasis. His art is always for the audience more than it’s for him. Consistent with this reading, his work is short on autobiography and issues of his personal identity, despite these being standard tropes of his genres.

His mixed racial identity isn’t a secret, but it’s not something he talks much about. “I think part of it comes from wanting to mess with people—Americans especially—who are so curious about race, like they need to know ‘what you are’ or they just can’t be comfortable. So leaving it ambiguous is nice, if only out of spite for those people. It also depends on the audience. If I’m performing in front of a group of Asian people, or mixed people, or whatever, I may talk more about my identity and my journey, whereas if I’m talking to a group of mostly white people, I don’t want to appear like I’m trying to cash in on my exoticism, or distance myself from my whiteness. But yeah, it’s complex.” When Guante does invoke race, as in “Confessions of a White Rapper,” it’s never as personal complaint but as a starting point to tell a story with universal reach. Stakes is high, see. Guante is up there for only one simple reason: to save the fucking world.

fuck the revolution, join a union . . . what we say is more important than how we say it And what we do is more important than what we say And what we build is more important than what we do So what you gonna build today? (“Deathbed”) “If a song is just a song you’re doing it wrong,” Guante raps on “Just a Song,” a track from A Loud Heart, his acoustic hip hop EP with Claire Taubenhaus. This is but one

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of countless Guante lines that can be quoted as his defining ethos. His work is almost fractal, so neatly do his content and artistic motivations scale hierarchically. This is not to suggest, however, that Guante’s output is merely an internally consistent and coherent imaginative product that can be admired for its creativity and originality. No, the content itself is so politically and socially urgent, so decidedly of this world, that Guante’s corpus reveals a fully integrated artist, one who succeeds by rap’s standards of valuation by embodying and living and rapping according to his own valuations. Guante, to invoke an antiquated phrase, keeps it real, and does so by refusing to be conscripted by someone else’s conception of what it means to be a hip hop artist. But you see that his realness runs deeper than a simple alignment of content and persona when you stop to notice how outwardly directed that content is. He writes poems about janitors who have their self-direction co-opted by the powerful who manipulate them like pawns. He writes songs about reliance on external salvation being a path to dependency and ultimately death. (“This is not a movie for us, trying to one take life / Don’t look for the sequel, look for the steeple / Ring every bell as though God had fallen and was fertilized in hell.”) The way Guante has defined his project, with political activism so central to his content, he can’t succeed by record sales or fame alone. His success depends, in part, on the effectiveness of his work first to reach you, then to change you, and then, by extension, to change everything.

Ask Guante what he does and he won’t stop at rapper and poet but will add activist and educator and sometimes more. He is the founder and curator of the Hip Hop Against Homophobia concert series. He is the founder of MN Activit, a network for connecting people trying to get involved in various movements for progressive social change with organizations already doing good (meaning progressive) work.

Tatyana Benson of The Canvas Teen Arts Center in St. Paul, where Kyle worked for two years and continues to lead a weekly writing circle, describes Kyle as being great with the students. “He is always ready to give advice to help progress their skills.” Former student Aimee Renaud agrees: “He really excelled at facilitating thoughtful discussion. His contributions are thoughtful and forward-moving, which just adds to the feeling of mutual respect. I've never heard him talk down to a young person or a new poet.” It makes sense that teaching would be important to Guante. There is no art qua art in his approach, only art qua human connection. “I think of art as communication, not as the mystical channeling of some inner force. So when I write I often start with the idea I want to express, and then build a concrete framework around that idea, and then add the details.”

The dangers for this kind of art are apparent. Putting his “message” up front risks both alienating large swaths of his potential fans and precluding the transcendent possibilities for his art in the name of advancing ideology. It’s a fine line

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people. He goes away and does his part and comes back with the artist walks between rallying cry and pedanticism—and Guante’s greatest weakness as an artist is that his convictions it finished. That really bothered me at first, but you have to sometimes get the better of him. Not that in Guante’s view this accept that’s how Kyle works.” is necessarily a weakness; art’s accessibility is subservient to There’s a couch or chair spot for everyone when Stink its point, he says. An artist’s work, he declares in “REACH,” begins her first song. The audience sits in a circle to watch “is one part entertainment / and one part revelation. . . . we and listen. It’s not clear at this point how many funds will be are all foot soldiers in the war / between giving the people raised. Neither is it clear how people got here or why. Five are what they want / and giving the people something they don’t SDS, two are rappers, five are MFS, one is a writer, and there yet know they want.” Some with certain aesthetic dispositions are maybe three others. Regardless, the space is transformed might object to this kind of earnestness and self-importance, when the lights are dimmed. Because it isn’t crowded, they might go because this is a sober space, and might go so farfaras to because we’re only a few feet from as to I think of art as communication, say this isn’t the performer, and because no one is this isn’t art atatall,all, justjust here who isn’t interested in the music, sophisticated this is the rare rap show where almost sophisticated not as the mystical channeling propaganda. every lyric is decipherable. This effect propaganda.

But nonooneone produces an immediate intimacy with of some inner force. who puts as Stink that doesn’t dissipate even when puts as much thought she flubs a couple of lines. It’s like thought into crafting somehow we’re in this together. into crafting his words as Guante does could possibly think art is reducible Both See More and Stink are very capable rappers, but when to its message. From his point of view, even if moments of Guante spits you feel like a voice you’ve been waiting for is transcendence are what propel artistic achievement, the talking directly to the part of you that’s been waiting. This is intangible qualia of an encounter with artistic genius are made evident by Guante’s performance tonight, informal as always personal, contingent upon particular material and it is. He proposes a discussion-based format with the crowd, social circumstances with particular political foundations. If art and encourages feedback between songs and poems. Before is going to change your life, the question is how.

“MN Nice,” a new poem on the difference between the Twin “I consider my art communication, more than anything Cities you read about and the Twin Cities he lives in, he says, else—one person standing on a stage saying something to “I’m not from here, but I’m never gonna leave.” After the a group of people. So with that in mind, I often ask myself poem, he’s asked about the lines “There are days / I want to ‘What do you want to say to these people?’ A lot of my work roll through downtown / in a tank,” specifically what he would is about the importance of organizing. . . . When things have blow up. He hesitates before naming Uptown, the ready improved in this country, they’ve improved because everyday counterpoint to the poem’s central claim that “the things we people got together and organized. The other main thrust of make invisible don’t disappear.” It’s in the hesitation, though, my work, I think, has been about rejecting mediocrity and that we hear the essence of his project: this isn’t about getting reaching for something bigger, about making the most of your even; it’s about love through criticism, it’s about caring for potential.” people you disagree with, it’s about believing in your own convictions—typical of Guante, it’s about a lot of things.

After the set, Guante hangs around and answers Humility is overrated questions, listens to young people who are compelled to tell Tonight Guante is performing with See More Perspectives him about their interests in hopes that he’ll write something and Heidi Barton Stink, two of his Tru Ruts labelmates. The supporting their causes. He listens respectfully to whatever show is a fundraiser for the UM chapter of Students for a they bring to him and hands out free sampler CDs, and Democratic Society, so this also an opportunity for Guante to encourages people to come to his upcoming events. He’s still combine his art and activism. in the spotlight, but as the mingling rolls on his ember begins Stink has lots of respect for Guante, calling him “an incredible to fade and he begins the transition into Kyle mode, his writer, who is a notch above the other stuff coming out of the answers growing increasingly monosyllabic, his eye contact Twin Cities. As a rapper he incorporates so much of what he moving from intermittent to nonexistent, his anxiety evident— knows from spoken word. He knows how to tell a story with you can’t but root for his escape. his cadence and his body.” She has worked with him, too, most notably on “Summertime Hip Hop BBQ Jam for the World,” a track on which she hilariously mocks his unfriendly Not talent, not hard work, not education. Ambition. tendencies. She describes the process like this: “He’s tough With someone as uniquely and confidently himself as Guante, to work with. We’ve collaborated, but he doesn’t work with it’s not easy to see right away where he fits into his traditions.

“

“

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such a thing as awesome But given the nature of his work, it’s not surprising to hear him say that “with the artists I respect and enjoy, I tend to value ambition over anything. I’d rather something be a noble, interesting failure than be yet another B+ song or poem or movie that does the same thing that people have been doing for years. So for my own work, I want to add something new to the conversation.”

There’s no talking about Guante, finally, without explicitly addressing his ambition. At the time of this writing he is at work on two albums, two books, one one-man play; he’s plotting a graphic novel version of his greatest hits; and most importantly, he says, “I’m using my community connections and whatever local fame I can cultivate to help influence policy. That’s the main goal of everything I do.”

Guante expects all of his work to be tremendous, and he wants all of it to be heard. “I think far too many people focus on one or the other—they’re either basement geniuses making mind-blowing art for a select group of people in the know, or they’re world-conquering superstars who are better at promoting themselves than they are at actually making good art. For me, one without the other is failure.”

Nothing about Guante is understated. He’s going for it.

And you’re invited.

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jennifer davis

bear

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stories of jenny boully The Unclassifiable Love Stories of Jenny Boully: An Interview Victoria Scher and Scott F. Parker

As much attention as your work gets for being formally inventive/challenging, the content seems to be equally complex. Can you talk about your interest in the said and unsaid in books like The Body and The Book of Beginnings and Endings?

them, dream them. The endings feel like ghosts, haunted and unclear, something we live through but cannot quite fully understand, assimilate, or believe. And I think that the form of the book—the beginnings that end abruptly and the endings that begin abruptly—mirror that experience.

Both The Body and The Book of Beginnings and Endings center on themes of abandonment, failed love affairs, displacement, and searching. I think that these states of being, in themselves, are chaotic, shifting, move between extremities of happiness and despair. Additionally, they give way to wondering, sense making. Therefore, the subject is often masked and transformed. I think every great act, and being is an act, is a balancing act between the seen and the unseen, the said and the unsaid. I think a lot of what's unsaid is hinted at in form and tangential or digressive impulses in a text. I have always been interested in metaphor, intuitive meanings, symbols, and suggestion in both life and literature.

The missing texts of The Body and The Book of Beginnings and Endings operate similarly in that they ask the reader to participate in meaning making, losing, and wondering.

And yet the reader—and this is also true about [one love affair]*, your most explicitly love-focused book—isn’t left with a way of understanding endings or love as much as a way of experiencing or approaching them.

So how would you describe your use of form in The Book of Beginnings and Endings to bring the reader into participation with the content?

I think "disruptive" is a good word for the relationship there.

Disruptive, broken, unhinged. And it's all about a relationship in the end. I mean, a failed love affair, which seems to be the nexus and impetus of so much of my work. In love affairs, we remember so vibrantly the beginnings, and the endings we try to make sense of for a long, long time and eventually just give up. We linger over the beginnings, savor them, relive

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Exactly. I think that the impression of experience is more important than drawing conclusions about that experience.

The conclusions can be wrong, but the experience was something lived through. I think that pausing, marveling, suspending are the joys of experiencing a work of art. I don't like to leave things too tidy. After all, I want someone to be able to look at the evidence and wonder what might have transpired. Love as a crime scene, the book as a crime scene—how can we piece together the evidence; that is: how can we make sense of what the author has given us? In the same way, as a writer, in [one love affair]*, I was trying to make sense of what a lover had given me, what the universe had given me, and in the end there was hardly any sense-making to be had. It is that same impetus that drives so much art: to make manifest that private experience and give it a life outside of one's self.

Your books are notoriously difficult to classify by genre.

What draws you to play with so many different forms?

I love the notion of playfulness, but I also love the notion of the book, of the page. There is a long tradition of writers,

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who, in the act of writing, are playfully aware that their pronouncements are being written in a book, on the page. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Lawrence Sterne is my favorite example of this. My forays into this awareness often result in work that doesn't neatly fit into the literary categories of our day. I think that when you write, you should only be concerned with your writing—let others work on the genre problem or think about it later after the work is finished.

other genres or media. I love to think of things in terms of being essayistic. That excites me. It is not so much the writing but also the theorizing about essaying that really interests me.

I love nonfiction writing, however, that teaches me something that I never knew before. I love the accumulation of arresting and quirky facts. I love the incorporation of theory and scholarship. Conversely, I love mediation when it adds to my life or helps me to position myself in some new way, that is, when it challenges my sense of being.

Your most recent book, Not Merely Because of the Unknown that Was Stalking Toward Them, is a reinterpretation of Peter and Wendy. What drew you to the Peter Pan story?

Can you say more about having your sense of being challenged? Is that something that happens more for you in nonfiction than in other genres?

There are many elements of enchantment at play in J. M. Barrie's novel Peter and Wendy. Peter Pan, through his make-believe and his insistence on the make-believe, is the origin of much of the enchantment that takes place in the novel. I'm attracted to his ability to so fully believe in makebelieve that, for example, the boys on his island could go days eating pretend meals instead of real ones. His inability to separate real and pretend and how this inability leads to real danger, real fright, is at the core of my fascination with him.

But, of course, I'm always interested in a love story gone bad, and Peter and Wendy is nothing but a love story gone bad.

He is the lover who refuses to fit perfectly, refuses to commit, refuses to choose. Love and make-believe lead to fascinating and dreadful results. It's a dangerous combination that Peter Pan possesses.

Why did you decide to write from Wendy’s point of view?

Wendy Darling, despite her upbringing as a middle-class Victorian girl, lingers and relishes the dangerous, the subversive, the naughty. She leaves her mother, who misses and loves her, in order to pursue a love affair with Peter, who cannot love her fully—that is, Peter will never make a wife of her. Wendy's story, I suppose, was also my story for a long while, and I related to her efforts at domesticity, her attempts to keep Peter happy, and her desire to mother and care despite the signs of Peter's infidelity and high-jinks away from home. What pierces me the most about Wendy is her total willingness to become fully immersed in Peter's make believe that she comes to believe it completely; she wants it completely. It's Peter who dispels the illusion; it's Peter, who, as a result, breaks her heart.

John D’Agata calls you “the future of nonfiction.” What nonfiction excites you these days?

Well, John D'Agata is very generous. I'm humbled by that pronouncement. I think a lot of exciting things are happening in nonfiction today, especially where the genre intersects with

I think what I mean by having my "sense of being" challenged is undergoing some metaphysical change, a change that illuminates the unseen or non-empirical world. Does a work of art, in other words, change how I relate to the human experience or my being in the world. The human experience, in my mind, is a rather tragic one, and, no matter one's lot in life, we have to die. That is tragic to me. So does a work of art show me something about living and about dying? For example, I recently watched Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life, which works to give impressions of a life rather than make any sense in terms of plot or narrative. In this way, in how it strives to explain the experience and mystery of being alive, it is an essayistic film. It illuminates the wonder and the mystery without any overt aims of unraveling or understanding or coming to terms with that mystery. Seeing how a life can be seen through this lens and how tender and fragile that life is and what death and life *might* be is an example of having being challenged. I think this challenge happens in all genres, and it happens better in some works than others. I experience it in painting, photographs, film, novels, poems, and essays, and sometimes I experience it in the everyday, and that is usually occasion to write.

So what are you working on now?

Now, I'm primarily working on my daughter, who was born in January of 2011. She's quite young, and I feel as if every day is full of her. There is little time left over, and that time is devoted to my job and teaching duties, keeping house, and my relationships with family. Of course, I'm always working on something, if even mentally or piece-meal. Right now, I'm "working" on a essay about a mourning suit and another about gray hair. I have also been "working" on mini-essays, which are very prose-poemy. I'm supposed to also be culling some of my poems into a book that is forthcoming from Coconut Books. I tend to work in quick spurts followed by months of non-creative work. I hope that the next "spurt" will come sooner rather than later so I can actually finish something. I'm excited to find out what this something might be.

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MY DOUBLE Paula Cisewski

MY DOUBLE My double wears a white gown like a debutante, a nurse, a dead poet, a bride, a mental patient all at once. She wears it to woo me when she finds me. How she finds and finds me. She’s a photo negative. She clings like a dumb moon. Here she grinning is, craving me like a reflection or a shadow. I’ve hidden from my double, given bad directions, jumped ship. I thought to slit her throat, but she isn’t the mortal one of us, and so I must do more: separate her body from her head. Her gauzy body will stand as a surrender flag billowing outside my cave. But her head travels with me. It must stay with me because it’s mine. It’s awful and it’s mine.

EMPTY NEXT SYNDROME Even in my ruined cave I am not an either/or. Anybody can recognize over-simplicity, the duality in the rubble. Inside I am/can make everything. Spiritual primordial invisible a golem, I revel. For outside the cave, I was issued only two faces: Mother. Predator. But the same day I exploded my co-opted cave, I pulled the eyeteeth from one outside face and snuffed the kindness from the other. Who issues such literal visages? Who agrees to walk around with two broken faces?

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FLAT LAND PANTOUM with Allison Titus

If there are 51 U.S. cities named Eureka, each a threadless distance from crow and lineament and all the phone lines down, then I have walked the tracks since the first Sunday of the world.

Each a threadless distance from crow and lineament.

A century of graffiti has collected in the boxcars.

Walk the tracks since the first Sunday of the world.

Precede train smoke. The dust is full of thieves.

A century of graffiti has collected in the boxcars.

I must stop rehearsing my “surprised” face which preceded train smoke. The dust is full of thieves.

If there is something, anything, left to discover I must stop rehearsing my “surprised” face.

A revelation should not look planned.

If there is something, anything, left to discover -like Eurekas! Eurekas everywhere! How amazed we once were—Hand me a pair of boots, a shovel.

All the phone lines down and I have walked enough. I shall guffaw shall brandish my gold tooth if there are 51 U.S. cities named Eureka.

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Interview with Philip Gourevit an Interview with Philip Gourevitch

Aaron Apps and Kathleen Johnston

Naturally, we leapt at the opportunity to interview the renowned documentary journalist Philip Gourevitch, who was in town to give the keynote lecture at “My Letter to the World: Narrating Human Rights,” a conference co-sponsored by the University of Minnesota’s Human Rights and Creative Writing programs. Gourevitch is perhaps best known as the author of We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, a book of intensive documentary reportage from Rwanda in the years shortly following the genocide.

His other book-length works include A Cold Case, which recounts a real-life, decades-long detective story set in New York City, and most recently, Standard Operating Procedures, in which he employs techniques of his trademark “aftermath journalism” to take another, more critical look at the events of Abu Ghraib. He is also a staff writer for The New Yorker, and served as the editor of The Paris Review from 2005 to 2010.

Currently, he is at work on a second book about Rwanda.

We were glad to speak with him about several topics that are relevant to this issue’s theme of erase/disclose on which he is particularly qualified to speak. These include the writer’s choice to insert or efface his or her own presence in a story, the effect of publishing realities on what a journalist is able to cover, and the role of national narratives on how people act during moments of crisis and understand their own lives afterwards. Gourevitch is a formidable interviewee, thinking not so much in paragraphs as in essays. We hope you enjoy.

During your lecture last night, you mentioned that the individual is often fetishized in nonfiction writing, and stressed the need to place the individual in a system.

Could you elaborate on that?

Stories tell of people and events, right? So, for a writer, there are two basic ways in: you have a defining event or situation or a defining person. And when I said last night that there’s a kind of fetishization of the individual, what I meant is not that we shouldn’t get very close and very deep and very immersed in our characters in documentary writing. By the way, I hate the term nonfiction, because it describes what the writing isn’t rather than what it is. But my point was not that we shouldn’t dig deep into character when we’re writing, but simply that the individual—the individual consciousness—does not and cannot exist in and of itself, in isolation. An individual has to

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be situated—socially, politically, economically, etc. The idea of privileging the individual subjective perspective at the expense of a broader context composed of other perspectives, which situate and encompass that individual, is difficult, or really impossible—because what is a character except a set of reactions to surroundings? Reacting is what people do. Our subjective interiorities are reactions to all sorts of exteriorities, so it’s just not illuminating, or even interesting, for writing to consist of a person just saying “I-I-I-I-I,” a person who is only thinking about themself. I’m interested, instead, in a person who speaks in a way that reflects some kind of larger situation, a larger condition—humanity or whatever. And that isn’t strictly a question of using or not using an “I.” Of course, this pertains only to writing about characters outside of oneself—as opposed to writing in the first person.

I think a lot about the use and abuse of the first person. I often use a first person of a sort, but I don’t really say much about myself. The first person that I use is a voice rather than a character—it’s an “I,” not a “me.” And there are also times when I find that to connect with the reader I use the second person—I use direct address; I speak straight to “you.” I’m drawn to this especially with deep, dark, even repellent material—when I want to be able to pop into a reader’s head in a conversational voice, before disappearing again for long passages.

The third person quasi-omniscient style voice is a fantastic, underutilized tool and there is too much of a tendency in reported writing these days for the writer to hold everything together by saying flat out: “I went here, I went there, I did this, I saw so-and-so, he said to me,” and so on: “I, me, I, me, I, I, I, I.” If you really look at it, and you ask, well what difference does it make that that person’s there, too often the answer is: it’s just lazy. There was a while, 25, 30 years ago, when this was considered bold, and called New Journalism to bring in a first person voice where the idea had always been to hide the first person voice. But now it’s become conventional, so I guess it’s time for a counter-reaction.

That said, there is one place where the “I” can be really useful in writing, and that’s when you want to be able to account for why you know something, or why something happened,

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and the reason is simply that you went somewhere, and you encountered something. Then you say, “I saw this,” or, “this was told to me.” But that’s not really the first person, because the writer isn’t the subject. That’s how I like to use the first person—the “I” is a guide, a companion to guide you through the story without creating a distraction.

Even granted that the first person has to some extent become cliché since the New Journalists popularized it, though, isn’t it useful in terms of reminding the reader of the complexity of the information and opinions you’ve gathered? Or would you generally cut it out?

I’m not hyper-conscious of it, to tell you the truth. I’ve sometimes tried to see how long I could go without the first person, just out of sheer formal curiosity, in order to see: is this a crutch? Am I using this lazily? Am I just using it unthinkingly? The first person is a great tool. I just think that it shouldn’t be an automatic or an absolute rule. A writer has to resist being dominated by it.

Anyway, it’s too easy for sincerity to be a rhetorical device. It’s too easy to make the sound of sincerity.

What does sincerity mean? Does it mean that you’ve laid yourself a little bit bare? That you mean what you say?

That you’re earnest? So what? A lot of people are earnest and boring, or worse, earnest and wrong. Some people are earnest and stupid, or misguided, or malign. You know—evil people are earnest, too. People you disagree with totally are earnest and the fact that they are being earnest or sincere shouldn’t make you feel in some way obliged to concede to them, and shelve your resistance or objection.

One space that the insertion of the self can be taken up in a productive way is to remind the reader of the implication of the writer, and by proxy the reader in the situation you’re describing. I don’t know if that’s something you’re conscious of in your writing—

Oh, definitely—there are times. I wrote a piece in Cambodia in ’98, when Pol Pot had just died following his purge from the Yes, it can be valuable to show how a piece of writing was Khmer Rouge after an interior party trial. I went up to Pol Pot’s made—to build in a bit of documentary of the “making of” what old turf, and watched reintegration of the last battalions of the you’re reading: “I went here. I went there. This is a chronicle Khmer Rouge into the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. The of my experiences.” Hunter Thomson is the extreme version. idea was that this very long war was finally pretty much over, Norman Mailer building and I was writing about up himself as a kind of what it meant for people character is a different to live with the legacy of We don’t have to follow them far Pol Pot time, when the version. Then there’s Joan Didion creating herself as entire country had been a frail persona who sort before they’ve shot off the devastated. Well, one day of quivers at the edges of I’m in the car with the driver things, although at the same and the photographer I was tires and the van stops. time she writes like she is working with, my friend made of steel. So there are Gilles Peress, and we’re different styles of using the driving down a main street first person that way, but none of them are really about the in Phnom Penh, and as we come to a big intersection, we see accurate representation of the author as a person. They’re a white van moving bumpily across our path, and then we see literary devices created around the device of a persona. motorcycles chasing after it, and there are cops on the bikes shooting at the car, so we say, “whoa, what’s this?” and we And, at times, the first person allows you tremendous chase after the cops. efficiency. If you’re not always using it, but then you jump in now and then as “I,” and make a declaration—announce We don’t have to follow them far before they’ve shot off the a question, or express an opinion, responding to your own tires and the van stops. They pull out the driver, and they beat material in a way that heightens and shifts it—that can be very him to death. Right there, in front of us, they beat him to death strong. So I’m really against having rules about these things, in two, maybe three minutes. A huge crowd had gathered in because as soon as you have a rule about it you are denying no time out of nowhere, and I was sitting next to my driver, yourself the possibility of a really useful tool. My one absolute a man named Sok Sin, who had told me earlier that during rule is that you should be aware of reflexive writing habits that the Pol Pot years he had lost all track of time, but now at the make you stop thinking about what you are doing. moment they pull the man out of the car, Sok Sin says, “Oh, he stopped now. Oh, they beat him now. Oh, he unconscious Regarding voice, what is your opinion on the “sincere” now. Oh, he dead now.” He knew exactly what a body could voice that seems dominant right now, this idea that as take. It was all there, it was just a minute, and that was almost long as one is sincere, whatever one says or writes will be the most striking thing about that whole scene. I mean, it was OK? Is this laziness, too, or does it have any merit? weird enough already. You couldn’t see much, because there was a cluster of people, but you saw this body get sucked It depends on what you say! No! The merit of what you say is down into this cluster of people, and then arms and legs not whether it’s sincere, but whether it is interesting, valuable, going down, and then Sok Sin’s narration took over. It was his persuasive, convincing, needs saying! I think we’ve become precise, instantaneous recognition of what we were seeing kind of slack about demanding those qualities from writing. that was most striking.

“

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Interview with Philip Gourevit Now in that situation, when I came to write about it, of course I used the first person. It’s not something somebody told me—it’s something I saw. It’s a complete fluke that I saw it, and it’s highly partial in the sense that literally, it’s my perspective from which I saw it. I happened to see it from this angle of vision, with this soundtrack. It represented an intense brutality, and a relationship with power, and a kind of cruelty and also crudity of police methods, to say the least. It represented all of these different things in this very short moment, but above all it represented the sense that the people around me in Cambodia carried a kind of terrible knowledge that none of us on the outside have. So that moment—of course that’s a first person anecdote.

But it’s interesting. At another time I might paraphrase an equally intense story in third person narration because I don’t have any direct experience of the story and I want to emphasize that distance and make you feel it.

Later, when we went up to Anlong Veng, which was the old Pol Pot hangout, we flew up on this military helicopter with a bunch of dignitaries and press to see a ceremony to mark the integration of the two armies. When we landed, they put us on these huge two-ton trucks to move us around, and again there was this little moment: I’m on a truck, and I’m standing next to this Chinese general who’s in perfect uniform like he’s in some reviewing stand in Beijing, and we’re sort of jostling around the back of this truck, and he says, ”You been here before?” And I say, “No, you?” And he says “Yeah, a bunch of times.” Now the Chinese were supporting the Khmer Rouge all that time, but they weren’t normally talking about it before.

That was something to me that again, it wasn’t an interview with this guy, it was just a funny moment where reminding people of my physical presence jouncing along next to him kind of anchors the scene.

But it doesn’t tell anything in either case about me, right? I don’t tell you what I felt about the killing. I don’t go into my reactions. Because, who cares?

It’s just the most compelling point of narration.

Right, I’m exactly what I don’t want you to think about at that point. I want you to be looking right through my eyes. I want you to see and hear—enter me maybe, or enter the scene through me, but you can have your own reaction. I don’t want to tell you what I thought or what I think is interesting to think about, as if it were mine.

The multiple angles from which you enter into scenes in your documentary writing remind me of your talk last night, in which you named Melville as an important influence. It brings to mind Moby Dick, in which very distinct chapters offer fragmented perspectives within the scope of the book’s trajectory. I was thinking about his relationship to audience— Well, he didn’t have one—he didn’t have an audience for Moby Dick—until he’d been dead for many years.

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But with Moby Dick, he felt he created something of import that people should have latched onto, and of course he didn’t get that within his lifetime. Your project is different to a degree from the outset—you’re writing about things that have important resonance politically in the present.

Well, weirdly, so did Moby Dick. It’s the great novel about the energy industry in the 20th century. It’s about the oil trade.

That’s what whaling was. That’s what ran New England for a couple of important decades. And it’s also about the exploration of the Pacific. All that stuff is braided in there. But it’s a mystical book ultimately—on a completely different level than reportage: it’s an epic.

It raises existential issues— But he also has the most amazing voice in there, I mean the first person voice, and these kind of Shakespearian flights of language. There’s somebody who’s tweeting all of Moby Dick right now, slowly but surely, so I’m following it. It’s great because in 140 characters you can barely ever get a full sentence of Melville’s. So it’s almost pure language. You just have these incredible phrases almost every day, which means every line.

But I do know what you mean about multiple perspectives.

That’s very important and interesting to me, and so is the bouncing back and forth between the very concrete, often political reality of a situation and the very strange, often surreal, somewhat mystical nature of human beings and their lives.

OK, here’s another example—I was in Sri Lanka after the tsunami in 2005 and the whole east coast of the island had just washed away up to a mile or two in, and the country had been divided a long time by the war with the Tamil Tigers.

When the wave hit the country had been on its way back to war, and now suddenly because of the wave it was all sort of, “Oh, it killed us all equally; it’s a reminder that we’re all one nation,” and the Tigers opened up their territory for the first time in a really long time, partly for humanitarian aid, since they wanted to get in on the stuff that was coming in.

So I was able to go to Mullaitivu, the little coastal town where Prabhakaran, head of the Tamil Tigers, had the Sea Tigers’ and his own base. That place was kind of the heart of the heart of the thing, and you were suddenly allowed to get in there. I had very weird interviews with these Tiger-politico military commissars the night before and then I went out to the beach and you’re in this place where you can sort of see what the grid of the streets was, but it’s just gone, swept away.

Over there’s a flight of stairs going up into the air, over here is a wall standing. There was a very big cathedral that was kind of wrecked, so it looked like a ruin, which if you think about it, in Italy you’d just say “oh, it’s a ruined cathedral, what a nice sight,” as opposed to this strange context where it was completely surreal.

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It was this empty beach, and there are these guys in church garb going into that cathedral, and then this total madman, the village idiot really, came up to me and started getting really close and making these honking noises, and he kept trying to touch my hair. Various people tried to explain it in various ways, and it wasn’t clear, you know, was this a guy in total trauma because he’d lost his family a week before or was this a guy who’d been the village idiot for 30 years? There was something about that as a scene and as an encounter, that in between these encounters with the commissars, who represented the hardest kind of reality, this utter lunatic was almost hyper-real.

So you bring some detail like that in there without necessarily trying to over-explain it, and it allows the story to breathe and to open up. It’s a simple way to complicate reality, which is to say to humanize the drama. I think that matters a lot, which is why at the beginning of the Rwanda book I have a prologue in which I say, “This is a book about imagination.” That might seem an odd thing to say at the beginning of a documentary book. But in order to report and to describe reality, we have to constantly imagine reality. If I’m asking you about your experience, I have to keep imagining, well what does it really mean that that happened to you, in order for me to get you to tell me more about it, and in order for me to understand it as fully as possible. My work is always an attempt to understand something that I didn’t experience directly. That’s what all reportage is to some extent.

To me, it’s impossible to tell a story without also addressing the question of how we tell stories to and about ourselves.

And that’s a lot of what that book’s about, because it’s about how identities are both imaginative and real constructs. How being Hutu or Tutsi is an artificial construction, and at the same time it acquires tons of reality once it’s been artificially constructed. So simply to say “oh look, it’s artificial,” is not very useful. Yes, it’s essential to understand how that artificial construction of identity functioned to understand some of the violence, but on the other hand to lean on that too much is to ignore how the violence made that construct real. So one is forced constantly to examine the ways that what we call imaginary and what we call real collide to form what we experience as reality.

We’re putting out an issue with the theme “erase/ disclose”—one way we’ve interpreted that theme is considering what writers and artists decide to omit or highlight in a given work. So I’m interested in what limitations you face as a writer when it comes to publishing realities. Where do you find yourself in tension with what stories you can follow and how?

Well, reporting a story is a big investment—of time and of money. Sometimes, writers who are just starting out will ask what kind of stories they should write to get published. The answer is: the stories that you’re most interested in. Because that’s what you’re going to do best. You have to know what you want to do and why, and then you try to convince the people who can help you do it. Because you always have to remember that even though it doesn’t feel that way when

dislocate you’re starting, publishers are looking for writers as much as writers are looking to get published.

Writing for The New Yorker, I don’t have to do stories that I don’t want to do, but that doesn’t mean that I get to do everything that I want to do. That’s a big distinction, and even if you’re happy with what you have been able to do, every once in a while you still wonder, what if I had done those other stories instead? At the same time, I don’t want to repeat myself, or get pigeonholed, so I’ve always tried to have a broad range. What gets left out, then? That’s a really tough question because there’s no pattern to it, and quite often you find a way to come back to what doesn’t fit in one project and make it work in another.

When I wrote A Cold Case, the murder book, I had written a magazine piece of it, and I had a bunch more material, and I wanted to expand it. I ended up doubling it—and it’s still not a long book, but it seemed like the right form. Still, I remember thinking as I was working on it, well, maybe I should sort of blow it open here or there and go out to a bigger meditation or exploration on police work, or telescope out and look at fugitives more comprehensively, or the nature of crime narratives, or build the story more directly around this or that moral issue. I remember taking a walk every afternoon, when my head was full of these possibilities, and I would just chant to myself as I trudged along: don’t-do-itdon’t-do-it-don’t-do-it-keep-it-clean-keep-it-pure. Because it was a perfect story by itself; even if I elaborated it really successfully I would risk encumbering it. It’s my sparest piece of long narrative, but it felt as if it was delivered to me by the story gods in perfect form, and I just thought that if I kept adding on, maybe I’d write as good or in its own way a better book, but I’d lose this book in it, and this book is the one I wanted to write.

So was that an act of omission? No, it was a decision to protect the story from my own dubious urges. Sometimes you go and you do a lot of reporting and in the end you just don’t want or need to use any of it. For instance, I’m working on this piece right now about President Sarkozy in France, and at first I did a ton of reporting about French involvement in the Libya war. But I think that’s hardly even going to go into the piece. The war is kind of over, and meanwhile there have been some scandals that have erupted in France that have been more interesting in a certain way, and they’re more narratively interesting, and what they tell us about France is in some ways deeper and also more unfamiliar to American readers. And, anyway, I can’t just put everything in the piece.

There isn’t room. I’m not writing a book, and I wouldn’t want to. So, with something like that I’ll work on it for a long time, and whole chunks of my effort just fall away. But “omitted” makes it sound like something is hidden. That’s not right. My rule is, what matters is that everything in the piece is good— not that everything good is in the piece.

If you spend weeks covering something, you’re going to meet characters that really don’t fit the story but were a part of the story for you, and they’re fantastic, but you don’t want to just wedge them in there just so you didn’t leave them out.

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Interview with Philip Gourevit That would be a disservice to the piece, to the characters, and to the readers. When I wrote my first Rwanda piece for The New Yorker, I turned it in way too long, at something like 30,000 words, and it was received with a long, long silence from the magazine. Then I was suddenly given 24 hours to cut the piece in half so that somebody would read it, or else it would die. So, I cut it in half really quickly. And one of the things that I took out right away was a chunk of maybe 5,000 words that worked as an essay unto itself. And I think even before my New Yorker piece had run, I had sold that cut to another magazine as a follow-up piece. So, again, it wasn’t that it was being omitted. In a way to me it was being saved.

I could have tried to boil that down, or crunch it, but then it would be just this tracing of what was there—and in the end that material I cut became central to the book I wrote.

out of wreckage, and how there really aren’t any really clean solutions at all—how a lot of things that are very, very hard to accept have to be accepted.

Aftermath writing seems to be able to avoid some of the pitfalls of on-the-ground-in-the-present reportage that are prevalent in a newspaper or television news cycle.

Does the hindsight that characterizes this kind of longform, reflective journalism allow your work to carry some sort of forward-directed, prophetic potential regarding the future?

You mean, do I think I know where the thing’s going? No. I have no idea. Less now than before. Because when I went to do the first Rwanda book, on the one hand I was doing aftermath, but on the other hand I was doing very much You’re going back to Rwanda now to write another book. present-time, because it was sort of an immediate first Even the first time you wrote about Rwanda it was aftermath chapter of aftermath that I was there for. Rwanda was ringed reporting—you with refugee camps filled were coming into with a million and a half or so Rwanda after you You mean, do I think I know where people who had fled, some of felt the situation them guilty of the genocide, had been forgotten some of them the entourage the thing’s going? in terms of the of the people who were guilty normal news cycle of the genocide, and some or public attention. of them just people who had No. I have no idea.

I wonder, when you been swept up in the whole sustain that kind of thing. It was a highly charged Less now than before. attention for a long militarized scene where you period of time, over had a quarter of the country a decade now, is it a in exile ringing the border and sense of responsibility that brings you back because you’ve in their midst was a sizable army committed to coming back taken on this story, or is it a matter of obsession, or what? and resuming the genocide. So it was pretty clear from the beginning that there was going to be another war. And how No, it’s just interest, it’s just fascination. I had no desire to go that war went down, where that war went down, and when back for a long time. I mean, I had a lingering I will go back that war went down—all of that was hanging over everything. some day desire, but I really wanted to do other things, and And of course everybody was trying to pretend everything I did other things. I didn’t stay overly connected to all of it. was all right, or trying to prevent a war happening by Frankly, I needed to get it out of my system for a while. And maneuver, but the fact was that there was a chapter that had then in 2009, after about eight years away, I went back right to happen. This couldn’t go on forever. At some point these at New Years to do one piece for The New Yorker. But I also camps had to be disbanded, and it was looking worse and went back because I had been hearing that people were living worse from the beginning. together better than I would have foreseen as possible, and I was curious what that was like. Not that they were living So I always knew that was basically my time frame. When together wonderfully, but better. And then suddenly all of I decided to do the book after my first long time there, I these issues and all of the old interests were there. I thought thought, I’ll report on the genocide and its aftermath until there are astonishing stories here, different stories than I’ve these camps are gone. And then every once in a while I’d told before—or different phases of stories that I’ve told—and have these moments where I’d think, wait, I hope this doesn’t I have a history with the place that allowed me to see the take five years, or ten years. But it happened relatively quickly. stories’ depths very quickly and how to animate them. So I It happened at the end of 1996 in the war that became the was completely absorbed. first Congo war. And some of that reportage was very presenttime and observed. And, of course, aftermath reporting is its Having talked about the first book in different contexts for own present. The point is that you’re looking at the present about ten years by then, there was almost a set of oral essays in its relationship to some cataclysmic event or some kind of in my head, responses to people’s responses, and responses massive realignment of history and you look at people in the to the ways some of those issues have refracted over time, after-wash of that. and then there I was seeing all of those responses suddenly reanimated by contact with the material I was reporting. That’s But now, I wrote this piece about the Rwandan bicycling when I thought I would like to do a different book about what team last summer, and among its preoccupations is the fact it means to live with it and what it means to build a society that you now have a generation in Rwanda that has no direct

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memory of the genocide or were really little kids at the time.

In this case they are basically in their early twenties, so they were really little kids at the time. They were old enough to be traumatized by things they directly saw. And it’s one thing to think of the genocide of those hundred days, which was a period of extreme convulsion, but then for many of them for a year or two afterwards there would have been total social upheaval, and sometimes violent upheaval, and displacement, and chaos and parents dying and disappearing and that sort of thing. So they were very much affected, but their memories of childhood are children’s memories, and more importantly, they have none of the baggage of accountability, suspicion, personal victimization, or blame at the same level as the older generation. It was an affair of their elders, you know? And they often speak that way, almost bitterly, saying, “Man, did the grownups mess things up around here?” you know, or “That older generation destroyed their country.”

This younger generation has grown up inside what can often look like a kind of propagandistically simplistic national myth of the post-genocide government, the idea that “we are all Rwandans now” and “Hutu and Tutsi identities are no longer meaningful.” But again, that is the kind of construction that starts to acquire a kind of reality if it serves you—if it is a rewarding response to some of what was most punishing about the previous reality. It’s got its major shortcomings and problems—a lot of things are swept under the rug, as is often true when creating a national unifying narrative that’s habitable. But these young Rwandans are in a very different place. They exist in a different realm of possibility than, say, their uncle who’s just come back from Congo having spent fifteen years in the bush fighting with the genocidal army there, and is now surrendered, and is being reintegrated; or the Tutsi survivor who is still in this trauma of having lost the entire family —because again, that is different for the kid than it is for the parent.

And then there’s how all of these things feed together, how all this reintegration of the society works, and also what it means for leadership to grapple with it. How do you try to sew all of this back together, and how do you encourage a kind of forgiveness that you may not even believe in as a politician, because if it works for the people, it works? You’ll talk to political leaders in charge of making people work together, you know, of implementing the policies dealing with cohabitation, and they’ll say, “A lot of these people, they have these religious things where they fall down weeping and washing each others’ feet and forgiving each other and I can’t understand it at all, but if it works, I’ll take it.” So it’s really trying to understand how complex some of these things are, and also how fragile, because then some little thing goes wrong or some rumor or signal is given off at the wrong wavelength and the whole place trembles.

So just now you were describing this simplistic national narrative that is binding people in Rwanda together in a vaguely positive way, but then last night in your lecture you talked about “our” national narrative after 9/11 and how that had very negative effects, and I’m wondering if you have any thoughts on the distinction between those

dislocate two narratives—when does a simplistic narrative help and when does it harm?

My thought is that leadership matters. And it’s an important thing to remember when writing about stories. I mean it almost goes back to—if we want to knit this up in a perfect structure—it goes back to the question about the individual versus the larger system. If we look at the Abu Ghraib story, some of those people were way, way, way out of line, and some of them got into the abuse, and some of them had criminal inclinations, but none of that stuff would have happened if it weren’t licensed, encouraged and rewarded from the top down. And that’s true in Rwanda too, right?

The country is full of killers, and yet they are not dangerous at present because where a license was once created, a prohibition has instead been imposed.

When I was first in Rwanda, I was astonished to discover that the government’s policy was to take soldiers who’d fought for the genocidal regime and reboot them, retrain them, give them a uniform and reintegrate them into the national army. It wasn’t just that they weren’t punished. They were redeployed, but on the opposite side of the fight. I said, do you really believe that a person who’s spent years fighting in the cause of genocide can just be turned around like that?

And I remember, Paul Kagame, the general who later became president, told me: Yeah. He said, people can be made bad and they can be taught to be good. And I thought, that’s either the most hopeful or the most cynical and sinister thing I’ve ever heard, because he was saying people are malleable.

Ultimately what I think is—I suppose it’s a political belief, but it’s also a literary belief that I come away with from all these stories—that none of us know how we’ll behave in such extreme circumstances. Everybody wants to identify with the good guys, or at least with the victims rather than the perpetrators. Everybody wants to think that they will be the hero of conscience. And that’s where I think there’s some false consciousness in the sort of mass marketing of the human rights brand to everybody these days. Everybody’s now a human-rights-this and a human-rights-that. But, you know, if you look at statistics, in societies that have gone off the rails, the majority of people behave badly; they don’t behave well.

And I don’t think that suddenly everybody is being so fortified by righteous human rights doctrine that they will behave well.

Most of us don’t know who we are, because we’ve never been tested in an ultimate way. It’s interesting to me as a writer to look at places where people have been tested, but it’s obvious that all of political energy and life should be dedicated towards living in a society where ideally nobody’s tested. Which is kind of an awkward thought, right? What makes America a largely very habitable place, wherever one sits on the political spectrum, is that for the most part, we’re not tested in that way, and we wouldn’t want to be, and you can get along a lot better with your neighbors and everybody else if you’re removed from that. That is what political and civil life ought to be organized to spare one.

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contributor notes

writers ana garcia bergua Paul Cunningham Paula Cisewski

“I belong to the school prison like I do every day and the only real light is the library option during eighth period study hall.”

Most Likely to Have a Bitchin’ Summer!

toshiya kamei

Photo not available

jason lester erin lyndal martin

Guildenstern: “Death is the ultimate negative. Not-being.

You can't not be on a boat."

Rosencrantz: "I've frequently not been on boats."

Most Likely to Become a Mermaid

lisa mccool-grime kathleen mcgookey erin murphy

Most Likely to Write for Harlequin

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"Spell Check is my Guardian Angle." summer 2012

Ana Garcia Bergua was born in Mexico City in 1960. She is the author of the novels El umbral (1993), Púrpura (1999), Rosas negras (2004), and Isla de bobos (2007), as well as the short story collections El imaginador (1996), La confianza en los extraños (2002), Otra oportunidad para el señor Balmand (2004), and Edificio (2009).

Paul Cunningham is the

Paula Cisewski's second

author of two e-chapbooks of poetry: Metro-GoldwynMayer (Pangur Ban Party, 2010) and foamghast (NAP Literary Magazine, 2012).

He is the managing editor of Radioactive Moat Press and his writing has appeared in publications like Esque, DIAGRAM, Shampoo, H_ NGM_N, Red Lightbulbs, and Dark Sky Magazine.

collection, Ghost Fargo, was selected by Franz Wright for the Nightboat Poetry Prize.

She is also the author of Upon Arrival (Black Ocean), and of three chapbooks.

Toshiya Kamei holds an MFA

Jason Lester is the

in Literary Translation from the University of Arkansas.

His translations include Liliana Blum's The Curse of Eve and Other Stories (2008), Naoko Awa's The Fox's Window and Other Stories (2010), and Espido Freire's Irlanda (2011).

incoming managing editor at Web Del Sol Review of Books, and has new and forthcoming work in elimae, otoliths, and Poetry International.

Erin Lyndal Martin is a poet, fiction writer, music journalist, and critical prose writer based in Madison, WI.

Lisa mccool-grime loves Sappho, wallflower women and collaborations. Her wallflower women are or will be appearing in DIAGRAM, Painted Bride Quarterly, Verse Wisconsin and elsewhere. Poemeleon, PANK, and elimae are some of the journals that have published her collaborative work. Tupelo Press awarded one of her poems first place in their Fragments of Sappho contest.

kathleen mcgookey’s work has appeared in forty journals and ten anthologies.

Her books are Whatever Shines (White Pine Press), and October Again (Burnside Review Press). She also translated French poet Georges Godeau’s fourteenth book of prose poems, We’ll See (Parlor Press). She lives with her family in Middleville, Michigan.

Erin murphy’s fourth book of poems is Word Problems (Word Press, 2011). She is co-editor of Making Poems (SUNY Press, 2010). Her works have been published in numerous journals and anthologies and featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac. She is associate professor of English at Penn State Altoona. Website: erinmurphy.com

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contributor notes

kevin mclellan Scott F. Parker Simon Perchik

Most Likely to Be Obsessive

Best Legs

phoebe reeves luke reiter kevin shea

Most Likely to Overdose on Ice Cream

Most Risk-Averse

Most Likely to Contract Sun Poisoning

ashley strosnider Dennis James Sweeney chris taylor

Most Likely to Secede

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Most Likely to Be Somewhere Else

Most Likely to Have a Good Summer summer 2012

kevin mclellan is the author of the chapbook Round Trip (Seven Kitchens, 2010), a collaborative series of poems with numerous women poets.

He has recent or forthcoming poems in journals including: Barrow Street, Colorado Review, failbetter, Horse Less Review,Kenyon Review Online, Western Humanities Review, Witness and numerous others.

Scott F. Parker's books

Simon Perchik is an

include Running After Prefontaine: A Memoir, Revisited: Notes on Bob Dylan, and Coffee— Philosophy for Everyone: Grounds for Debate.

attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. For more information, including free e-books, photo, his essay titled “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” and a complete bibliography, please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.

PhOEbe reeves teaches

Luke Reiter works as an editor at a weekly newspaper and writes mostly about municipal bonds and people shoplifting at Kmart. He lives in St. Paul with his wife, Ashley, and their greyhound, Lola.

Kevin Shea lives in Brooklyn, NY and is a graduate of the MFA program at The New School. He works as an editor of computer programming publications.

His poetry has previously appeared in Forklift Ohio, Unshod Quills, Asinine Poetry, and The Equalizer.

at Clermont College, in Southern Ohio. Her chapbook, The Lobes and Petals of the Inanimate, was published by Pecan Grove Press in 2010, and her poems have recently appeared in Rosebud, DIAGRAM, The American Poetry Journal, The Los Angeles Review, and Quarterly West.

Ashley Strosnider's poetry appears in Fifth Wednesday, Word Riot, and Unsplendid, and her prose appears in DOGZPLOT and decomP. She holds and MFA in poetry from the University of South Carolina, where she served as Editor of Yemassee. She currently lives in Charleston, SC, where works in the publishing industry making other people's books. ”I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.”

“I don't see how Henry, pried / open for all the world to see, survived."

Dennis James Sweeney lives in Kathmandu. His work is upcoming in DIAGRAM, MidAmerican Review, PANK, and elsewhere. He is, like, totally psyched to be in this issue of dislocate! He likes countries, and trails, and never endng plates of dal and rice, and... well, he likes you! Have a great year! LYL! “I absolutely always wanted to be have the chance to do a senior quote, my high school didn't do it.

Now you are and I can't think of anything. I guess you can put that in if you want.”

chris taylor lives in Madison, Wisconsin where she writes for various amounts of money and is occasionally mistaken for politicians of the same name.

Her poems have appeared in the Madison Review, decomP, New Wave Vomit, elimae, Verse Wisconsin, and others.

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contributor notes

allison titus j. a. tyler

artists jennifer davis

Most Likely to Creatively Purge Several Times a Year

Most Likely to Steal Cats from Another Hoarder

Ellen hughes kristoffer west johnson ivan de monbrison

“Let’s get a round of applause for ballpoint pens!”

“Is something art because you hang it on a wall?”

"If you want to follow a man you first need to find his shadow on the ground...."

kate renee asia ward erica williams

Most likely to be Wearing Custom Painted Shoes at Art Openings

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Most Likely to be a Master Exaggerater

Most Likely to Hoard Cats

summer 2012

Allison Titus' book of

J. A. Tyler is the author

poems, Sum of every lost ship, was published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center in 2010.

of A Man of Glass & All the Ways We Have Failed and No One Told Me I Was Going to Disappear, co-authored with John Dermot Woods. His work has appeared in Redivider, Diagram, and New York Tyrant among others. For more: www. chokeonthesewords.com.

“Some nights, I wish that my lips could build a castle.”

ellen hughes is a

Kristoffer West Johnson

Graphic Design and Art undergraduate student (still) at the University of Minnesota. Hire me? Inspired by a mash up of psychedilia and natural elements, heavy on the mind manifestation... no really, hire me. Please.

Kate Renee is a professional artist who lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

She graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BA in fine arts and art history, and has worked with various galleries in the Twin Cities. Kate is building a national and international reputation with exhibitions throughout the United States and in Japan. You can see her latest work at www. katerenee.com or follow her blog at www.thesuctioncup. com.

earned his BFA from Minnesota State University in Mankato. Shortly after, he began work as a studio artist, exhibiting and selling original paintings and drawings as modern day folk and fine art in the Midwest.

Embracing a wide variety of influences from the classical to modern day freak folk and punk art, Kristoffer has developed a unique style that now transcends into a variety of mediums.

Asia Ward is a Program Specialist and Artist in Residence for the Learning Technologies Center at the Science Museum of Minnesota, where she prototypes and develops hands-on activities for all ages, which are then tested in the classroom and on the exhibit floor. Her work as an artist ranges from animatronic creatures to large-scale metal sculptures.

Jennifer Davis has lived all her life in Minnesota (b. 1975).

She discovered her passion for painting and drawing at the University of Minnesota and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1998.

Her portraits of people and animals have a surreal candyland exterior full of innocent charm, which only hint at an undercurrent of darker truths.

Jennifer’s paintings have been widely exhibited throughout the United States, Canada and also in the UK. For more information please visit http:// www.jenniferdavisart.com ivan de monbrison was born in Paris in 1969. He is currently a painter and sculptor in Paris, France.

His work has been exhibited in Europe and the USA, and has appeared in many publications. It can be seen online on his blog: http:// artmajeur.com/blackowl

Erica Williams is a freelance illustrator from Colorado Springs currently working in Minneapolis. Her work seeks to combine illustration, design, and fine art through meticulous line work, color, light, pattern, and figure.

She incorporates elements of folklore, fantasy, myth, philosophy, and psychology.

She is often influenced by album and book covers, poster art, and photography.

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faculty

aaron apps feng sun chen kristin fitzsimmons

Poetry Editor

Art Editor

Managing Editor

j. fossenbell

Photo not available

christine friedlander ellen hughes

Assistant Editor

Web Editor

Layout Design

kathleen johnston nasir sakandar Kerry voigt-samarasinghe

Prose Editor

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Assistant Editor

Editor-in-Chief

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FEATURING writing by Ana GarcĂ­a Bergua Paula Cisewski Paul Cunningham Jason Lester Erin Lyndal Martin Kevin McLellan Lisa McCool-Grime Kathleen McGookey Erin Murphy Scott F. Parker Simon Perchik Phoebe Reeves Luke Reiter Kevin Shea Ashley Strosnider Dennis James Sweeney Chris Taylor Allison Titus J.A. Tyler artwork by Jennifer Davis Ivan de Monbrison Ellen Hughes Kristoffer West Johnson Kate Renee Asia Ward Erica Williams plus a profile of spoken word / hip-hop artist Guante interviews with Jenny Boully and Philip Gourevitch cover art

liberation jennifer davis