Oklahoma Review, 17.2 by The Oklahoma Review

The Oklahoma Review Volume 17: Issue 2, Fall 2016

Published by: Cameron University Department of English and Foreign Languages

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Staff  Editor in Chief  BAYARD GODSAVE  Managing Editor MOLLY KELSO  Faculty Editors GEORGE  McCORMICK, DR. JENNY YANG  CROPP, DR. JOHN HODGSON & DR.  JOHN G. MORRIS Student Editors  JARROD BROWN, ABIGALE  HOOPER & GARY REDDIN Web  Design ELIA MEREL & HAILEY  HARRIS   Mission Statement  The Oklahoma Review is an electronic literary  magazine  published  through  the  Department  of  English  at  Cameron  University  in  Lawton,  Oklahoma.  The  editorial  board  consists  of  English  and  Professional  Writing  undergraduates,  as  well  as  faculty  advisors  from  the  Departments  of  English  and  Foreign  Languages & Journalism.  The  goal  of  our  publication  is  to  provide  a  forum  for  exceptional  fiction,  poetry,  and  creative  nonfiction  in  a  dynamic,  appealing,  and  accessible  environment.  The  magazine’s  only  agenda  is  to  promote  the  pleasures  and  edification  derived  from  high‐quality  literature.  The Staff  The views expressed in The Oklahoma Review  do  not  necessarily  correspond  to  those  of  Cameron  University,  and  the  university’s  support of this magazine should not be seen as  any endorsement of any philosophy other than  faith in – and support of – free expression.  The  content  of  this  publication  may  not  be  reproduced  without  the  written  consent  of  The Oklahoma Review or the authors.

Call for Submissions  The Oklahoma Review is a continuous, online  publication.  We  publish  two  issues  each  year:  Spring (May) and Fall (December).  The Oklahoma Review only accepts  manuscripts during two open reading periods.  •Reading dates for the Fall issue will  now be from August 1 to October 15  •Reading dates for the Spring issue will  be January 1 to March 15.  Work sent outside of these two periods will be  returned unread.  Guidelines:  Submissions  are  welcome  from  any  serious  writer  working  in  English.  Email  your  submissions  to  okreview@cameron.edu.  Writers may submit the following:  •Prose fiction pieces of 30 pages or less.  •As many as five (5) poems of any  length.  •Nonfiction prose pieces of 30 pages or  less.  •As many as five (5) pieces of visual  art—photography, paintings,  prints, etc.  •All files should be sent as e‐mail  attachments in either .doc or .rtf format for  text, and .jpeg for art submissions. We will  neither consider nor return submissions sent  in hard copy, even if return postage is  included.  •When sending multiple submissions  (e.g. five poems), please include all the work in  a single file rather than five separate files.  •Authors should also provide a cover  paragraph with a short biography in the body  of their e‐mail.  •Simultaneous submissions are  acceptable. Please indicate in your cover letter  if your work is under consideration elsewhere.  •Please direct all submissions and  inquiries to okreview@cameron.edu.

Table of Contents Nonfiction 08 Ken Hada, “Wild Bill” 15 Louis Bourgeois, “Gogo and the Mr. Bojangles Man”

Poetry 10 Kerri Vinson Snell, “Lucy Pretty Eagle at Carlisle Boarding School” 11 Kerri Vinson Snell, “All Those Talks We Never Had” 13 Kerri Vinson Snell, “Chickasaw Elder Teaches Us Gardening Vocabulary in a Power-Point Presentation” 14 Kerri Vinson Snell, “Paige Bradley: Expansion” 19 Paul Austin, “The Window” 22 Paul Austin, “The Abuse of Language” 26 Paul Austin, “Monk” 28 Paul Austin, “Listening to Schubert” 33 Paul Austin, “Plopping Down Steep Hill” 35 Molly Fuller, “Cornfields for Miles” 36 Molly Fuller, “Sparrow Woman” 37 Molly Fuller, “Arrival’s Knifed Edge” 39 Saima Afreen, “Are You the One Who Sobbed in Shahid’s Arms?”

Fiction 41 Billy Howell, “Encroachment”

Reviews 56 Bayard Godsave, A Review of Daniel Borzutzky’s The Performance of Becoming Human 58 Gary Reddin, A Review of Danielle Vega’s Survive the Night 61 George McCormick, A Review of Nathalie Léger’s Suite for Barbara Loden

Contributors         62

Contributor’s Page

Poetry      &Prose

Ken Hada Wild Bill    It's 8:42 pm., Sunday night and I'm bored. I've been restless all weekend, passing time with non‐ descript distractions to thinly disguise an anger underneath it all.  But now, as I sit listening to  Nanci Griffith and switch between Hearts and Solitaire on the computer for the umpteenth time,  you cross my mind. I get a glimpse of you, alone in your little white, native stone house up on a  hill. No doubt  by  now you  are  laying in bed  on this cold early  spring night ‐‐ a night that can  make  you  feel  especially  lonely  because  three  days  ago  spring  promised  sunny  70  degree  skies  only  to  fall  back  to  40  degree  blustery  days.  Like  the  daffodils  that  outline  your  front  gate,  we  open to the sun only to be squeezed shut again.    I see you, Wild Bill, struggling from your elevated hospital chair turning for one last look  around  your  cluttered  living  room  before  you  extinguish  the  light  and  head    through  the  darkness to your bedroom.   On  the  wall,  pictures  of  a  daring,  smiling  young  cowboy  standing  by  his  prized  horse  "Trigger"  penetrate  in  silhouette  through  the  dusty  twilight.  You  grieved  like  a  widow  for  Trigger, but then a glow quickly illuminated your face whenever you spoke of him. Lower, by the  light switch, A Farmers Coop calendar, yellow from bygone months lingers on a headless finish  nail. Your handwritten notes reconstruct a busy month, a history overlooked. Beside your chair a  table  supports  your  whole  existence  as  it  has  now  been  reduced.  Your  giant,  red‐letter  edition  King  James  Bible  is  opened  to  the  passage  you  last  read  this  afternoon.  Its  dog‐eared  pages  contain  favorite  underlined  verses  along  with  sanctified  thoughts  scribbled  throughout,  as  if  Moses himself would be envious of your transcriptions. To the side a pile of unopened junk mail  marketed  for  senior  citizens  who  evidently  have  nothing  to  do  but  sign  their  lives  away.    A  wrinkled pad with dozens of phone numbers is close by. The preacher and members of your old  congregation,  a  few  neighbors,  the  rural  fire  department,  the  sheriff,  the  ambulance,  your  daughters, the electric coop and rural water.  Alone, trusting an unsteady metal walker, you push your way through the dark following  a familiar path between cedar door jambs. I can hear you now talking out loud to Jesus as you  approach the room where you sleep. You turn your back, and with faith, fall downward into your  ancient  bed.  Wincing  in  pain,  with  cracking  knees  you  struggle  to  settle  in.  Your  disfigured  fingers pull the covers over you.  I wonder if you get lonely Wild Bill? Your boys have been gone for many years now. They  are locked up in an institution, "for their own good," it was said. To keep them safe I suppose.  Still, I remember them happy, free, hard‐working, in love with life. Together you milked better  than a hundred goats morning and night, not to mention tending the beef cattle, crops and the  multitude  of  other  duties  that  comes  with  managing  400  acres.  Alone,  you  raised  them.  You  made them responsible for their chores. You didn't pity them in their sickness. You taught them  to believe. You let them play. You were a good dad, never mind what the social workers say.   8

"Don't get bitter" you told me several years ago. "Don't let the devil get your heart" you  said, and I marveled at your faith. I wonder, Wild Bill, in your 96 years, did you ever get bitter?  You've been mostly alone ever since I've known you. Is that why you always hugged me so  tight  whenever  you  saw  me.    You  always  greeted  me  with  a  rambunctious  "let  me  hug  your  neck"! I would boyishly try to squirm away from your embrace, but you always managed to hug  my  neck.  I  remember  the  power  in  your  Pop‐eyed  forearms  and  biceps.  I  miss  your  tender  strength.  You let me hunt squirrels in your woods, chasing through rocky hills on sunny mornings,  eventually  winding  up  at  the  spring  where  I  drunk  myself  silly  on  pure  water.  Your  chainsaw  buzzing  up  on  the  ridge  reminded  me  that  you  were  hard  at  work  on  the  coming  winter's  woodpile. You knew I would be back at the house in time for lunch. I remember your kitchen.  You just piled the dishes higher and higher on the overloaded counter. I liked that. You managed  the  essentials:  a  belly  full  of  wild  Ozark  honey  on  freshly  rolled  biscuits  before  milking  time.  Does anyone make biscuits for you now, Wild Bill?  I never got around to asking you about your name. As a boy, your name was something I  said in mythical reverence. To investigate it was unthinkable; it would be like investigating Jesus.  But now I wish I knew why you were called Wild Bill. I guess it might be because you talk loud ‐‐  always have. People who live alone do, I notice. Maybe your name comes from your cowboy days  when you and Trigger pranced through every no‐count town in Oklahoma and Arkansas. Maybe  they called you Wild Bill because you lived for a good coon hunt. You loved to "make em squall"  didn't you old man? Next to your religion, coon hunting was your passion. I remember once you  and the boys raised 63 Bluetick pups. Even after they took your boys, you still coon hunted. No  lonesome hound ever had better companionship than the shrill of your invigorated tenor voice:  "Whooo Blue! Ho now girl. After em Blue. Whooooeee!" I wish I could take you out one more  time Bill to listen to some soulful dogs running hard while fiery diamond stars hover over us.  It is nearly Monday morning now, and I'm not so bored any more. How can I be? I see you  in your iron bed lying on your back, with a justified chin pointing heavenward, blessing others,  but maybe, with the smallest tear in the corner of your eye, looking forward to seeing your boys  again.

Kerri Vinson Snell Lucy Pretty Eagle at Carlisle Boarding School    Each morning the same sparrow falls into my mother’s hands.  I see it as I open my eyes—sun shasta on the rutted rocks  of a red canyon—plight of the light splitting.    I am learning to write here and not to speak, except   when spoken to, when my words are curtsies. And what to say?  I am learning the false response to everything, to let my visions  burrow like a prairie dog. He digs until the wet of his nose  is as dry as a memory.    Each evening I gather, with rake or with my own fingers,   the leaves which pile against the barn.  If I were gathering  her skirts in bunches, I would only use my hands. I would  follow after her silently and find the toe‐prints  in the red mud where her whispers prospered into the down  of wings.     The leaves offer their impressions—flesh‐like openings  where water and dirt are a sticky‐tack and the spine  of each maple leaf etches dead words into silence. When I scatter,  the words scatter, the meanings scatter—the world  is not the same as she once was and if I owned a spiked  beak I would croon and bellow and beckon the stories—Irish‐German  and Choctaw and Cherokee—I would yell into the yellow  of trumpet flowers    and if someone said witch‐child, heathen, Indian he would no longer  be able to see me or hear me and my touch would slice the air—  the hills would make the sound of boots—    but I must get home to sit with her—the sun nearly on its way—  her eyes opening and her palms beginning to reach.

All Those Talks We Never Had    our rooms are delicate    crooked boards (morphemes)    incurving planks    we walk with the talk    stripped from us    like a fricative varnish    the tongue can wallow    but the ear will immerse    in its rejection of spirants    you say best: gave your;     best: for the; best: is yet to    the wind whistles through that      as lisp of a Manatee scrolling    blue waters—immaculate black showing    for poet‐children, for last‐day lovers    one hundred yards from the shore    of the sound. Monopolizing in winter    the lower Suwannee, dark bodies joining

their tongues— Shhh, you tell me—    the less said    the more we see.

Chickasaw Elder Teaches Us Gardening Vocabulary  In a Power‐Point Presentation    She tells us: We must thrust from this ground  like the buried bulb.    Slide one:  See how the sower  with the blade stacks these fine‐skinned daffodils  as a cairn, her mind an alembic  of memory, how even the last drop of water on the forehead  will trace the nose to reach the tongue    She looks back for nothing. She is   the suggestive silhouette, an amalgam of unwashed gold  and nameless fire in the shape of dirt’s pillar  after the digging. Her western‐yoked shirt hangs  on the hooks of her shoulder blades.     Slide two: Through fingers the dust disperses  Like ashes over smoky water.  Each year for sixty years  she plants seeds and waits for faces  to emerge    and with each sun flower she reckons with what has been lost.    Slide three: Full bodies dancing on a sandstone ridge  planing across a wide canyon, dancing for crops, for nourishment,  for fertility, for a huge, black pot of pashofi to be passed  around like a new baby,    and in my crock‐potted classroom as I chew the warm pork  in my mouth and the grit of the hominy, I know that all the words  for my prayers stay buried  like the dead, and when we cry out for them  they hear us, our words, in their waiting places  with their clay‐pressed wings.

Paige Bradley: Expansion    say it won’t hurt       it will hurt  say we are bare           our feet scraping stone  say I meander on miracle heels  say my body will remain        whole          no    say the ground is feathered with wings  of birds         birds that don’t shit  say friends don’t let friends  they do    say wine and crust of bread sustain me  say manna chunks the sky  say the arms around me are my blood  say good stranger            clear water  clear water    say this light which covers my heart  is my heart               is my light  say as I harden that I will not break  you will break    say sounds washing over me are not lost sounds  say my language will mount as on a marvelous horse  say my thighs will pump again  say faster than daughters again  say       when your eyes are broken  all that you can see            say broken  broken

Louis Bourgeois Gogo and the Mr. Bojangles Man    The  house,  now  a  church,  had  concrete  walls  and  enormous  archways  and  halls  dividing  the  rooms. The place was always dimly lighted. There were cockroaches all over the floor and on the  walls, that’s what I remember for sure because that’s what frightened me the most at first. My  next memory is of my Acadian step‐grandfather sipping from his cheap beer and cheaper gin in  the large den, only lit by the grey light of the black and white Philco television. Apparently, my  parents  had  dropped  me  off  for  the  night.  My  step‐grandfather  didn’t  speak  much,  he  always  wore his army fatigues from his time in both Korea and Vietnam, Korea because he was young  and  could  fire  a  rifle,  Vietnam  because  he  was  from  Marksville,  Louisiana  and  could  speak  French well enough to communicate with deserters of the Viet Cong. Korea left him all but deaf  and Vietnam all but speechless. This is the night of my first memory.    It  wasn’t  fear  I  remember  most  at  the  root  of  my  first  memories,  it  was  sadness,  childhood  sadness. I sat alone on the concrete floor in the adjoining hallway where the back door was and  played with the roaches and an old rubber ball half gone, bitten in two by some dog I suppose,  the  faint  voices  of  the  television  behind  me.  There  was  just  enough  light  to  illuminate  the  darkness.  My  step‐grandfather’s  beer  and  gin  filled  the  air,  deepening  my  already  deep  melancholy. Every now and then in a kind of depressed but controlled drunkenness, he would  call  out  to  me  “Où  à  tu,  Lucas?”  and  I  would  answer  “On  the  floor,  Papa.”  I  was  around  three  years old. I could understand  simple commands in French but was not able to speak it. It was  1973, a year I remember only from certain angles in the shadows.    Finally,  he  fell  asleep.  The  television  went  off  the  air,  as  television  channels  did  in  those  days  before cable and satellite dishes. My parents would not be coming to get me on thisnight. I was  still  on  the  floor,  unattended,  forgotten,  in  the  cold  concrete  house  on  the  outskirts  of  Slidell,  Louisiana.  It was then that Gogo came to me. How to describe him? Clownish, at least the hair  of a clown, but it was silver, not orange or red. He was puppet‐like, spindly and mechanistic in  his  haunting  movements,  standing  about  eight  inches  tall,  and  speaking  incessantly  without  forming any true words—his mouth just moved and only the air of words escaped from his thick  red  lips.  At  moments,  I  thought  he  was  trying  to  speak  to  me  in  French,  and  at  other  times,  I  thought he was trying to speak to me in Spanish, the language of my maternal grandmother, but  only English thoughts came to me. Most of the short time of Gogo’s existence I spent showing  him the cockroaches and he showed me the inside of himself which was a mirror with emerald  trim. I saw myself over and over again in Gogo’s magnificent mirror, a brown‐headed boy with  heavy  but  fine  hair  and  a  perfect  Gaelic  nose.  Gogo  would  point  and  I  would  offer  him  a  cockroach as thanks for showing me his mirror, the inside of himself, but he didn’t seem to like  the  roaches  and  he  would  point  to  my  mouth  and  I  would  eat  them,  as  many  as  I  could  find,  until finally I got sick and threw up all over myself. It startled me and I began to fear Gogo, to

the point of real tears. Eventually, I quit crying long enough to somehow gather the courage to  pick Gogo up by his silver hair and flush his wicked body down the toilet. I have yet to hear from  him since.     The  next  day  they  came  for  me  but  it  was  late  in  the  evening.  My  step‐grandfather  had  gone  fishing that morning and brought back a string of fish, mostly gar, shoe pique and carp. Around  noon, we had fish and rice for lunch, with water and coffee to drink. He took up the dishes from  the Formica‐topped, steel‐legged table. I remember the methodical clanking of the dishes as he  washed them.    He went to his chair and smoked his pipe for awhile. He drank a beer and fell asleep with the  sound  off  on  the  television.  I  stared  out  the  kitchen  window  for  awhile  watching  an  old  lady  from  across  the  street  feed  her  cats.  She  had  dozens  of  them,  different  colors  and  shapes.  She  seemed to me to be very far away, as far away as my arms and legs, as far away as the sky. I have  always been intoxicated by distances.    I slipped out the back door without waking him. The yard was large and was not fenced in. Rozo  cane  grew  along  the  fetid  ditch  that  ran  along  the  front  yard.  The  cat  lady  waved  to  me.  In  response, I threw my half‐ball in her direction, it lopped into the ditch. I went for the ball and  the cat lady told me to stay out of the ditch. I stuck my hands into the viscous black water to  find my ball, water bugs and crayfish swam about. I felt ancient, as if I had never been born. My  step‐grandfather was standing at the front door. I saw him before he spoke, then he said, “Lucas,  rentrez maintenet.” I went to him without saying anything. He picked me up with his short but  strong arms and sat me in his huge white zinc tub. A roach began floating in circles in the yellow  brackish water, and I picked it up and tried to put it in my mouth when he slapped me lightly on  my  face  and  said,  “No  Lucas,  c’est  caca.  C’est  caca!”  For  whatever  reasons,  those  were  the  last  French words he ever spoke to me.    My mother and father came for me and I climbed into the back seat of the white beat up Falcon.  The inside had that old car smell, like the inside of an old person’s Oldsmobile or Fairlaine. But  my  parents  were  not  old;  they  were  young,  good  looking,  hostile,  slightly  backward,  and  very  tense.  Normal  attributes  of  the  upper  working  class  of  Southeast,  Louisiana.  My  father  was  recently discharged from the Navy fleet at Long Beach, one of many fleets in the Navy that didn’t  see action in Vietnam. My mother was the first and only high school graduate of her family. That  day,  I  remember  her  long  autumn  hair  and  red  pantsuit,  and  his  thick  mustache  and  wide  violent eyes.    We  went  down  the  long  and  dusty  semi‐rural  road.  Lines  of  pine  trees  mostly  thin  and  short  rolled rhythmically, the sky was a dark blue fading into ochre, crimson, and purple. I have never  forgotten  that  sky.  It  was  the  first  time  I  was  mesmerized  by  it.  I  remember  feeling  as  if  I  had  16

become  the  sky  or  that  the  sky  had  become  a  part  of  me.  There  was  sadness  and  glee,  as  if  I  could walk on air but in tears. It was then I became aware of the sound of nothingness and time.  The song “Mr. Bojangles” was playing on our push‐button AM radio:        I knew a man Bojangles        And he danced for you        In worn out shoes          Mister Bojangles        Mister Bojangles        Come back and dance again    The song blended with the colors of the evening.  The evening and the song and the moldy smell  of the car made me dizzy. I had the strange sense that I might disappear at any moment, but it  didn’t frighten me. It was as if my body was being purged of all details, only the real poetic stuff  of existence remained.    My  father  turned  down  the  radio  and  slowly  came  to  a  stop  in  front  of  the  mailbox  of  a  large  one‐story brick house. “Mr. James died of a heart attack today,” he said to my mother. From the  back seat, I could see Mr. James’ wife pulling flowers at the edge of the yard. Like the cat lady,  she appeared to me to be very far away, as far away as I could see before she disappeared into the  evening air. I imagined how the flowers would taste. I imagined my mouth full of purple petals,  as I still do when I see such flowers.    It must be that I had seen Mr. James before or imagined I had seen him, mowing his lawn in a  pin‐striped  suit,  a  spindly  man  pushing  his  mower  to  and  fro,  his  short  overweight  wife  androgynous, taciturn, and silent, edging the sidewalk and fertilizing the front yard’s shrubs and  flowers. The two of them, very quiet and nondescript, without want or ambition of great things,  working together and speaking indirectly under the ambiguous sky of Slidell, Louisiana–he dead  ten  years  before  her,  she  living  well  off  the  insurance  money  with  no  hope  of  finding  a  replacement  and  existing  in  the  shadow  of  his  obscure  memory.  Perhaps  I  had  only  imagined  him; he very much resembled Gogo, the apparition I had destroyed the night before. The poet‐ child takes in and digests phantoms, and produces phantoms all his life.    We arrived at home near sunset. I climbed out of the car and could hear a dog barking from a  long way off. I remember seeing the quick movements of bats speckling the sky, although at that  age I did not know they were called bats. An uncle of mine was sitting on the front steps of our  two story bungalow, a triangular looking home made of cheap cinder wood. He was drinking a  Dixie  beer  and  smoking  a  cigarette.  He  looked  and  talked  like  Johnny  Cash,  but  he  was  a  foot  taller and skinnier. I had never seen him before and still don’t know why he was waiting for us  on the front steps. My father took a beer from my uncle’s Styrofoam cooler and they talked for

awhile  in  the  waning  evening  light.  I  remember  my  uncle  telling  how  one  evening  a  snake  crawled  under  the  door  of  his  house  while  he  and  his  wife  were  watching  television.  I  also  remember him saying how he wished he was back in the war overseas.    The  Slidell  sky  was  shrinking  quickly  on  this  day  in  1973.  I  envisioned  dragons  eating  up  that  sky.    I  looked into the horizon. I stared at it harder than I had ever stared at anything before or since; staring  into the horizon until it almost drowned me.

Paul Austin The Window

The mother draws the green shade down  to match precise the eight inch  open space from sill to window  trying to ease the summer heat,   yet see but remain unseen  from the second floor apartment  that she has made into a home  on Boston's Berkeley Street.    She sits in a plain hard back chair  she borrowed from the kitchen,  her face in its hard set habit,    a half full pack of Chesterfields  and a brim full amber ashtray   are set with purpose on the sill  so not one ash will fall   to soil the pride of a clean house.    She has kept up this attempt  to take a break despite the fact  the view remains always the same  old red brick Berkeley St. buildings  where the hotel of the pimps and whores   and  St. Vincent's second hand store  remind her why she keeps to herself  and feels old at thirty‐eight    She holds the smoke deep in her lungs,      as a nourishment of some kind.  A stab of pain in her chest  startles up from deep memory  her happy go lucky Harry,  dead in his sleep eight years ago,   as Buddy Clark’s blue baritone  croons a radio ode to love.

The smoke in a half sighed release   escapes into the street air  wafting like a summoned ghost  unsure of why it was called  only to fade into the sun  the way she herself wants to fade  from an outside world she fears  but still must make her way     out where rich Beacon Hill ladies  look down their noses as you scrub  their floors, out where welfare workers  treat you like garbage, where tough kids   rough you up and then steal your purse,  politicians are on the take,  where the corner store Jew   cuts off  your credit, the Coloreds   slit your throat, and those fairy boys  do their filthy business.    She sits fixed in her hard back chair    and knows this resentment is wrong,  feels the return of an old shame  and Jesus, Mary and Joseph     wishes she’d stop feeling this way.  She looks to her left on impulse  though it’s not possible to see  Our Lady of Victories church.    A desire to confess, to feel   the grace of sacrament,  shudders through her like a ghost  of someone she can’t remember  causing her to look back toward   St. Vincent's second hand and see  Mrs. Silverman go inside  holding her pocketbook close.     Her lips form a silent prayer  a thought she once had as a girl   20

back at home in Nova Scotia,  this is me here, that is them there    The boy enters the room.  The mother does not turn her head.    The boy’s eyes are on his mother   looking out the window,  unaware this is the first time  he’s ever felt her so present.    If the word 'beautiful had come   to mind, he would have said her name.

The Abuse of Language       Doubt is not pleasant, but certainty is absurd – Voltaire      slap, slap, slap…    Wittgenstein would hit his forehead,  hoping to knock loose the right word   leaping from neuron to neuron,  within a whirligig of thoughts.    what … what ... what is it!?...    He sought the right word,  the exact word among others,  to satisfy a ravenous desire  to find sense in nonsense.    His life’s work had become a quest  to decontaminate language,  rid its vocabulary of rough estimates  with their parenthetical uncertainties.    How dearly he wanted   to prime mind and body   for supple constructions  that brought clarity to reason .    Despite a misanthropic disposition    and occasional delusions of grandeur,  he sought a virtuous language  that would eliminate double talk,    originate word‐gatherings   to free the past from dogma,  save the future from false prophets  and their inevitable tyrannies.    He played the game of language,  in the music hall of his mind,  22

slip‐sliding on false starts,  prat‐falling over bad choices,    spinning verbal cartwheels   hoping to revealed hidden truths  in what, for him, was the natural   state of the nonsensical.    2.  Obsessed to free his mind,   unchain his heart   from obfuscating phrases   and unconscious falsehoods,    he more and more fell into   the habit of slapping his forehead,  convinced he could, in time,  batter out enough  words    to recapture that infant thrill  when word and thing   first came together   and gave birth to knowledge.     But every time he tried  to reason his way  to the heart of the matter,  the very words he chose     stimulated unconscious feelings  that craved language of their own,  making a disruptive muddle   of the original formulation.    The confusions of thinking,  rethinking and thinking again  made him increasingly impetuous  in his outward behavior.    One day he’d take a satyr’s glee

at coming close to success,  the next he would belabor  a fury at just missing it.    He took a paradoxical pleasure  that his personal confusions   were echoes of the puzzles   presented by language itself    and realized he had, himself,   become a laboratory  wherein  those around him could study   the human complexity of  asking    a thing is… what?...  I am… what?...  a fact is,… what?..  a perception is… what?...  I am … ?...   … slap… slap…  ……..slap…  What!?    He died still seeking a grammar  that brought about a “harmony   of thought and reality,” that would  make possible a truthful life    3.  Yet still today there are tyrants  who use their power to divorce  thought yet further from reality  by perfecting their cynical use    of language as shell game,  words sold as snake oil,   conning the poor of heart   to damn the proud of heart,     as moral anesthesia,   24

for the righteous to declare   the blameless guilty,  the selfish to fear the selfless,    locking free thought away  from the reality of  their world  with obfuscation and euphemisms  like… collateral damage…    It is… what?...  this...  euphemism…   this…slap, slap…  … collateral damage!?    It is the language of finance,  defoliating nature,  poisoning its water,   spawning mass starvation,    collateral damage is… slap!... what?...    It is the language of technology  harvesting rotted flesh,   disfigured faces, missing limbs,  blinded eyes, mutilated genitals,    ravaged wombs, radiated sperm  and shattered minds gone mad.  to make the unlucky wounded  beg to join the fortunate dead.    Collateral damage   is language as blasphemy  plausible deniability  as cover up of conscience,    the body’s soundboard  as bamboozlement, a ruse  to allow heads of state  to date‐rape history.

Monk    There he is,  flesh and presence,   hovering   over and round   the story of midnight jazz….                                                                             a note                                       hangs in the air,                                              its tone   eliciting a wonder               for what’s to come…..                                                                                              himself                                       in wonder, wandering,                                       captivated,                                       bewitched by a kaleidoscope                                       of undertones and overtones,                                       calling him into a zen world                                        of echoing resonances,                                       where he might stay too long,  as he seeks a sound that is most                                      true to his own witness,   and risk a one‐way, no return                                      ticket to irrevocable   residence inside his head,                                                                                                        in what may be no more than   eleven, maybe twelve seconds,                                      a motive for an unheard song                                      makes its way to his fingers,                                      and prompts his own, uncommon   touch to summon up a C‐chord  pregnant with a phrase that will riff                                       a new tune       26

for a narrative                                      first hummed in secret below decks  in the dark bowels of a ship   as it sailed the Middle Passage                                      to the American slave fields                where tyranny inspired new riffs,  changes for those who would come next   inspiring them to blow their  own   riffs on the original tune,  to troubador the continent,         booking this late night, low‐lit bar                                      on Manhattan’s Lower East Side,  jamming out a rival anthem  to right the nation’s wrong,  where Monk   will play another change                                      for the public ear to hear                                      what’s needed to keep moving.

Listening to Schubert    1  Listening to Schubert  on a mid‐morning mail run  this last calendar day of summer,  anticipating how the noonday whistle  will cue the leaves, glistening green,     to bleed the first, warm tints of fall,  three turkey vultures   feed on fresh road kill.    Can they hear, I wonder,  the String Quartet in D minor?    The approaching four‐cylinder,   114 horespower Chevy Corsica   causes no alarm,  nevertheless they ‐  sullenly, it seems to me ‐  lift their talons, as if from sticky glue,  from off the tar road  and fly to tall grass camouflage.    I proceed toward town,   ears re‐tuned to the surging allegro,  and pass unnoticed by the birds,  who stare with yellow pupils  from within the bleached grass  at the feast of carcass on the road across.    Not much at the post office:  a late bill reminder, the county paper.    Driving home, the strings   andante con moto now,  the buzzards are back,  dining on dead squirrel.  28

I stop early, to not send   them away so soon this time;  slowly roll closer, frame them  in the shatter‐proof windshield.    They're not (as thought  from more distant sightings)  dark‐cloaked, ugly angels of death,  but have the handsome, certain   look of stern‐eyed fathers  pressed onto Roman coins.    I watch them, alive with detail  in the sun‐cleaned air,  tear away at the squirrel, ripping  pink flesh from its gray hide.    Achromatic images  crowd the screen of my inner eye;  cutting in, fading out, dissolving, emerging,  overlapping, tracking, piling on ‐  a swirl of continuous brain‐maps,  neuronic firings that never began   but always are.    Skulls, elbows, toes,   rings, teeth, tattered cloth stars,  speckled mounds of brick and metal rubble,  bloated organs, cracked plastic icons,  intestines, feces, and unstrung rosary beads  float down rivers of vomit and blood.    The sorrowing bow of the cello echoes   the unheard screams of abandoned cats  and corpses litter rotted orchards  under a sky smoked black by burning flesh,    Awed by a sunless force,  parallel‐opposite, negative‐reversed

to the same primitive need   which bloodies the buzzards’ beaks,  my mind's eye composes   groupings of the dead and maimed,  6 million, 2 million, 1 million ‐  on buses, ferry boats,  in empty fields, crumbling churches,  army barracks, rice paddies, outbacks,   airports, nursery schools ‐   the many, the few, the alone,  the chosen, the accidental,     the faceless, nameless, casualties  of a black and gray Apocalypse  bereft of moral feeling .  The violins double time the cello,  urging return to the actual  where the vultures  eat the dead.    The birds hold fast one last  parenthetical glance at me,   look me in the eye   like annoyed parents,  lift themselves straight up  to the branches above,  giving me leave to go.    In rear‐view reflection   three red heads,  perched and impassive,  watch me off  then turn their unblinking eyes  to the shredded corpse below  and drop down to get what's left.    I continue toward home,   listening to Schubert ‐  music's renewal as necessary to me  as squirrel meat to the birds.    30

2  Paused in the driveway,   motor running, radio on,  I lean, slumped to the passenger side,  ears uncrowded by the steering wheel.  to listen the Schubert through,    In the abruption between movements,   a screen door flaps, someone   stumblerushes from a house,   a woman stops, frozen with terror  then quickly, warily, circles round  to the driver's side,  mouthing something unheard  over the up‐tempo phrasing of the fourth movement.    I roll down the window.     "My god," my wife says, words  rushing with emergency into the car,  "I thought you'd had a heart attack!"    (Looking out the window from  the other world within our house,  she'd mistaken my hunched,   slumped listening.)    A glimpse of my death in her eyes  gives me to know   it's already happened  in the time within time of the music.    Blushed with relief we have  history yet to live together,  she leaves me listening   as the furious presto of the finale  gallops wayward to nowhere,    assuring me when death comes again,  in space without time,

I will regret the accident of my birth  no more than the squirrel could regret his.

Plopping Down Steep Hill    A young girl, ten or thereabouts,  plopping pell‐mell down Steep Hill,  her brown pony tail flopping,   arms and legs this way and that   as if swimming for balance,  reins herself in from full gallop  in front of a bright black door,   numbered bright white eleven   and set in a dull red brick wall ‐  her entrance to courtyard and home.    A short pause for breath,  a slender white arm raised   a flat, happy hand bangs loudly  to announce she’s here,  a simultaneous gust of wind,  as if caused by her whirlwind self  hammering the door,  blows her skirt over her waist  baring a view of her white child’s panties,  and calling up a ghost‐image,     of white‐blonde Monroe standing  over an air‐conditioning exhaust grate   on a white hot Manhattan street,  a blast of heated air having  billowed her bright white skirt  up and out like a summer sail,  showing her full grown white legs  costumed in white satin panties,  her fire red mouth a slight smile of wonder,  her child‐innocent blue eyes looking   into the camera.    The wind, quick to extinguish itself,  lets fall the girl’s skirt,   a brief click opens the door,

the fleet portrait of young girl   and conjured woman is gone  as the girl passes through  the closing door   with its bright white eleven.

Molly Fuller Cornfields for Miles    These fancy shackles keep me rooted.  I dig up the amaranth seeds, let each one remind me how  growing flowers sound.  I ask my sons to bring me rings, my daughters to circle me with tears.  My grandchildren to collect the pocket watches hidden behind the walls and bury them beneath  the  house.    I  wait  for  the  girls  to  grow  taller,  to  remind  me  how  each  inch  decreases  their  chances.  They press dolls against their chests and practice being women.   When the boys pull  rabbits  from  their  nests,  I  hold  my  tongue.    I  live  in  silence.    I  offer  up  pails  of  fresh  milk  to  illuminate the night.

Sparrow Woman    In his hands, raindrops and a passport.  His knees and neck a raft of scars.  His back is smooth as  water.  A nest‐thin woman balances against gravity, against the pull of earthquakes, and grasps  at his hands. Networks collapse in the shadows, right and left hands tangle, a spotlight clearly  outlines  them  as  they  run  down  muddy  hills  from  the  top  of  a  broken  collection  of  burning  buildings. He feels and does not think this decision to move, to run, to let go of her hand.  Later,  branches become alcoves, signposts of sadness, graves.  Limbs have been gathered, small parts  hung to swing like fruits from trees. Winged and crawling insects convoy smaller bits into the  forest and bees come around, nosing at the plum stains on the sticky grass.  Now, safely in this  place,  here,  he  no  longer  knows  how  to  manage  his  hands,  how  to  eat  the  pulp  of  fruit.  He  watches as wrens peck at small seedlings where his feet are planted on a still and turning earth.

Arrival’s Knifed Edge    1.    There is a history of opening petals, how to find the inside of an artichoke.  A woman is not skin,  or sinew or fat.  A woman is the knotting of string between each pearl.  The body is the first  phase of things you should know:  the treble of scars, barrenness, the way salt tastes on your  lover’s lips.    2.    Now there are two.  The first is a key cutter, a tape dictionary, charcoal drawings of spices,  shadow maps, images of trading stories.  The second is post card news, no hands and all  gleaming toothpaste smiles, columns filled with squirming black squiggles and this marginal sea.    3.    fish swim past the birds     the walls bend   intersecting surfaces   textures are messages to fingers  each writer   keys machines   filled with black holes     folds pages of spices   keeps sea salt  invisible collision of quarks    glossaries as if     the wave of the universe in this paper envelope could       4.    You are withdrawal  tides run around, aground   colliding space.

I tell you now, I will tell you how I am       come in    there is sea salt everywhere    and skies reflect arrival’s knifed edge.

5. My ears are filled with salt and I am bombed with wanting. Textures and messages are demanding that the postcards are actually advertisements and I taped them to the door for you, physical ransom notes, columns of numbers, traded stories, also images I traced and cut from a remembered melody. There are fragile portraits, dried flowers, glossaries and blueprints for inventions inside my torso. Bury me at sea and the ink’s type will become fragments of carbon and shadows. 6. A woman’s skin is a sign of the beginning of violence. See the sky reflected in the pool—the arrival, the edge, the increase or the withdrawal of the tides around that half- moon with dark stars and black holes and quarks as currents. The wave of the universe is invisible, and the particle is expanding and colliding with sea foam and the ocean’s mouth kisses behind my knees and all of my anatomical contours. Starfish on the beach want more than just to withstand waves. Come in.

Saima Afreen Are You the One Who Sobbed in Shahid’s Arms?    My forehead permanently shone  For kissing five times the floor‐stone    I was born a prophecy.  An ultimatum of sins  In contours of an apple  And Eve.    Naked leaves were her sanatorium  Mine, too.    With each sunset, my slavery renews  Slavery to dark fruits, owl hoots  silver nights, candle days  adding layers to my shadow.  A silhouette that was thrown from Eden  To Lanka, to Jeddah    still wandering in its skin  in towns, rivers, wilds, wells  howling, shrieking, wailing  to hold two feet of earth  that slips and promises  to wring her ribcage on resurrection  for not covering her bust  that was full of wild blooms;    the mirror shows her depths of mud  dug two yards deep  it couldn’t show her those eyes  that dropped diamonds  on mornings stretched with starch  with breeze eating her fingers  that rose with minarets.

Prayers break into beads  Stuck between star‐lights  That measure depth of her last tear.    Her body was a clay‐lamp  She lit it up, wanted to burn  “The Fire is from Hell, your body is not yours,”  Scriptures opened another book in her iris.  They didn’t tell her about war‐brothels,  Maps pulsating with bombs,  The terror of black and white    Yet there is a promise of peace in afterlife  The eternal joys. Grape the size of a carafe.  The pearl palaces too clean, too pure  For her grubby chipped nails, fingers.  She stains her body with light,    tears her skin, the holy text falls  like lorem ipsum  between columns.    She pastes herself in spaces between beheaded crowns and mumbles:    “dear prophet  after you no one will come  then who sobs at my arms?”        Glossary:  Shahid – US Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali

Billy Howell Encroachment     After  a  three‐day  search,  the  boy’s  body  turns  up  racked  and  swollen  near  the  east  end  of  the  Kiamichis, a pock of flesh torn loose from the arm, three vertebrae crushed to pebble, the back  of the neck gaping like an open mouth. It lies on a low slope, suspended against gravity by the  thin trunk of a hardwood.    Even before they reach the body, Roy Macabee says, “It’s Sawyer’s boy, all right.”  Roy turns the face upward with the toe of his boot. The rest of the search party crowds in  behind  him.  Three  times  they’ve  set  out  at  first  light  to  find  D.  J.  Sawyer.  They’ve  covered  ungauged distance on aching grades of hill, and Roy knows that every man among them is ready  to be done with this affair.  “Hell, Roy,” someone says, “don’t mess him up any worse than he is.”  Roy kneels and studies the boy’s misconfigured face. Only recognized him by the clothes,  an orange‐button down and jeans with knees worn white. He’s seen the boy breaking horses on  Sawyer’s land, has seen him trekking up and down the walking path at the side of the road that  runs  the  valley  between  their  homes.  Has  only  seen  him  at  a  distance,  because  of  the  boy’s  father—protective of his son and the horses he boards. Cloistering. Roy never saw the boy this  close in life.    Roy steps back. From a distance, the body in its ochre puffcoat looks like a record‐setting  pumpkin.  A  shuffle  of  leaves,  hollow  snap  of  a  branch,  and  the  men  turn  away  from  the  body,  raising the rifles they’ve been carrying through the daylight hours for three days.  They stand in a  clutch in a clearing below the hiking path. The past few weeks have taught them a certain kind  of fear.  “It’s  season  for  black  bears,”  someone  says.  “Could  be  one  of  them  got  the  boy.    Maybe  hungry.”  No one moves. The still pines, the dry grass. Hot, brown August surrounds them.  Their silence is an agreement: this boy was killed in one stroke, like the two victims last  month. Catamount. Cougar. Mountain Lion.  Roy  stoops  carefully  against  the  trunk  and  fishes  the  boy’s  shirt  up  with  a  twig.  The  stomach rolls out green and soft over the dry brown grass. “The lion’s not coming back,” he says.  “He’s done with this body or he would have fed for a few days, pulled it under some bushes and  come back a time or two. This kid’s got a week of bloating on him.”  The men mill about, itching to put ground under their heels. There’s no sadness in them,  no emotion playing on their faces. They look like quartz miners at the end of a shift back when  Roy lived on the Arkansas side of the border. Those men would roll out of the caverns like sheets  of paper, clothed in the powder of the dry rock, skin blanched by time out of the sun, huddled,  stooped and active. But their eyes showed that they only stayed upright by a miracle of will.

The  men  who  make  up  his  search  party  aren’t  cut  out  for  the  long  tours  of  countryside  they’ve  been  carrying  out  since  D.J.  disappeared.  They  trade  more  in  leisure.    One  is  a  Bigfoot  guide, another teaches hang gliding. These are men unused to death. Roy leads them because he  is the oldest and because, as a volunteer fireman in a town too small for police, he has the most  official  title  among  them.  He’s  old  enough  to  have  seen  men  die  in  worse  ways,  in  thicker  jungles, in hotter weather causing faster decay.  These men have had a week to prepare themselves for this sight, and now they’re relieved  by it. The anticipation drains. They’ve found what they expected to find.    “Someone  had  better  let  David  know,”  Roy  says.  “Somebody  better  give  thanks  that  it  wasn’t Sawyer’s team that found him. God knows what that sight of his own flesh would do to a  man.”    *  *  *  Roy takes the footpath from his house to Sawyer’s.  Giving his condolences is only proper.  If he had a son to lose, he would expect it, even if not from the most welcome sources.  Before Roy’s father died, ages ago now, he asked Roy not to pray for his soul, his salvation.  He knew he was dying, knew the cancer would finish its work in a matter of weeks. One of the  last times he was fully awake, undrugged, Roy asked him why he shouldn’t pray.    His  father  said,  “My  neighbor  Tom  Travis  was  a  good  man,  good  to  his  church  and  his  community right to the end. Selfless and personable in a way that made him money, bought him  land. More land than me, anyway.”  He took Roy’s hand.  “Son,” he said, “I’m not setting foot in Heaven if I have to share it with that pious old fart.”  This is roughly the same sentiment Roy has felt for David Sawyer all the years they have  been neighbors.  Roy shares two things with Sawyer: a creek valley and a fence.  The fence runs alongside  the creek—on Roy’s side of the creek—and down the length of their land.  For all the money he  makes boarding horses, Sawyer built the fence himself.  Felled and planked a handful of pines,  dug postholes, and puzzled it all together with a satchel full of nails while trudging ankle‐deep  down  the  flow  in  the  creek  bed.  The  result,  a  warped  and  knotted  yellow  skeleton,  traces  the  boundary of Roy’s land.  Sawyer corrals his horses on the other side of the farm. The fence stands useless, serves  only to keep Roy out of the creek. A marker of property lines and nothing more. That gets to Roy  at times. The needlessness of it.    Of  course,  Roy  knows  what  drove  Sawyer  to  build  the  fence.  He  built  it  because  of  the  third thing they once shared: Sawyer’s wife.  Sawyer began to suspect Ellen’s hospitality after she delivered her third welcome‐to‐the‐ neighborhood  pie  to  Roy’s  front  stoop.  People  talked.  By  way  of  defense,  she  said  she  had  to  show off her specialties—apple, pineapple, and cherry. Sawyer kept a close eye on her after that,  knew that she just needed an excuse to leave him. That excuse was a credit card, his card that  42

she ran up buying furniture. He didn’t want her to work, wanted to provide for her. Apart from  reading, decorating was all she had.    That is how she told the story. She called him a miser and a scrooge, obsessed with his  horses, the money they made him. She drifted into sleep whispering these complaints into Roy’s  ear. She spent three nights in Roy’s bed complaining about David and another three dreaming of  California. She’d been reading The  Grapes  of  Wrath and that story twisted around in her head  and turned the west coast into a promised land, dust bowl or not.  Roy hadn’t had a woman since he started planning his salvage yard. He figured he didn’t  have  the  time.  Of  course,  he  welcomed  Ellen,  thought  he  was  saving  her  from  something,  something the husband and son put on a woman like her. She stayed at his house six nights. On  the seventh morning she pulled out onto the valley road and drove away from the sunrise.    David started the fence when Ellen moved in with Roy, finished it when she left town. No  way to tell if he built it to hold her close by if she returned or to keep her from ever getting back  in.  Roy recalls all this as he trods down the valley along the walking path. He didn’t call when  they  first  found  the  boy,  and  he’s  had  to  talk  himself  into  making  the  walk  up  to  the  house.  Figures he has to get this talk out of the way sometime.  Everyone  has  worried  about  Sawyer  this  week.  Roy  more  than  others.  He  has  seen  him  wandering  his  field  at  night  with  a  flashlight,  has  heard  him  ranting  at  the  line  of  trees  at  the  edge of his property. Maybe no more than the ordinary delusions of grief. But Roy worries now  because leading a search party didn’t help him bury the guilt. The heavy result of thinking about  Sawyer living alone now that his boy is gone.  Footprints in the dried mud remind him of the boy. Ellen must have wanted out badly.   She didn’t even leave a contact, might never find out that her boy is dead. Roy sees that he was  just an excuse for her to get away. This thought is enough to give him a share in Sawyer’s loss,  enough  to  make  it  personal,  since  they  are  both  alone,  both  missing  the  same  person,  who  Sawyer needs now more than ever.   Beyond that, it’s just a hell of a thing to outlive your child.  He doesn’t expect David Sawyer to answer when he knocks. Doesn’t expect David, weak  and confused, to take his hand. He doesn’t expect David to ask him in, offer him coffee. To look  at him without anger or memory. It makes sense, though, after the first few minutes. All grudges  are paid by the son’s death.  “I want to offer my sympathy, if that means anything,” Roy says.  “More  than  it  should,”  Sawyer  says.  He  asks  Roy  to  follow  him  out  while  he  rakes  the  horse runs and puts out feed. They walk through the living room and kitchen.  Hardwood floors.  Cabinets  of  carved  wood  animals.  The  sort  of  thing  people  mean  when  they  say  “rustic.”  A  naugahyde  recliner  and  overstuffed  couches,  polished  dining  table.  Must  be  some  of  the  furniture Ellen bought.  “It’s  not  just  for  D.J.  My  sympathy,  I  mean,”  Roy  says.  “I  feel  for  you  being  alone,  and  I  figure it’s at least part my fault.”

Sawyer says, “I estimate being alone feels a lot different for me than it does for you.”  In  the  barn  he  uncurls  the  baling  wire  from  a  stack  of  hay,  pulls  loose  a  two  pats  and  throws  them  over  the  first  stall.  He  has  Roy  scoop  meal  out  of  a  bucket  and  pour  it  into  the  grated troughs that run the inside wall of each stall.  “I  trust  your  sympathy,  Roy,”  Sawyer  says.  “Other  people  are  nice  to  me,  sorry  that  D.J.  picked the wrong day to go hiking out. Fair enough. They’ve always given me some care. But that  doesn’t help me bury the boy.” He stops and looks at Roy. His sun‐browned face is calm, even  friendly. “I need the cougar that did this.”  His voice echoes over the sound of the first horses nosing at the pellets in their troughs.  Florescent bulbs hum with light as the sun fades out on the runs.  “I can trust your sympathy, Roy,” Sawyer says, “because you don’t owe me nothing. You’re  the closest to an enemy as I’ve made in this life.”  “I’ve got a few to spare, I’m sure,” Roy says. He finishes with the feed and drops the scoop  and bucket at the side of barn door.  Sawyer says, “I want you to do the tracking for me, to hunt down the beast that killed my  boy.”  Roy thinks of all he owes Sawyer, all the wrong he’s done him. The cougar could settle his  conscience. About that one thing he is certain.  They close themselves into the first run with a Morgan, busy eating. Sawyer skims around  the muscled haunches and forks at a dark spot in the wood chips on the floor.  “I’m just a businessman,” Sawyer says. “But I know you’ve got some hunting behind you.  I’ve heard that you were part of the trackers that went out after the cougar that attacked your  mining camp over in Arkansas.”  “That was a long time ago.”  “At night I think I see the lion out there at the edge of the trees. Nobody pulls me away  from the window,” Sawyer says. Roy drags a waste bucket out into the open air of the run, the  long fenced ground stretching toward sunset. “And I know that if he ain’t dead, he’ll come after  me next.”  Roy tells him that he’s losing his senses, that he’ll be able to let those worries go after D.J.  is laid to rest.    “Oklahoma Wildlife is sending in a boy out of Tulsa,” Sawyer says. “Name of Bellis. Lance  Bellis.”  “Heard of him,” Roy says. “He does conservation work. Came down here a couple of years  back over some endangered species. That sort of thing. I never met him, but I read an article he  wrote about it.”  “Exactly  what  I  mean,”  Sawyer  says.  “I  want  that  cougar  dead,  and  that  ain’t  going  to  happen if Bellis catches him. I want you to beat Bellis to him.”  Sawyer shovels another forkful of dung into the bucket.  “I’ll do what I can for you,” Roy says.    44

*  *  *  Reverend Evan Lee presides over the funeral, provides the mourning everyone expects: a  wasted  life,  the  death  of  one  so  young,  unfulfilled  promise.  Roy  has  seen  him  in  action  on  Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights, when the preacher indulges in talk of the fires of Hell.  Lee’s face goes bright when he talks, a face to match his orange fire hair. Roy is surprised by how  emotional Lee is over losing a boy he barely knew, probably never spoke to. The passion of lines  he probably learned by rote long ago.   His listeners cry out of their own private longings, wanting to bring back a kid they have  all  felt  sorry  for  since  his  mother  left.  They  also  cry  to  show  Reverend  Lee  some  acceptance.  Politeness knowing he’s doing his best. They chatter quietly: Lord bless him. How hard it must  be to give a eulogy for a member of your congregation only two months after moving into town.  Comes from Shepherd, Texas. A preacher so young, he must be extra spiritual.  Sawyer  might  have  given  the  eulogy  himself  if  he  weren’t  so  broken  up.  Heaving  with  unpracticed  tears,  alone  on  the  front  pew  save  for  two  church  deacons  who  felt  sorry  for  him.  Roy sees why he doesn’t trust their sympathy. It’s too close to pity.  Toward  the  end,  Lee  pours  on  the  brimstone.  The  fires  of  hell  that  await  those  caught  unsuspecting, unprepared. The soul of this good Christian boy would be in danger if he hadn’t  attended the church whose teachings even now keep him safe from the grip of the Devil.  “For the Devil lies like a lion in secret places,” Lee says. “He lies in wait to catch the poor  and draws them down into his net.”  There  is  no  reason  to  file  past  the  closed  casket,  but  many  people  do.  They  touch  the  thick polish, drag fingers across the floral arrangements, and file out with an uncomfortable nod  to the grieving father, too far gone to speak.  When Roy leaves, he passes a cluster of women wearing dresses black as ravens. In their  whispers, Roy hears fear.    *  *  *  The  two  dozen  people  who  make  up  the  town  of  Honobia  meet  at  Carrie’s  Café  and  Convenience to await the arrival of Lance Bellis. Carrie herself has pulled in extra folding chairs  and cooked a buffet of Sasquatch hash for the event. Bellis has insisted that he meet everyone at  once, that they all come up with a game plan together. Those were his words: Game Plan.  “What if people think Bigfoot is behind this?” the owner of the rental cabins asks. “Our  tourism will bottom out by October. Nobody will come for the festival.”  “Even worse,” someone says, “what if Bigfoot is behind this?”  Carrie assures them that Bigfoot wouldn’t turn on the people who raise awareness about  him. Tommy Stage, owner of the local gas station, lays blame with the townsfolk themselves.  “Look what our sin hath wrought,” he says, shaking his head. “It says right there in second  Kings: They feared not the Lord, therefore the Lord sent lions among them.”  A protest arises. But what have we done?

Roy  takes  a  coffee  and  a  plate  of  hash.  Since  the  end  of  August,  he’s  been  hearing  scripture on lions from every corner of the Bible and in every Honobia mouth. Listening to these  locals you’d think the Book was hardly more than a nature study.  On a napkin Roy maps out as much of the Kiamichis as he can reconstruct from memory.  The  peninsula  of  mountains  stretches  east  over  the  prairies.  If  he  offers  to  lead  Bellis,  he  can  keep the upper hand, know where Bellis has been. One of them is bound to find the lion. If they  haven’t waited too long. If it hasn’t moved on.  A  handful  of  people  stand  up  when  a  car  pulls  in.  Bellis  is  here.  Several  others  crowd  around the door as it opens. Already a celebrity, Bellis shakes hands as the crowd parts to lead  him  to  a  corner  table  between  a  rack  of  folded  maps  and  a  diamond‐shaped  BIGFOOT  CROSSING sign. Apart from their reaction, nothing about him speaks of celebrity. Still, he wears  the city on him like a chasuble. Dressed in black collared shirt and tie of similar metallic sheen,  he  stands  as  high  as  a  water  well  spigot.  He  adjusts  his  squat  rectangular  glasses  and  calls  for  attention.  The room murmurs as he tells everyone that he understands their situation, that he has  studied similar circumstances. He says a little education will put them at ease. He has prepared a  slideshow but suffered some technical difficulties with his equipment, in the form of an open car  window  and  unexpected  rainfall.  So  he  will  resort  to  drawing  out  some  bullet  points  on  the  reverse side of a chalkboard menu, if no one minds.  “The  catamount  is  an  obligate  carnivore,”  he  says.  “It  only  kills  under  the  pressure  of  hunger.  For  an  average  adult,  this  translates  to  one  kill  every  two  weeks.  Taking  into  consideration, of course, the fact that it is a generalist killer, that it will supplement big kills with  insects and rodents.”  He makes notes on the board, but it would seem that he’s only tracking his own thoughts.  His letters might as well be hieroglyphs.    “You  should  also  know  that  we  may  have  nothing  to  worry  about,”  he  says.  “In  all  likelihood,  the  animal  has  moved  on.    Catamounts  will  often  travel  up  to  five  hundred  square  miles in habitat formation.”    Whispers in the crowd. Impressed by the language, the numbers.    “Since  the  catamount  is  an  ambush  predator,  observation  and  tracking  are  our  safest  course of action. I have brought along a number of technologies designed for these purposes and  luckily,” he says, “they remain undamaged by act of God.”    “Praise Jesus,” one woman calls out.    “Quiet down, Myrna,” a woman near her says. The scene risks becoming a sermon.    Bellis  goes  on  to  tell  the  townsfolk  that  they  should  guard  themselves  against  panic.  Paranoia will cause them more harm than good. “But you can all do your part. Spray your trash  with  air  freshener  to  cover  its  smell.  No  need  inviting  a  wild  and  misunderstood  animal  into  your homes. Remember: Prevention will be our analgesic.” A final stroke of the chalk against the  board.      46

He asks for questions, but no one thinks of anything, or else dares to raise concerns, save  for a kid with a notepad asking him to clarify one of the lines he’s written. “Obligate,” he repeats  to the boy. Then spells the word.    *  *  *  Morning  comes  cold  and  clear  by  the  end  of  September.  Dew  rises  from  the  grass  and  sticks to your skin. The pines stand crisp as a photo in a magazine.  Roy  has  agreed  to  show  Bellis  the  mountains,  to  lead  him  out  as  far  as  High  Top.  He  wants to give  Bellis a  definite  route  so that he knows where Bellis has been,  where the cougar  isn’t.    Roy first leads Bellis to the spot where they found D.J.’s body. The overgrown hiking trail  takes them straight out. A wonder they didn’t find the boy sooner. Only they thought he would  be closer to town or that maybe he’d gone west. They will walk back to town from here.    They crest a sandstone bluff and catch a view of the Kiamichi River trailing off to the far  line of the horizon. Blue‐smoke mountains rest ghostlike in the distance.  Today will be slow going. Roy can already tell. Bellis plods behind him in irregular lines,  veering off to hang cameras the size of half dollars and bright yellow markers on trees. He says  he  will  follow  the  markers  back  after  he  maps  out  the  topography  of  this  walk,  only  after  he  decides where to set up traps.  He  has  had  two  kinds  of  traps  shipped  out  to  him  on  a  tractor‐trailer.  Stacked  in  the  trailer like carts of produce. One type is a cage of wire with a hook inside for bait and a spring‐ loaded door. Bellis says he doesn’t like this one, that it endangers the animal too much. The cat’s  paws or head might fall under the spring‐loaded door, like a rat in a trap.  The other is a live bait trap. It consists of a wooden frame with thick iron bars around the  sides. The cage inside is split into two spaces, two rooms.  “It’s  a  lot  better  for  the  pest  animal  and  for  the  bait,”  Bellis  says.  “You  see,  the  bait  animal—I’m  going  to  use  goats  for  this  one—the  bait  animal  stays  safe  inside  the  inner  cage  while the outer cage catches the catamount.”  They  watch  for  signs  of  the  cougar.  If  it  is  male,  the  cougar  would  have  left  territory  markers:  pyramids  of  leaves  covered  in  urine.  If  female,  scattered  dung  and  scratched  trees.  Bellis photographs every paw print they see, even ones that are clearly not those of the cougar.  Any  information  about  the  area  will  help  him  map  out  the  ecosystem,  he  says.  The  cougar’s  prints will be hard to find. The ground is dry, hard. Leaves gone yellow or pink litter the ground.    “If we catch it,” Bellis says, “we will carry out a health check, put on a GPS collar, and turn  it over to a reserve.”  They cut through a pocket of scrub brush and trail along an escarpment overhanging the  hiking trail. Honobia’s main street is a line of colored boxes below.  “Have you ever killed an animal?” Roy asks.  “Only  once,”  Bellis  says.  “I  was  in  the  Peace  Corps  in  northern  Indonesia.  A  couple  of  locals were killed by a tiger, and a team of us went out to find it. All we had were rifles that the

farmers kept for shrews or rats that might have been carrying rabies. One of the victims was an  infant, so we all felt like those people were depending on us.”    He  drops  his  rucksack  and  peels  its  front  pockets  open.  He  turns  off  the  GPS  tracker,  removes and caps his camera’s lens, and packs everything away.    “Still,” he says, hefting the bag onto his back, “I would have liked to catch the tiger alive.  We could have studied its diet, its habitat, maybe understood why it attacked humans. After all,  that  is  an  inordinately  unusual  behavior  in  large  felines.  Usually  animals  only  attack  under  extreme  duress,  either  from  hunger  or  fear.  Of  course,  encroachment  plays  a  role.  It  helps  to  know what you are up against.”  Roy agrees with him. This is the nature of the hunt. You have to study your prey.    *  *  *    Another Sunday sermon, this time about comfort. This must be what the young shepherd  thinks his flock needs. Lee’s voice rising: He works signs and wonders in Heaven and in earth,  who hath delivered Daniel from the power of the lions.    They  do  need  such  a  level  of  comfort.  In  the  convenience  store  aisles,  over  breakfast  in  the café, on the fields of hay bailers, Roy hears Reverend Lee’s words traverse their lips. In long  breaths  they  talk  about  the  cougar,  about  Bigfoot—a  barrel  of  what‐if  and  could‐be  stories  traveling among them.      People drive instead of walking, even for short trips in town. They trap the autumn heat  behind locked windows and doors. The gas station, café, and tourist shop close early, trying to  beat  the  sunset.  People are  sure  of things  happening in  the  dark  that  could  not  happen  in  the  day.    At twilight Roy is checking the pine board fence between his property and Sawyer’s. He  imagines Bellis is right, that the lion has moved on. If that’s the case, Sawyer might not come out  of  this.  The  fear  that  has  taken  hold  of  everyone  will  keep  them  all  shut  in,  checking  locks,  turning  on  their  floodlights  at  dusk.  He  imagines  a  town  of  electric  fences  and  scanning  spotlights  and  guard  towers,  Sawyer  perched  at  the  corner  of  his  land  with  a  rifle  and  an  exhausted look. Ridiculous.  His  own  land  seems  safe  enough  that  he  indulges  in  leaning  on  the  fence  until  dark,  watching the sun go down the way it did before the attacks. Only the ordinary and routine kind  of miracle.    Water  runs  thin  over  the  pebble  creek  bed.  He  ducks  down  and  leans  under  the  lowest  plank of the fence, but his fingers can’t quite reach the water. He wants to touch the creek water  only  because  Sawyer  has  made  it  off  limits.  This  says  something  about  him,  he  figures,  but  he  can’t make out what that might be.  Sawyer  has  spent  the  day  dragging  out  rolls  of  electric  fencing.  Before  long,  Roy  won’t  even be able to try for the creek.    A glaze of light instantaneous on his body leads him to stand and look out over Sawyer’s  land. Sawyer comes up in silhouette behind the spotlight.  48

“Praise God it was only you,” Sawyer says. His beard has grown in salty, his eyes shriveled  and  dry,  Roy  guesses,  from  sleeplessness.  “My  finger  wasn’t  a  hairsbreadth  away  from  the  trigger.”  “You  been  taking  care  of  yourself,  David?”  Roy  says.  He  steadies  his  voice  to  casual,  hoping Sawyer is exaggerating. “You look like hell.”  “We  look  our  worst  when  we’re  at  our  best,”  Sawyer  says.  “I  have  everything  under  control. A constant eye.”  He doesn’t look at Roy. A worrisome sign. Roy asks if he’s been getting enough sleep, and  Sawyer tells him about his dream, the one keeping him awake every night. A horde of lions kills  everyone in town. They dress in the human skins, disguise themselves. Sawyer lets them into his  home, and they throw off the disguises, reveal their plan to make his home their den.  Roy asks if he could sit with him, keep watch so he could sleep a while. But Sawyer has  already turned. The bobbing light pitches streams into the darkness until it disappears into the  back of the house. The sound of Sawyer’s door closing echoes over the field. After, everything is  dark.    *  *  *    A  week  before  the  Bigfoot  Festival  is  set  to  go  on,  Roy  tracks  north  toward  Buffalo  Mountain. He has sent Bellis off to the east end, the well‐worn territory of their early searches.  They have been at this for a month and found nothing. No cat on any of the cameras. No bait  stolen. Unless the lion crossed the miles of flat and open prairie around the Kiamichis, it must  have traveled the region lying in front of Roy.  The  sharp  ridges  and  tall  pines  remind  him  of  the  quartz  territories  of  Arkansas.  Little  wonder,  since  all  these  mountains  are  part  of  the  Ouachita  formation.  A  region  formed  by  tectonic  shift.  What  once  was  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  ages  before  a  language  existed  to  give  it  a  name.  Folds  of  earth,  buckled  rock.  Geological  throes  that  left  pockets  for  outlaws  to  hide  in  during Prohibition. Any number of caves for an animal to settle in.    Leaning out from a summit, he sees a glint of light reflecting off something near the base  of a ridge. A quick descent, feet slipping over flat rock and steep loose gravel. He lands within  feet of the source, a five‐foot trap baited with meat not yet rotten.    He kicks the cage, looks up, sees that a camera is trained on the position, probably set to  shoot when the bait is pulled. But the slag of meat hangs intact, untouched.  “Goddamn it,” he yells and hears the echo from a wall of sedimentary rock.  Bellis has been here without him.    *  *  *    Two nights before the festival is slated to start, Reverend Lee hosts a planning meeting in  the church basement cafeteria. Roy sees Sawyer sitting at the front and is tempted to talk to him,  but he wants to wait until he has some result, some cure. The corpse of the lion.

The  reverend  will  provide  his  two  microphones  and  small  amplifiers  for  the  scientific  conference  on  the  status  of  the  Sasquatch.  Several  men  volunteer  to  judge  the  results  of  the  Biggest  Foot  Mini‐marathon.  The  hang  gliding  events  are  slated  to  take  place  starting  from  Buffalo  Mountain.  The  citizens  distribute  the  street‐side  tents:  Carrie  will  provide  a  snack  bar,  her mother will set up the quilt exhibit.  No one volunteers to lead the Bigfoot hunt. No one promises to lead tourist hikes. After a  few minutes, it becomes clear that no one plans to volunteer for these roles.  “What is this fear, my people?” Lee says. “If the Lord is your salvation, you have nothing  to worry about. You must be one with this community of believers, to stand behind the shield  our great hunters have provided. Being here right now protects you. Weep not: behold, the Lion  of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, will prevail.”    Sawyer stands, unbidden. His hair fallen wild, beard uncut, he greets his fellow townsfolk:  “You  know  that  I  have  lost  more  than  the  rest  of  you.  I  am  the  closest  to  this  thing.  The  only  people  who  might  come  close  to  understanding  me  are  those  two  families  up  in  Talihina  who  lost their kin.”    Lee steps back, stands against the wall next to the cafeteria window. A wash of pity on the  faces of the crowd.  “But even they do not know what I know. You see, I have seen the face of the Devil. It is  also the face of God. The great gaping mouth of the lion.”  He  makes  it  no  further  before  a  number  of  men  and  women  stand  to  surround  him,  to  force  him  out  of  the  room  with  the  swarm  of  their  concern.  His  voice  gutters  and  falls  into  silence as they steer him outside.    *  *  *    On  the  day  of  the  festival,  the  streets  of  Honobia  clatter  with  footfalls,  the  roar  of  vehicles. The town was not built for as many people as the festival brings. The noise, the huddled  throng  of  people  will  keep  the  cougar  away,  even  with  the  smell  of  food  wafting  over  the  stretched white gazebo tents.     Now  that  it  arrives,  the  festival  serves  as  cure  to  their  fear,  as  reminder  of  routine  and  normal life. No different from any other year. For a minute, it doesn’t seem to matter whether  Roy catches the cougar. Maybe the people will let go of their fear, see the festival as the end of  some chain of events, and leave the book closed.    Then  he  remembers  Sawyer,  his  crazed  look  at  the  town  meeting  as  the  people  herded  him away. He has to go.  He feels safe about leaving the people to go out on hunt. They’ve never had problems in  past years, beyond one boy stepping on a loose manhole and getting his leg pinned and wearing  home the badge of a ring of purple bruises.   It only takes twenty minutes for Roy to catch up with Bellis. He hears the chaos before he  sees it:  Camcorder  in  hand, Bellis circles  one of his large cages. Inside,  a  trapped lion paces in

circles. In the inner cage, a goat lies with its neck torn open, pumping blood like a broken gasket  pumps water. The goat’s squealing noise like a car wreck in slow motion.  “He took the live bait,” Bellis says. “A mohair kid I put in there last night.  To think, he  couldn’t have been far off even then.”    “I thought the goat was supposed to be safe,” Roy says.    “Under normal circumstances, yes. But he must have been right up against the bars when  the catamount entered. Astounding. It pounced in and hit the goat on the neck before the goat  even saw it coming.”    Roy  watches  the  tiger  pace,  its  eyes  trained  on  him.  It  stands  in  place,  and  its  great  maw—white teeth in a black ring—falls open. Saliva pink with blood falls in webs to the ground.      Roy is relieved to have the cougar, to see it caged. Bellis beat him to the capture, but that  doesn’t mean Bellis has won. Roy still has a debt to pay.    He raises his rifle, levels, and fires. He carries out this duty without hesitation. The cougar  drops in an instant, its life shed as easily as a cloak falling heaped to the ground.    *  *  *  After  a  rant  of  cursing  laments,  Bellis  drops  Roy  off  on  his  way  back  to  town  to  make  arrangements for the cougar’s body. Bellis leaves Roy just a few minutes down the road between  the festival and home, then skids his truck away on angry wheels. Heading home, Roy walks the  street that Ellen once drove away on. He formulates his triumph, rehearses what he will say to  Sawyer: The cougar is taken care of.    As he crests the hill by his own driveway, he sees a crowd gathered in the valley below.  Cars sit parked at odd angles in the street. A dozen or more people in the black Bigfoot Festival  T‐shirts  perch  on  the  walking  path  like  a  murder  of  crows.  A  crumpled  confusion  of  bodies  humming along the skeleton fence.    He draws closer and sees a teenaged boy sitting half covered by a blanket, guarded by the  tourist crowd in T‐shirts.    “We  didn’t  think  anyone  would  be  here,”  he  says.  He  is  shivering,  pale.  Flecks  of  blood  blaze in his hair.  He and his friends thought everyone was at the festival. They knew Sawyer boarded the  best horses, Arabians and Morgans. They brought a torch to cut the lock, he says.   Someone  else,  shaking  dazed  with  excitement  and  with  the  energy  of  the  scene  as  if  trying  to  hold  in  a  laugh,  fills  in  the  gaps  for  Roy.  The  boy  and  two  friends  came  up  from  the  woods behind Sawyer’s house. They waited and watched for movement until they were certain  no  one  was  home.  Sawyer  didn’t  wait  for  them  to  clear  the  trees.  He  opened  fire  at  the  first  movement, the first shimmer of branches. The girl was fifteen, maybe sixteen.  Roy kneels to the creek, bent with his forehead on one knee. He rises only when he sees  men approach from the distant group in Sawyer’s yard. Sawyer is among them, drawn along the  creek by the two church deacons who sat next to him at D.J.’s funeral. One of the men carries  Sawyer’s  gun.  Someone  helps  Sawyer  up  to  the  roadside.  His  face  is  blanched  white,  a

translucent  sheet  of  paper  with  gray  eyebrows  and  mouth  slack  as  if  drawn  by  a  child’s  hand.  The triumph slips away from Roy’s mind. Nothing he could tell Sawyer would make a difference  now.  Roy  reaches  for  him,  clutches  his  shoulder.  Sawyer  doesn’t  acknowledge  the  touch.  His  eyes trace odd lines toward the tree line, looking for nothing at all.

Book     Reviews

Daniel Borzutzky. The Performance of Becoming Human.  Brooklyn Arts Press. 2016.

Reviewed by Bayard Godsave   I first encountered Daniel Borzutzky’s work in Angels  of  the  Americlypse:  An  Anthology  of  New  Latin@  Writing,  a  beautifully  put  together  book  edited  by  Carmen  Giménez  Smith  and  John  Chávez  in  2014.  The  prose  poems  of  Borzutzky’s  included  in  that  anthology  were  arresting,  violent,  and  rigid,  employing  the  language  of  bureaucracy  to  examine  the  ways  that  human  beings are transformed into commodifiable bodies, bodies to be shuttled back and forth across  borders, bodies to be counted, to be tortured, to be killed. As Johannes Göransson writes in his  introduction  to  Borzutzky’s  poems:  “whether  they  take  place  in  an  invaded  country  or  on  the  streets  of  America,  the  poems  focus  on  the  body,  and  the  violence  that  goes  out  from  and  returns  to  bodies.”  And  later:  “every  body  can  be  weaponized”  (21).  Borzutzky  has  been  publishing prolifically on small presses for nearly a decade, and his books include, among many  others, The  Book  of  Interfering  Bodies and In  the  Murmurs  of  the  Carcass  Economy  , both from  Nightboat  Books.  Most  recently,  he  is  the  author  of  The  Performance  of  Becoming  Human  (Brooklyn Arts Press) which in November was awarded the 2016 National Book Award for poetry.  The  poems  in  The  Performance  of  Becoming  Human  operate  according  to  an  almost  Kafkaesque logic. There is a capricious movement from image to image, and even the point of  view of the poems shifts in seemingly arbitrary and disorienting ways as well. In “The Gross and  Borderless Body,” for example, sometimes the gaze is cast upon a hypothetical immigrant body,  and  other  times  the  poem  is  seen  through  that  immigrant’s  eyes.  The  spaces  these  poems  occupy, as Göransson has pointed out, are interchangeable. They are the US and they are foreign  countries; they are the world we occupy right now, and they are the blasted landscape of some  not‐too‐distant dark future—a future that suddenly seems nearer still in the wake of the Untied  Sates’  election,  in  2016,  of  the  least  qualified  major  party  candidate  in  American  history.  “The  Gross  and  Borderless  Body”  imagines  an  “immigrant  at  the  border  that  separates  Indiana  from  Illinois,”  as  though,  by  the  very  presence  of  the  immigrant,  this  innocuous  space,  what  is  basically  an  arbitrary,  easily  crossed  dividing  line,  is  suddenly  transformed.  It  is  a  remarkable  kind  of  transformation,  a  transformation  that  comes  about  through  an  alchemy  of  language  (“immigrant”) and context (proximity to a border), and one that the book continually explores.  It  is  with  words  like  “immigrant”  and  “illegal”  that,  as  Borzutzky’s  book  so  often  illustrates,  a  human being is transformed into a body, a commodity, a thing to which violence can be done,  and it is a transformation that is carried out at the behest of a system, a vague power structure  encircling all people and all places. “[I]t is often said on the shores of Lake Michigan, which is  the  bay  of  Valparaiso,  that  we  will  die  for  reasons  we  do  not  understand,”  reads  one  of  the  stanzas in “Lake Michigan Verges into the Bay of Valparaiso, Chile.” All spaces, by virtue of the  bureaucratic  structures  that  link  them,  are  “unitestatesian,”  all  bodies  are  “untiedstatesian  bodies,” all of them beneath the same “unitedstatesian” night.   56

The Performance of Becoming Human feels like an extension of a larger project of witness,  and of interrogation, that Borzutzky has been carrying out in each of his books, of the decades‐ long neoliberal experiment that has given us, among other things, The War on Terror, a bubble  and burst economy, and staggering levels of income inequality. The world they describe will feel  familiar to readers of his previous books like The Book of Interfering Bodies and In the Murmurs  of the Rotten Carcass Economy. As in those books, rotting carcasses, both real and metaphorical,  are  everywhere.  The  world  in  them  is  defined  by  Big  Data,  and,  as  he  writes  in  “Data  Harbor”  (from In the Murmurs of the Rotten Carcass Economy.): “According to the data, there will be no  end  to  the  rotten  carcass  economy.”  Though  the  content  feels  familiar,  the  poems  in  this  new  book  feel  more  mosaic,  with  shorter  paragraphs/stanzas  that  seem  to  allow  for  more  air  and  light. Borzutzky has said that as an artist he is drawn to the language of bureaucracy, and that he  writes  with  the  idea  of  appropriating  it  and  turning  it  back  on  itself  as  a  kind  of  critique,  and  that approach is still on display here. In those earlier books, though, with their massive blocks of  prose,  the  poems  often  felt  as  though  they  were  written  from  within  the  confines  of  a  kind  of  data prison—indeed, reading Borzutzky write about big data it seems as if he could be writing  while  trapped  in  an  hours‐long  departmental  program  assessment  meeting—where  these  new  poems appear to execute a kind of pivot, and move with a grace that feels more nimble, more  free—none of which is to say that this book is better than the others, in some ways I miss the  intensity of his previous two books.  Since first reading Daniel Borzutzky’s poems I have been thinking a lot about poetry and  resistance. There is a passage I can recall only vaguely from Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s  book  Empire,  about  globalization  and  protest,  about  how,  in  the  fog  and  fuzz  of  so  much  suffering, it is difficult sometimes for the worker whose job manufacturing A/C units in Indiana  is  lost  to  outsourcing,  and  the  child  disassembling  iPads  on  a  junk  heap  next  to  a  polluted  stretch  of  the  Indian  Ocean,  and  the  trans  persons  fighting  for  basic  rights  in  Thailand  (and  practically  everywhere  else),  and  the  black  victims  of  systematic  murder  and  incarceration  all  across  the  United  States,  to  see  that  they  are  all  of  them  a  part  of  the  same  struggle,  are  all  victims of the same system of state violence. The power that wields violence and oppression is so  systematized  that,  though  its  tools  are  often  highly  visible—and  destructive—that  power  itself  often  remains  invisible.  It  is  everywhere,  and  in  all  things,  and  it  is  nowhere.  In  the  aesthetic  statement  that  accompanies  his  poems  in  Angels  of  the  Americlypse,  Daniel  Borzutzky  writes,  “my writing is informed by a refusal to see the history of atrocities as a series of separate events.”  In Performance of Becoming Human, and in the books that come before it, we can see Borzutzky  shaping language into a tool to trace, describe, and interrogate systems. As a project, his books  seem to unfold like an ever expanding map of that unitedstatesian space our world has become;  and they represent, I think anyway, a concerted effort on Borzutzky’s part to make visible that  which would prefer to remain unseen.

Danielle Vega. Survive the Night.  Razorbill. 2016.

Review by Gary Reddin

What’s the one thing that contemporary YA novels have been missing? Well, if you ask Danielle  Vega, the answer might just be Lovecraftian horror. On the heels of her successful duology The  Merciless  and  The  Merciless  II,  Vega  has  released  Survive  the  Night.   The plot of Survive the Night is fun, if not a bit formulaic. A group of teens attends an exclusive  underground rave in NYC filled with drugs, booze, and sex only to find themselves locked in the  sewers as someone disembowels their friends one by one. At first the plot feels like another run  of the mill slasher. Things get weird quick though, as the teens soon realize that it isn’t someone  hunting them down, but something.  Around the mid‐point of the novel the killer is revealed, not as a masked maniac, or even  a mutated alligator/sewer monster, but as a writhing mass of clawed, omnipresent tentacles. To  make  matters  worse,  the  wounds  from  these  tentacles  cause  a  zombie‐like  infection,  turning  friend against friend.   Now, for the uninitiated, this may seem like a sharp turn into left field, or, perhaps even a  letdown  after  a  great  build  up.  However,  for  anyone  that  has  ever  dipped  their  toes  into  the  waters of weird fiction, this scenario will be eerily familiar. Like something crawling out of the  Shadow of Innsmouth, the cosmic horrors of H.P Lovecraft have worked their way into the world  of YA fiction in Vega’s novel.   The  creature  in  Survive  the  Night  is  never  explained.  It  exists  as  an  extension  of  the  deepest human fear. See, there is a reason that Vega’s novel works on the level that it does. It  owes all of its tension, its fear, to that greatest of human villains: the unknown.   As Lovecraft himself once said The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest  and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.  What  makes  Vega’s  book  interesting,  is  the  way  she  weaves  the  traditional  YA  story  of  teen  rebellion  into  this  dark,  unnerving,  gory  tale  of  cosmic  horror.  Casey,  the  books  protagonist, is fresh out of rehab for an addiction to pain pills she acquired after blowing out her  knee  at  a  soccer  game.  Throughout  the  book  the  reader  is  given  a  patchwork  recollection  of  Casey’s fall from grace. From star captain of the school’s soccer team, to washed‐out pillhead in  just  a  few  months.  Throughout  the  book,  Casey  struggles  with  the  very  real  monsters  in  the  subway tunnels, and the monster of addiction still trapped inside of her. While at times heavy‐ handed, Vega often strikes a generous balance between the two.   Where  Survive  the  Night  falls  short  is  in  its  requisite,  if  shoehorned,  YA  love  triangle  between  Casey, her best friend, and her ex‐boyfriend, both of which are in the tunnels with her, because  of course they are. Oftentimes, during life‐or‐death moments, Casey will find herself wondering  about the status of her relationship. Which is…just ridiculous, honestly, if disembodied tentacles  were killing off your friends left and right would you take the time to contemplate why your ex‐ 58

boyfriend  didn’t  hold  your  hand  longer  as  he  was  helping  you  escape  certain  death?            Ham‐fisted romance aside, this book certainly isn’t for everyone. Are you a fan of concrete  endings? Then this book probably isn’t for you. Dislike horror but are a fan of YA novels? Maybe  pass on this one. However, if you’re a fan of a good creature feature, enjoy YA novels, and love  some unknown horrors from beyond thrown into your reading, I’d say pick up Survive the Night  and give it a read. Don’t let a fear of the unknown keep you from a good book.

Nathalie Léger. Suite for Barbara Loden.  Dorothy Project. 2016.

Reviewed by George McCormick

True story: Barbara Loden was an American actress who was almost famous (writes Léger, “She  should have been in The Swimmer with Burt Lancaster, but Janice Rule got the part…should have  been in The Arrangement with Kirk Douglas, but Faye Dunaway got the part instead.”) and who,  in 1970, wrote, directed, and starred in the enigmatic film Wanda, which won the International  Film Critics Award for that year and is something of a cult classic today. Also true: writer  Nathalie Léger was given an assignment by an editor to write a short entry about Wanda for a  film encyclopedia. Unable to capture the film in two or three sentences Léger let the dam break  instead, and what we have in our hands is a strange, wonderful little novel (the back cover calls  it “auto‐fiction” but that sounds clunky to me; let’s just call it a novel, we lose nothing by  allowing the form to be as elastic as possible) about how we see ourselves through others.  Loden’s Wanda follows Wanda Goronski, an unhappy housewife who upon relinquishing  the rights to her children wanders through a bleak American landscape. She sleeps in a movie  theater, meets a man, is abandoned, meets another man in a bar who physically and emotionally  abuses her; she helps him rob a bank, he dies, she meets another man. This man attempts to  sexually assault her in a hotel room. She escapes and in the movie’s final scene she is in another  bar where strangers buy her drinks and give her cigarettes. Léger tells us where the idea for  Loden’s film came from: “Her inspiration for the screenplay was a newspaper story she had read  about a woman convicted of robbing a bank; her accomplice was dead and she appeared in court  alone. Sentenced to twenty years in prison, she thanked the judge.” It is in this gesture— thanking the judge for removing her from the world—that Loden and Léger find mutual  fascination. And it is here that the book moves from being a piece of film criticism and becomes  a novel. Léger’s obsession becomes the story’s McGuffin and from here we follow her (and a  sometimes fictionalized version of herself) as she travels to the United States to learn everything  she possibly can about Loden/Wanda. What emerges is at once a novel of ideas and an oblique  autobiography—think a distant cousin to W.G. Sebald’s Vertigo.  Reading Léger’s novel made me think of two relatively recent pieces of daring film  criticism: Geoff Dyer’s book Zona (2012), a glorious meditation on Tarkovsky’s Stalker, and  Rodney Ascher’s documentary Room 237 (2012), a survey of some of the wilder interpretations of  Kubrick’s The Shining. Each taps the near nuclear‐like energy of fan obsession, and both made  me go back and re‐watch each respective film. And this is where I think Léger’s book diverges  from them. While someday I may in fact see Wanda (I pieced the above summary together from  my reading) for now I don’t feel compelled to. Somehow, it was never about that.

Contributors    Saima Afreen grew up in Calcutta, smelling shiuli flowers and chewing different syllables. To  breathe she churns poems; to earn a living she works as a journalist. Her poems have been  featured in The McNeese Review, The Nassau Review, The Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Friends  Journal, Shot Glass Journal, Visual Verse, Open Road Review, Muse India, Coldnoon Travel  Poetics, Wordweavers, Nivasini Publishers, Ræd Leaf Poetry, The Asian Age, The Telegraph, The  Times of India and many other publications.  She won ‘The Nassau Review Writer Award in  Poetry, 2016’. She won the first prize in poetry contest by Wordweavers, 2013. She was declared as  the winner in MuseIndia Poetry Contest, 2010.    Paul Austin has acted and directed On and Off Broadway, Off‐Off Broadway, summer stock,  and regional theatres around the nation, as well as acting for television and film. Late Night  Conspiracies, a collection of his writings was performed with jazz ensemble at New York’s  Ensemble Studio Theatre, where he is a long time member. He has written for and about the  theatre in essays, poetry and plays. His work has appeared in such publications as This Land,  Sugar Mule and Newport Review. He’s currently working on three collections Actors, Mother and  Son and Persons of Influence.     Louis Bourgeois is the Executive Director of VOX PRESS, a 501 (c ) 3 arts organization based in  Oxford, Mississippi. His forthcoming Collected Works will be released in the fall of 2018 by  Xenos Press.    Molly Fuller is currently a Teaching Fellow in the Literature program at Kent State University.  She also received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. You can find her prose and poetry in  NANO Fiction, Union Station Magazine, Potomac, Dressing Room Poetry Journal, and Hot Metal  Bridge. Her flash sequence “Hold Your Breath” is in the Marie Alexander Flash Sequence  Anthology, Nothing To Declare. She is also the author of three chapbooks: The Neighborhood  Psycho Dreams of Love (Cutty Wren Press), Tender the Body (Spare Change Press), and All My  Loves (forthcoming from All Nations Press). She lives in Ohio.     Bayard Godsave is an editor and regular reviewer for the Oklahoma Review.    Ken Hada has published 6 collections of poetry, including his latest: Persimmon Sunday (Purple  Flag, 2015). Ken is a professor at East Central University where he directs the annual Scissortail  Creative Writing Festival. Reviews, bookings and information available at www.kenhada.org.     Billy Howell received his MFA from University of New Mexico and his PhD from Oklahoma  State University. His writing has appeared in Florida Review, Blue Mesa Review, Lumina, Arroyo,  and elsewhere. He lives in Washington, D.C., and teaches at George Mason University.    George McCormick is a regular reviewer for the Oklahoma Review. He teaches at Cameron  University    62

Gary Reddin is an editor for the Oklahoma Review. He is a student at Cameron University.    Kerri Vinson Snell completed an MFA degree from Ashland University, Ashland, OH in 2015,  and currently works as an assistant professor of English and Communication at McPherson  College, McPherson, KS. Her poems have appeared in Mikrokosmos (Wichita State University),  Relief, and Foothill: a Journal of Poetry. In 2016 she received a Pushcart nomination and was a  contributing poet at Scissortail Creative Writing Festival in Ada, Ok.