Volume 50 // Issue 1 // 2017
Editors: John Gallaher, Luke Rolfes
Associate Editors: Daniel Biegelson, Richard Sonnenmoser
Editorial Assistants: Morgan Wagle, Korbin Jones
Content Assistants: Halston Belcastro, Anthony Procopio Ross, Leigha Chenoweth,
Ashley Hawkins, Charlnae Spearman, Maddie Pospisil, Kennia Lopez, Hannah Kludy,
Bailey Weese
Cover Design/Art Direction: Korbin Jones, Erin Verbick, Bailey Weese, Maddie Pospisil
Interior Design: Korbin Jones
e Laurel Review publishes two issues each calendar year. Online submissions accepted
via Submittable. No manuscript can be returned nor query answered unless accompanied
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e Laurel Review is indexed in e Index of American Periodical Verse, e Annual
Index to Poetry in Periodicals, Humanities International Complete, and e Index to
Periodical Fiction.
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Copyright 2017 GreenTower Press
All rights reserved
ISSN 0023-9003
T H E
L A U R E L
R E V I E W
GreenTower Press
CONTENTS
FICTION
Darren Dillman e Abortionist's Daughter 107
Robert Long Foreman Grace 4
Wynne Hungerford e Wedding in Charleston 14
Louise Marburg e Querent 57
Alan Robert Proctor Buttery Girl and Mirage Boy 44
Don Zancanella e Badger 73
REVIEWS
Kristina Marie Darling eater of the Mind: On Recent Performance
Texts by Khadijah Queen & Meredith Stricker 35
Maryfrances Wagner e End of Pink by Kathryn Nuernberger 87
PLAYS
Mark Halliday
Martin Stannard e Visitors 69
POETRY
Je Alessandrelli "In Spite of Everything." - Jacqueline Lamba 12
"e Meaning of Life Is at It Stops."
- Franz Kaa 122
"At the Present Time, in All Honesty, I Am
Interested in the Longevity of Fecal Matter."
- Sir Richard Walnen 126
Mary Biddinger Dregs Week 120
Bruce Bond Hands 26
Monster 28
e Ghost in the Shape of an Unnamed Flower 30
Manifesto 32
Emily Borgmann When the Dreams Know More than You Do 118
Christopher Citro e Low Crumble of Distant Applause 68
Paul Dickey Be Careful What You Desire When You Despair 67
Henry Israeli Alone with Only Our oughts to Destroy Us 95
Reections at the End 123
Elizabeth Jacobson Mountains Hidden in Mountains 97
On Foot 98
Mike James Michael Benedikt’s Suitcase 39
In Bob Dylan’s Neighborhood 40
Meridian Johnson Souvenir Said 86
Robin Fulton Macpherson "If" in Spring 91
Summer without Words 92
Summer Solstice 93
Surface 94
Al Maginnes As Much Salvation as One Can Believe 2
Göran Malmqvist e Stone at Eats Sound 56
Kyle McCord Watching Hoarders with My Father 22
Watching a Cialas Ad with My Father 24
Gary McDowell Marriage And 66
Palindrome 96
Christopher Miles e Sun Goes Down at Last 90
John A. Nieves Tarnish 121
Kyle Norwood e Business of Business 42
Martin Ott Mission 117
Eric Pankey e Apprenticeship 41
Outtakes from e Newlywed Game 54
What Is the Purpose of Your Visit 124
Simon Perchik * 55
Sandra Ramirez What Happened to Stargirl? 11
Dana Roeser Desert Heart 82
Eliza Rotterman Dirt Eaters 100
Carrie Shipers Divas' Division 119
Kathryn Smith Chronic and Nameless 99
Maryfrances Wagner e Dead Don’t Hear the Songs 125
Marcus Wicker On Being Told Prayer Is a Crutch 1
TRANSLATIONS
Tomas Tranströmer / Göran Malmqvist 128-131
Ingela Strandberg / Göran Malmqvist 132-145
Kjell Espmark / Robin Fulton Macpherson 146-157
Volume 50.1 Marcus Wicker | 1
On Being Told
Prayer Is a Crutch
Marcus Wicker
So what if it is?
Clear days, I understand it,
molecules scatter azure
light from an in-his-feelings-
sun, & that’s why
the sky is blue. We know
too much, or want to.
Not the bible, but the i-
Phone tells us so.
Devotion doesn’t work
that way, but it does. Not
the path, per se, for me
though, a trail back to grace-
fully living with one’s light
shone toward higher
axioms than I
can presently see.
It’s the immediacy
of a just-thought
thought, thundering
into a device
of my own decided making,
prayer. You know it as, Siri.
I call it instant intimacy.
2 | Al Maginnes The Laurel Review
As Much Salvation as
One Can Believe
Al Maginnes
For George Looney
I should start this poem with a priest
pouring a shot of whiskey, but that would
make it one of your poems, not mine.
But now I’ve already begun, and I know
you could make be believe an angel
sits in a chair opposite the priest.
So I will give you the priest and add re
rolling in the hills over town, smoke
black as a cassock lling the sky.
Black at noon, blacker still at midnight,
thin seam of re visible and moving
above them. ere are no angels
and, for now, no res where I live.
I will tell you it has rained enough today
to drown any angels or any good intentions.
It’s hard to consider salvation if
your rst thoughts are safety or food,
or if you are shaking for the shelter
of a drink of wine or whiskey.
Just as I imagined the priest.
e way we both imagine lives
and try to t them into crude boats
of song, somewhere they can oat
safe from re, the water deep
and slow as the motion of wings.
e priest is tired of promising heaven
with no strings attached. e angel wants
to fall into esh and live in the world
he once scorned, to search for
a woman he danced with
Volume 50.1 Al Maginnes | 3
on his last mortal night, when
he was human and owned a future.
Outside the dance hall, he wrote her number
and bent to hug her. When he recalls
the so possibility of their bodies,
the lemon and honey smell of her,
the motions of clouds, of prayers
the priest has lost, of re all
vanished into the ood of memory
and that rises with it, all
the salvation we can believe.
4 | Robert Long Foreman The Laurel Review
Grace
Robert Long Foreman
Grace is gone.
e last time I saw her, she was in the Nursery Room, feeding one of the baby
dolls the museum sta keep there with a plastic bottle of simulated milk. She kept
slapping the baby against the oor, pressing the bottle to its face. Waterboarding
it, in other words.
I went into the hallway. It was loud in the nursery room, and I wanted to
read the magazine I’d brought with me. It featured an article about the health
benets of long-distance empathy. A few sentences in, I was absorbed.
It must have been then that Grace le me, her mother, and walked out of the
Nursery Room. When I went to check on her, she was gone.
I know she is still in the building. Children can’t leave the children’s museum
without the adults they arrived with. ere is a wristband system in place, to
prevent abductions and runaways. e kids can’t take the wristbands o, only
the sta can take them o, and the door that leads outside won’t open for a child
unless she is accompanied by her corresponding grownup. Both of them have to
have their wristbands on.
No one says out loud that the wristbands are worn to prevent abductions.
No one says the word “abduction” to a parent—not until or unless one takes place,
I imagine.
It must be a word that’s used oen, then. Once it happens, the abduction
must be the only thing anyone wants to talk about.
❧ ❧ ❧
When I didn’t see Grace in the Nursery Room, I thought at rst that I might be
the problem.
Volume 50.1 Robert Long Foreman | 5
I am oen the problem. I’ll be looking for Grace in a crowd of children. I
won’t see her, and I will panic.
“She’s gone,” I’ll think. “Oh no.”
But she’s right there, I’ll realize a few seconds later. She is sitting with a
crayon or a block in her hand. I don’t see her, somehow, until I’m half-blind with
fear.
I go wading through the children, only to nd her right there, where she has
been all along. How did I not see her?
I spend half of every week with Grace, but somehow she blends in among
other kids like I don’t know her, like I have never seen a child before and can’t tell
them apart. It’s not as if she doesn’t have the same nose and ears I’ve been looking
at in the mirror for 31 years.
But there wasn’t a crowd in the fake nursery. ere were two kids only,
neither of them anything like Grace. I would have asked if they had seen Grace,
but I knew they didn’t know her. I wasn’t condent they could speak clearly to an
adult. Maybe they weren’t condent, either. I turned away.
❧ ❧ ❧
Shade Children’s Museum, its name written in big letters along the hallway, is
Grace’s favorite place.
I oen want to take her to a real museum, an art or history museum, one
with minerals and dinosaur bones, or sculptures behind glass. Grace isn’t old
enough for that, so we have to settle for this other sort of museum, which is more
of a playground for indoor kids. It was once an elementary school, but there was a
gas leak. Some children didn’t survive. ey built another school, xed the leak at
this one, I imagine, and converted every classroom to an activity room. It is meant
to be an educational place, as well as someplace fun.
“Your intestines would be 25 feet long if they were stretched out,” read the
writing on the wall in the hallway. “And that’s how long this wall is!”
I thought I might see Grace there, in the hallway. On our way in, she had
spent ten minutes catcalling the guinea pigs they keep there in a waist-high cage.
But she wasn’t there.
Two women on a bench in the hallway were talking. I didn’t look at their
faces, saw only the pale legs their skirts le bare. I heard one say, “e last time I
saw a little boy piss himself? Yesterday. e playground. No one cleaned him up.
No one noticed.”
I went into the Art Room, where a lone boy’s arms were covered with blue
paint. Some of it was on his face. Maybe he belonged to one of the women on
6 | Robert Long Foreman The Laurel Review
the bench. Maybe he belonged to no one at all. He appeared to be painting a
mountain made of too many colors to exist in the natural world.
He looked up at me and smiled. I didn’t smile.
I le him to his mountain. I continued my search for Grace.
❧ ❧ ❧
I didn’t shout Grace’s name. I wasn’t there yet.
It would have been eective, or so I thought at the time. But it would have
been abrupt. It would have drawn attention to me, which I try to avoid doing.
Shouting Grace’s name in a crowd is bound to make people frown at me and
assume I’m a bad mother. ey might talk about me later as an example of what
not to do. Shouting for a child, anywhere but inside a house, is the last resort of all
last resorts.
In the Farm-to-Table Room, children rummaged through groceries in the
grocery store simulator, pulling fake produce o of shelves, stung empty boxes
that once held Trix and Life into miniature shopping carts, pushing past one
another and the blasted parents who stood watching them, desperate to reach the
checkout.
At the checkout, a boy with black hair had cast himself in the role of Cashier.
He rang up every item the other kids piled on his belt, which he had to advance by
turning a crank. He did his work with great severity, punching numbers into the
toy register like it was his real job, as if there were a kid supervisor looking over
his shoulder.
I went into the adjoining room, with its articial cow full of fake milk the
children can coax out with their hands.
ere were rubber chickens, plastic oranges, and stued bees that t over
the children’s wrists. Two boys Grace’s age were hard at work stinging one another
with the bees, using the bees’ heads for stinging, making no progress.
Grace wasn’t with them. She wasn’t in the alcove between the cow and the
white plastic fence. She likes to lodge herself in just such places, where I must go
in search of her.
I turned to see that a woman was watching me search. When I looked at her,
she looked away. I carried on.
❧ ❧ ❧
I don’t want it to sound as if the whole of me were not in a state of mounting panic
at the apparent, sudden absence of Grace from a place where she had been just
Volume 50.1 Robert Long Foreman | 7
minutes prior.
But I had no reason to worry. e wristband system is foolproof. An alarm
would have gone o, if Grace had tried to leave without me, or if she had been
carried away.
I kept telling myself that. It helped.
e children’s museum would close soon, anyway. Grace would have to
show herself. e only way for us to leave was to go together, and we had to leave.
As much as Grace would like to abandon me and our life together, and live out her
childhood at the children’s museum, it isn’t an option. e food at the fake grocery
story isn’t even real. ere is water, sure.
❧ ❧ ❧
In the Water Room there were wet children, gathered by a fountain that stood a
few feet o the ground. It rose out of a pool that had rubber ducks in it and other
oating rubber things. ere appeared to be an aqueduct running from one end
of the room to another, made for the children but not by them.
Of the four elements water is the one Grace is most drawn to, but she
wasn’t in the Water Room. I walked across it to peer behind a misplaced easel and
saw there was another room, the size of a walk-in closet. A curtain hung in its
entrance, like a darkroom.
I parted the curtain, stepped through, and in the dim light saw instructions
in black letters on the wall.
I was to stand against the wall and press the red button. A bright light would
ash, and if I was very still in the moment it ashed I would step away to see my
shadow burned into the white wall where I had stood.
When I looked I saw, or thought I saw, still impressed upon the wall, the
shadow of a girl the size and shape of Grace, standing with her head turned to one
side with her arm stretched out, reaching up to catch I knew not what as before
my eyes the shadow faded from sight.
❧ ❧ ❧
I passed the women on the bench again. One eyed me with alarm, the other with
what I took to be disapproval. ey were talking to one another while they looked
at me. I didn’t hear what they said, this time.
It must have been the sweat dampening my hair that made them look at me
so. Or else it was the look I wore on my face, the way I kept clenching and opening
my sts as I walked.
8 | Robert Long Foreman The Laurel Review
If Grace chose this to be the place, I thought, where she turned to dust and
scattered, I would not be surprised. It would be her way of evading me at last
and for good, she who runs from me in public places, every chance she gets, who
doesn’t listen, who seems to see in me an enemy, at least half the time.
She has both relied on and fought me since the day she was born. She has
clung to me and pushed me away, and when she was born I felt something awake
in me for the rst time just as something else in me died.
It could be that Grace is more than merely out of sight. It could be she
is really gone, not only not here but nowhere, having sublimated in a last-ditch
eort to evade me once and for all.
Like the unlikely feat she performed by getting born, she became another
form of matter, one I cannot see or smell, and the only way I can be with her again
is to breathe her in the air where she resides, now, drawing her back into my body
by inhaling the ether she diracted into.
❧ ❧ ❧
e Lego Room was crowded with children. One of them had blonde hair, another
wore a dress identical to the one Grace had on. None of the children was Grace.
She came into my room that morning, before I woke up. She looked into my
eyes as I opened my eyes, grinning with a full diaper, comb stuck in her hair.
Another girl in the Lego Room looked just like Grace, for a moment, until
she turned her head to look my way.
A boy beside her held up a Lego man and said something no one could
understand. He tore the man apart and scattered him across the table.
❧ ❧ ❧
I heard an announcement on the intercom that in ten minutes the museum would
close.
I made my way to the hallway again, past the children again. I was looking
for someone who worked there. I hadn’t seen one in a long time.
I could see down the hall, past the guinea pigs, that no one was at the
front desk. Grace had not returned to see the guinea pigs again, as I thought she
might, as I hoped she had. In their cage there were toys, food, shit, and shreds of
newspaper.
e guinea pigs were gone. I didn’t know where they had gone.
I had checked all the rooms, even both of the restrooms, but maybe Grace
went slinking from one room to another while I searched them. It could be she is
Volume 50.1 Robert Long Foreman | 9
playing a game, that she initiated hide and seek without telling me rst.
By the time I returned to them, the women on the bench had become one
woman. She looked at me half-smiling like Grace was sneaking up on me, like she
knew something I did not.
“What is it?” asked the woman, still with her half-smile.
“I haven’t seen Grace,” I said. “My daughter.”
“She was here?”
I nodded.
“She was with you?”
“Yes.”
“How long has it been?”
I shrugged. “Too long.”
“What does she look like?”
“Like me,” I said. “Smaller, though. Younger.”
e woman laughed. I didn’t laugh. Parents led past us with their children,
some in strollers. ey nodded at me, and smiled as I didn’t move out of their way,
so that they had to nd their way around.
“Where is your child?” I asked the woman on the bench.
“I don’t have one,” she said, smiling.
❧ ❧ ❧
I le the woman’s half-smile and checked the Lego Room again, and the Water
Room, the grocery store and the farm.
ere was no one le in any of the rooms.
As I hurried, someone said on the intercom that the museum was closing in
ve minutes. I would have to leave. So, I guessed, would Grace.
She hadn’t reappeared in the Nursery Room. She wasn’t with the shadow I
thought she had le in the closet.
Even the shadow, now, is long gone.
❧ ❧ ❧
I returned to the front desk, where the woman is sitting even now. I made up my
mind to wait by the desk for Grace to appear, or for someone to show up who
could tell me where she might have gone.
If I could nd someone who works here, I could ask if she has seen Grace. I
don’t see anyone but the woman.
10 | Robert Long Foreman The Laurel Review
Grace must know that when the museum closes she has to come to the front desk.
But then I can never really tell what Grace knows or doesn’t know. She doesn’t
ever give me straight answers.
ere are no children in the building, now, that I can see, not Grace nor
anyone. e place is silent. ere are only me and the woman who eyes me from
the bench. She isn’t smiling, now.
e emergency exits won’t open for Grace alone. ey will open for me, but
I won’t leave without her.
I am standing by the front desk, looking down the hallway at the woman on
the bench, who is squinting back at me in the dim light.
I am watching to see if Grace will come out of one of the rooms. She may be
hiding. I may have missed her.
I don’t know what the woman is watching, unless she is watching me.
She can watch all she wants. I can wait for a day, or a month. I will not leave
this spot by the door until I see Grace again.
Volume 50.1 Sandra Ramirez | 11
What Happened
to Stargirl?
Sandra Ramirez
Twinkle-eyed Jesus’ girl
gathering your seaweed skirts
under the tarp of America
I last saw you feeding a seagull
by the deserted basketball courts
your dew-soaked ribbon hair half mast
Your eyes two pale dots
Scotch-taped slapped shut
You blew me glitter kisses
as bodies hovered
nearly out of air
and those birds frowned
Scolded me and my playthings
Come then, show me your face
near the water’s edge
so I may wash your feet.
12 | Jeff Alessandrelli The Laurel Review
“In Spite of Everything.”
- Jacqueline Lamba
Jeff Alessandrelli
At night we close
our eyes
not because we welcome
death but because
we cherish life
too much to
marry
our tempered
thoughts
to the blues, greens,
yellows and grays
of sight
for hours waking long.
To seek the gold of time,
as André Breton had engraved
on his tombstone,
is to nevertheless realize
that while attempting
such a quest
you might
one day get divorced
in Reno, Nevada
in a shabby municipal courtroom
on a stillborn dreary
Tuesday morning
as André Breton once did,
his marriage
to Jacqueline Lamba
a gradual darkness
married merely
to
revulsion, apathy,
Volume 50.1 Jeff Alessandrelli | 13
disgust.
e surreal teaches us
that the beauty of the
mannequin
derives from the fact
that it is covered in dirt
and cum and blood
and not that
it was initially
rendered
in the shape of a human,
a woman,
a man.
We oen fall
asleep
without falling
asleep,
without closing
our eyes.
e sight of such
an act
never startles.
On the street,
in the park,
passersby
meander and frolic,
the day so painstakingly
buoyant
aer the pain-
staking beauty
of the night.
14 | Wynne Hungerford The Laurel Review
The Wedding in Charleston
Wynne Hungerford
Julia was a senior in high school and, because of her
age, she didn’t think she was expected to stand up in front of everyone and talk
about her older brother and his ancée at the rehearsal dinner. Julia was seated
next to the pastor, though, and the pastor was on his third glass of wine and
dropping silverware on the oor and saying that Julia better volunteer to give a
speech or else he’d do it for her. It had started as light teasing and then turned into
a threat over the course of the blue crab dinner. He was a friend of her brother’s,
a young, progressive pastor who wore slim-t jeans and a tweed cap. On his wrist
was a copper bracelet engraved with the word “Grace.” Julia glanced at the faces
around the table and begged for someone to come to her rescue. No one did.
Her mother’s chair was empty. She had been so excited and proud that she
started crying early in the evening and it had undone an hour’s worth of primping.
e full tears tracked mascara down her face and then, dangling at the edge of
her jaw, the tears dropped onto her dress and le Dalmatian spots. “Good Lord,”
Julia’s father had said. “at woman.” en he’d received an emergency phone call
from somebody at his contracting rm and had to step onto the deck outdoors.
Julia watched him through the windows, his tall, stooped silhouette moving in
front of the marina lights. Outside, the boats swayed in their slips. If Julia had ever
gone to a school dance, she would have been like that, too, swaying in a corner all
by herself, but she had never been able to bear the thought of it and always stayed
home.
e pastor nudged Julia. He said, “Speeches are going to start any minute
now,” and he began to suck on the lemon garnish le on his plate.
Arms crossed and shoulders hunched, Julia tried to get small enough that
she might be le alone. Giving a speech was the last thing she wanted to do. Earlier
that year, the guidance counselor had told her that she was in line to be
Volume 50.1 Wynne Hungerford | 15
the valedictorian for her graduating class, that she was ranked rst out of nearly a
thousand students in her high school. ere was a moment when Julia felt happy,
truly happy, and then she realized that being valedictorian carried the obligation
of a speech. ere was the podium and the microphone and all the hundreds of
students that she would have to address, people who only thought of her as a
bookworm and nothing more. She had intentionally answered questions wrong
on her next Calculus test, lowering her grade for that class to a A- and taking her
out of the running.
❧ ❧ ❧
“Maybe you should jot down some notes,” the pastor said. “Me, I’m a spontaneous
speaker. I stay up all night preparing a sermon and then when I go to church on
Sunday morning, I feel moved to say something else and scrap the whole thing
and just wing it.” He sucked his teeth, saying, “I bet you don’t wing anything.”
A team of waiters brought out plates of key lime pie balanced on their arms.
ey wove in and out of the tables and then slipped away in silence, like sh.
Julia said, “I don’t think I can do it.”
“Be a good sister. Give your brother a speech.”
He seemed more like a bully than a pastor. She couldn’t imagine him giving
a sermon. She couldn’t imagine him praying over another person and meaning it.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m nervous.”
“He’d do it for you.”
Julia looked at Ryan’s table across the room. His ancée, Haley, took the
napkin out of her lap and wiped a stray dab of whipped cream from his lip.
e truth was that Ryan wouldn’t have given a speech for her even if the
situation had called for it. Being eight years apart meant they never really knew
each other growing up. By the time Julia was an interesting person, not just a shy,
blank little girl, Ryan had moved to Charleston and gotten a job as the manager of
the seafood restaurant where the rehearsal dinner was held, a place with exposed
brick and modern brass light xtures and a large, berglass marlin hanging from
the ceiling. He had started going to a church with a young congregation, met
Haley, and gotten engaged. ey were strangers to each other, Julia and Ryan, and
had never felt compelled, either of them, to reach out and get acquainted.
One of Ryan’s friends rose from his table and tapped a knife against his
glass, announcing that it was time for the speeches to begin.
e pastor said, “Is it going to be you or me?”
16 | Wynne Hungerford The Laurel Review
“I don’t know.”
He said, “I see how it is.” en he picked up his dessert fork. “is is some
baby pie. Look at how small this pie is.”
Julia decided to volunteer herself. It was not what she wanted to do but it
was the least painful of the two options: volunteer or be volunteered.
She had been raised to respect authority gures and because the pastor,
although tipsy and young and looking decidedly unlike a pastor, qualied as an
authority gure, Julia felt like she had to do it. She couldn’t slip away. She couldn’t
refuse him at-out. She obeyed all orders, which was easy enough if her mom
asked for help with the dishes but was harder when her grandmother, say, at the
Christmas Eve brunch, asked for Julia’s help going to the bathroom. It was the
same with school. Teachers oen grouped her with the slowest kids for projects,
kids who had never bothered to learn the state capitals, much less memorize the
Periodic Table. Her obedience made her a model young woman in many respects
but it also crippled her in a way that could not be seen by the naked eye. When she
didn’t want to do something, she suered on the inside. She cried out for help. She
begged to be le alone. She did her best to hide those feelings, though, because
her parents taught her that it was rude to show them.
Ryan’s friend, the one who tapped the glass, gave the rst speech. He
worked with Ryan at the restaurant and made jokes about poor services they had
weathered together. Julia couldn’t pay attention to his speech and plan her own
remarks at the same time. She tried to remember things Ryan had done when
they were younger. He played baseball on YMCA teams and wore the same lucky
socks to every game. He got a pair of rollerblades for his birthday one year and
began to skate the neighborhood. He knocked over the large ant farm that Julia
kept in her bedroom. He took a can of spray-paint out of the garage once and
painted “Fuck” on the fence in the backyard. She remembered her father grabbing
a handful of Ryan’s shirt, right at the back of the neck, and leading him into the
master bedroom to be spanked at the foot of the bed. He must have been thirteen
then and being spanked as a teenager was the worst thing that Julia could have
imagined. Her obedience stemmed from this moment, this moment when she
learned that breaking the rules had consequences. It was not the physical pain that
bothered her so much. It was the shame and embarrassment. From her bedroom,
where she sat hugging her knees to her chest, Julia had been able to hear her
brother crying. She had been able to hear the belt on skin.
❧ ❧ ❧
Volume 50.1 Wynne Hungerford | 17
Everyone clapped when the rst speech ended. Julia found herself going through
the motions along with the group, even though she hadn’t been paying attention.
en Haley’s college roommate got up and talked about how she and Haley had
met at a Bible Study for freshman girls and how important those Wednesday night
meetings had been. Julia couldn’t relate. ere was a group of girls she ate lunch
with at school, in the far back corner of the cafeteria near the Army recruiter table,
where nobody else wanted to sit. Sometimes the recruiters tried to get the girls
to do pull-ups on a bar they brought and set up, but the girls, blushing, remained
frozen. ey never saw each other outside of school, never went to the movies or
even to get pizza.
Julia’s mom and dad took the microphone next. Someone must have gotten
them from the bathroom and the deck, respectively. Her mother’s makeup was
xed and there were damp spots on her dress where she had tried to dab away
the mascara stains. Her father smoothed his hair, which had been disturbed by
the breeze coming o the water. He started by saying how glad he was to see Ryan
settling down and doing so well. “ere was a period,” her father said, “when
we worried about Ryan. He went through a rough patch as a young man and we
weren’t sure what was going to become of him. He picked himself up, though, and
met the beautiful Haley. We are indebted to you, Haley, for taking on this great
challenge.”
Everyone laughed.
Her mom reached for the microphone. She said, “Ryan was my little baby.
I remember when he was born and the doctors had to put tubes in his ears. I
remember seeing him in the little glass thing, the incubator, and I had to put
my hand through a hole in the side.” Talking about Ryan having meningitis as a
newborn made her cry again. She picked up a cloth napkin from the nearest table
and wiped beneath her eyes. She said, “e doctor who told me that he was sick
had just nished her residency and it was her rst day on the job. She cried when
she told me that his spinal uid was milky. at’s a bad sign, you know.”
Julia had heard the story before. It was no longer moving.
Her mother said, “He obviously pulled through, and for that I’m thankful.
I’m so thankful.”
Her father put his arm around her mother. She opened her mouth to speak
but could not. Aer a moment, she gave up trying. She blew a kiss to Ryan and
then handed the microphone back to Julia’s father. He said, “We love you, son.”
As everyone clapped, the pastor leaned in and said, with his wine-breath,
“Your turn.”
“Now?”
“You want me to volunteer you?”
18 | Wynne Hungerford The Laurel Review
“No,” she said. “I can do it.”
He said, “Okay,” and held his hands up. en he winked and brought his
hands down on the table. e hairs on his hands were dark red and his skin was
covered in faint freckles. He winked and stood up. He said, “Attention, everyone.”
Julia was hot with embarrassment. She couldn’t believe that pastor had
jumped in like that. She thought they’d had an understanding.
“e sister of the groom would like to say a few words. And believe me,” he
said, whispering, “she’s a girl of few words.”
Julia didn’t stand up.
e pastor took her hand and raised her from the seat. She thought if he had
pulled any harder he would have dislocated her shoulder.
“Hop to it,” he said. “We’re all ears.”
When Julia stood, her legs were unstable. She was wearing a brand new pair
of tights and felt the waistband cutting into her stomach. She walked over to her
father and took the microphone.
He said, “is is a surprise,” and her mother, clutching the napkin tightly in
her st, said, “Oh, honey.”
She still didn’t have anything prepared. Her parents sat down and she was
le all alone in front of a crowd of y. Some she knew. Most she didn’t. When
she thought about Ryan, whenever she thought about him, which wasn’t oen,
the only thing that really came to mind was the time he almost got them killed.
Her father had mentioned Ryan’s “rough patch.” By that, he meant the change in
Ryan when he went to college. He had started partying at USC, a normal enough
thing, but his grades suered as a result and he had been agged as a student on
the brink of failure. If he didn’t bring up his grade point average within a semester
he was going to be kicked out. During that pivotal semester, he came home for a
long weekend. Julia’s father couldn’t take her to school that Friday and asked Ryan
if he could drive her instead. Ryan said, “Sure.”
He went out drinking with some of his old friends who still lived in town,
friends who went to Greenville Technical College, and he didn’t wake up on
Friday morning. Julia went into his bedroom and said, “You’re supposed to take
me to school.”
He wouldn’t get up. She kept going in every ve minutes or so, politely
reminding him that he’d promised to take her to school, and he would only roll
over and groan and say, “I’m awake,” even though he never opened his eyes. He
wasn’t wearing a shirt. Only a pair of basketball shorts. He smelled like beer and
when he wrapped his arms around his pillow and hugged it, she saw the dark hair
under his arms.
Volume 50.1 Wynne Hungerford | 19
She touched Ryan’s arm. She didn’t want to miss school. Her attendance
record had been perfect up until then and she had looked forward to receiving
an attendance certicate signed by the principal at the end of the year. e school
was too far to walk and there were too many busy roads to ride a bicycle. “I’m
going to be late,” she said, shaking his arm. “Please.”
He nally kicked the blanket and sheets o of him and rolled out of bed.
When his feet rst touched the ground, he wobbled. He was still a little drunk
but Julia didn’t know that. She only knew that he stank and that he was angry. He
grabbed his car keys and put on a pair of leather bedroom shoes. He said, “Let’s
go, then. If you want to go to school so bad, let’s go.”
Back then, Ryan drove a Dodge Durango. When he turned the ignition,
rap blared from the radio at full volume. It was so loud it hurt Julia’s ears. e
words “bitch” and “nigger” and “cunt” smothered her and entered her body as
vibration. She put a hand to her chest and felt her heart being tested. A visor
embroidered with a scarlet gamecock was hanging from the rearview mirror and
it swung violently with every turn. Empty Gatorade bottles rolled at her feet. He
had a small beer belly that rolled over the band of his shorts. Whenever they hit
an uneven spot in the road, it bounced. She knew that he was driving too fast. She
held on.
When they reached the big intersection by her school, Ryan took a le on a
red light. ere was a cemetery nearby and the wind was picking up and bouquets
of articial owers blew into the road. Julia saw that he was going to run the light
and said, “Stop,” but he gunned it. Oncoming trac honked at them and braked
hard. One car swerved so bad Julia could hear the rubber skidding on the asphalt
and if she had looked back, she would have been able to see the marks the tires
had le on the road, long and black and stinking of burnt rubber. In that moment
she thought Ryan wanted to kill her. Of course, later, she realized that he was tired
and angry and still drunk from a night out with friends. He wanted to be asleep
in his bed. He didn’t want to be taking his little sister to school. Still, it felt like he
wanted to kill her.
ey pulled into the carpool lane. Julia knew that she would have to run to
make it to class on time, but she couldn’t do it. She started to cry because she had
never felt so hated by anyone in her entire life.
Ryan said, “Get out.”
Her chest shuddered as she sucked in air.
He said, “Go.”
She swung her backpack over her shoulder, heavy with textbooks and three-
ring binders, and went into the school. She locked herself in the handicapped stall
in the girls’ restroom and stayed for the entire rst period. When the bell rang for
20 | Wynne Hungerford The Laurel Review
second period, she had nally gathered herself and joined the current of students
moving down the hall. She never told her parents what had happened, and she
and Ryan never discussed it. He ended up going back to school and getting his
grades up, even graduating, in the end, with his name on the Dean’s List.
❧ ❧ ❧
At the rehearsal dinner, holding the microphone, Julia couldn’t look at Ryan
because she was remembering the car ride. First she said, “I’m Ryan’s sister,” and
a few people in the crowd, friends of Ryan’s, looked surprised to hear that he had
a sister. She began to talk about the few good things she could remember, such
as going to one of his baseball games and seeing him catch the game-winning
ball in the outeld. She talked about going trick-or-treating with him and him
oering to test her caramel apples to make sure there weren’t razorblades hidden
inside. She talked about the time he let her try on his rollerblades and go down the
driveway. She ended up falling at the bottom, skinning her so, white chin. He’d
let her try, though, because she wanted to. at was when she was little enough to
be unafraid. She brought up these few moments that were not particularly special
but they were the best she had. en she congratulated Ryan and Haley. As if she
was alone in the room and talking to herself, she said, “It’s funny. He seems like an
adult now.” She had missed the transition from immature boy to grown man and
found it hard to believe that Ryan had this decent life and this pretty ancée and
all of these friends who seemed like good people.
Back at the table, the pastor was slouched in his chair and yawning. He said,
“It wasn’t great but it wasn’t terrible.”
“Honey,” her mother said, nally back in her seat, “do you need a tissue?”
Julia was crying, not because she was happy for her brother but because
of the memory of that car ride. She was glad nobody knew the dierence. Julia’s
mother handed over the napkin that was covered in the beige and black of her
melted face.
e next morning, on the day of the ceremony, the wedding party had to
take photographs on the dock at the marina. Under an overcast sky, the water
appeared dark and gray. e bridesmaids stood together rst. ey moved
carefully over the dock, trying not to let their pointed heels catch in between the
wooden boards, because one of the bridesmaids said she’d had a dream the night
before that she’d stumbled and fallen into the water, where she was cut by oyster
beds. e groomsmen posed together next. ey had been given shing lures as
gis and the wedding date was on the side of the lure in silver, meant to ash in
the water. ey argued the merits of live bait versus articial lures, nally all
Volume 50.1 Wynne Hungerford | 21
agreeing that live bait was the way to go, and managed to be quiet long enough for
the photographer to take a dozen satisfactory shots.
Aer the bride and groom took photos with their parents, Ryan walked
over to Julia and said, “Let’s get one together?” He wore a linen suit with a pastel
pink bowtie. He put an arm around her shoulder.
He asked, “Are you having fun?”
She nodded.
“Know where you’re going to school yet?”
She said, “I haven’t decided,” even though she had already sent in the
acceptance paperwork to Dartmouth. She didn’t know why she lied.
e photographer said, “Okay, relax now,” and it only made her muscles
tense even more.
Ryan’s hand was light on her shoulder. He said, “You could have said a lot of
other stu but you didn’t.”
She didn’t know what to say, so she didn’t say anything.
He said, “anks.”
She knew he wasn’t bad, that she had only seen Ryan at his worst and
unfortunately that incident had colored their entire relationship. e memory
and the pain it carried was not going away but she could learn to live with it.
ere could be other memories, better ones, made to o-set that pain. It would
take time for her to know the person Ryan had become and for him to know the
person that she had become. Time was what they needed and, being young, time
was what they had.
When the photographer nished taking photographs of them, Julia noticed
that the wedding party was pointing at something over her shoulder. Ryan
noticed, too. He said, “Wonder what they’re looking at.” ey turned and saw, at
the very end of the dock, a cat reaching for something in the water that no could
see, exing its claws.
22 | Kyle McCord The Laurel Review
Watching
Hoarders
with My Father
Kyle McCord
Anne has y crates of antique cat’s eyes
Ray says he invented the power source
for the Voyager 2 that’s why
he needs y rusted junkers it’s obvious
Doris can do without the swimwear
amed lime with mildew thirty
Maltese puppies coiled in a planter
Jim lost his mother Chastity
drank a handle of Beam a day
mouthwash when cash ran out
you’re a Nikon panning
her hallway reworks burst
like blood from a buckshot wound
the night Cindy’s son drove
o the overpass she keeps
his photo on the bureau
above forty pounds of diatomaceous
earth to ward away ants away
silver sh away roaches like careless
travelers on a highway
Don knows his wife
is leaving either way
Rhonda is just another
object with this lter Randy
is y pinball machines Smokey
is two teeth and a stained nightshirt
Dan can’t imagine transcending
he is a cluttered cage
peppered with droppings
a ragged cast iron consider this
pan over Ron’s kitchen
listen to this audio
Volume 50.1 Kyle McCord | 23
where Wendy nally breaks
we’ll splice this in the credits
she thought she’d die
in this house at a certain angle
she’s just her hoops
we’re this smoky gaze watching
the room ll up Anne draws the shades
to stop anyone from looking.
24 | Kyle McCord The Laurel Review
Watching a Cialas Ad
with My Father
Kyle McCord
e man adoring his wife adores her
more as she torques her hips to return the serve
she is regal as heat lightning seething from the court
I know how he feels wanting to work
each swollen muscle with his nger blunt
as a sculptor’s pitcher but these aren’t the hands
of Michelangelo they are the hands of a CPA
or a hospice patient or as the ad suggests a man
walking a terrier on a beach (jump cut
to a shot of their ngers twined against
the sun shimmering below the schism
of salt-veined sky and black stones)
their ordinariness is the point
so their problems are shadows of our own
but what is it that drives any of us
the words scrolling by sterile as sand can’t say
whether it’s ego or devotion
it can’t answer whether what follows minutes
later under sanctity of doctor-recommended pills
is an act out of passion or rote practice
Volume 50.1 Kyle McCord | 25
what proof can anyone oer
but these sweated sheets pentimento
of the most fervid sculptors
blind to all but what they make
26 | Bruce Bond The Laurel Review
Hands
Bruce Bond
And weary of the long day at work,
he takes o his hands and lays them
like a belt of tools at his bedside.
Naturally the rst one proves
easier to remove than the second,
but the mouth serves as a third hand
as it oen does in times like this.
And as he lies with nothing to do
but think about the things he is
not doing, his hands crawl away
out the pet door into a yard
dark with stars and the howling moon.
Such, of course is the nature
of hands, to point at this star
and that, and in their pointing stitch
the stars together, piece the bodies
of gods who, like hands, would make
the world into a world they love.
Truth is, there would be no gods
if these lights had not been torn
from one another. Mother from child,
child from the child he was.
Volume 50.1 Bruce Bond | 27
Always a body back there,
somewhere, a ghost that slipped its coat
from the armature of bone.
Sirens slit the chest of silence,
and dogs pour through with mating calls
or calls of warning. Hard to tell.
Say they are one call, that they turn
to the mirrors of each other,
like palms, and touch, shade to shade.
When a man wakes, disheveled at dawn,
he understands: sleep is work
that never quite begins or ends,
but calls the sirens of the dogs
together: the world is too damn far
from the world; words far from words
and the animals that made them.
Still there is a tenderness
to the questions answers long for,
a one-eyed star of joy that fades
so we who wake might dream of it.
It’s up there. In there. I see it. ese hands
like doves on the arms of day.
28 | Bruce Bond The Laurel Review
Monster
Bruce Bond
Say we start with the understanding
you are not real. You are in a movie
beside a window in the winter rain
and the only house for miles. Say
the woman whose car broke down is not real either,
though you fear for her, follow her because
you must, because every gaze pours through
a window in the dark. She comes. She rings.
And no, you have no telephone, no power,
but as she stands at your door, her hair ravaged
in the downpour that drugs the whole of nature,
your exhumed heart begins to pound a wall
somewhere, the way someone pounds a machine
that breaks, cursing it to make it work.
And the long loneliness of never being
here, never breathing the dead-leaf scent
of rain that makes a mist of late December
begins to dawn on the woman who sees in you
something of the wreck she le behind,
of the car and marriage gone to rust.
Someday, she says, machines will carry us
over the threshold of a house in the rain.
Volume 50.1 Bruce Bond | 29
Whatever the nonsense or indiscretion,
you agree. Say we begin with that threshold,
and you are on the other side, opening
your heart. And the shovels in the yard
open theirs. Say we begin beside a river
where you drink. en you turn from the water,
startled, blurred, and when the blind girl touches
the scar in your forehead, she opens a wound.
And the movie never gets better than this,
this hand in human darkness, this moment we swear
a real rain is just beginning. e mirror breaks.
A wind blows through the stillness of the screen.
30 | Bruce Bond The Laurel Review
Bruce Bond
When Eduard Hitzig wired a living brain
and found a shock here raised an arm, there
a nger, he made a map and planted the ags
of native German into the strange new world.
If you are wondering what place does what,
come. Sit. e region that raises your hand
is the chair where the scientist is busy
shocking your brain. And his brain is shocked
in turn by the guy in the chair in his head,
the seeker you cannot see. No one does.
If you are like me, you are always in
the way. e old gods of the wind have little
on those of the blind heart beating in panic.
e anthropologist living with the natives
can empathize. He knows what it is like
to study the behavior of a tribe with some
anthropologist in it. What is a point
of view, asks the cortex. Where does it start.
And why does a shock in the pre-frontal
portion do nothing. Or nothing we observe.
Only a ash on a scan that could be someone
stranded in the dark. It could be Eduard,
The Ghost in the Shape
of an Unnamed Flower
Volume 50.1 Bruce Bond | 31
now that we know him a little better,
and he knows us. It could be his research
agenda among the nocturnal owers
where he snaps o his ashlight and lies down
weary with the scent. And though he cannot
see them, they see him, and like the grave
he crawled from, he opens his mouth a bit
wider the deeper he breathes. And breathe he must
as the red leaves breathe. And then sleep.
And the ames in thousands come tumbling in.
32 | Bruce Bond The Laurel Review
Manifesto
Bruce Bond
Dear History, you who are my rst
thought each morning, my last each night,
my unmarked grave,
and though we’ve never met,
I’ve read your letters over and over,
until they became, in time, the ghost
whose imagined
gure is everywhere I
am and am not yet. All at once.
And the more I read, the more
I leave my body
to break down at the walls
of holy city aer city,
name aer name of those who fell there,
none of whom
are you. Dear History,
I confess, I am beginning
to lose faith in the old gods,
in the word’s
power to fathom the human
face. I keep thinking of the movie
where they bring a severed head to life.
Volume 50.1 Bruce Bond | 33
I see the torso
who kills to repossess it.
If a torso can be serious
a moment, it would tell you this.
What I see,
grieve, talk to in dreams,
appears as such in a distant mind.
But in the movie it says nothing,
like a broken
nation that has no mouth.
Life, we know, does not return.
Only the word life whose meaning
leaves a body
helpless, heartless, dead.
Only a head whose torso is out there,
lonely, scared. If a zombie can be
serious,
it would sit down with us
and confess what hunger does
when the soul is elsewhere in
another movie.
Dear History, I am afraid
of my country, though I know
the word is made of many heads,
many of whom
are severed. When asked how
34 | Bruce Bond The Laurel Review
history would judge, my president
replied: History. We won’t know.
We’ll all be dead.
And the awkward silence said,
we’ll all be headless, heedless.
We, as one, will be the many
ships on a stone cold
sea, thrashing in the dark.
Volume 50.1 Kristina Marie Darling | 35
Theater of the Mind: On Recent
Performance Texts by Khadijah
Queen & Meredith Stricker
Kristina Marie Darling
In the
unavowlable community
, maurice blanchot
considers the impossibility of fully apprehending another consciousness. If the
other could be known, he argues, they would not be other. We are confronted with
that which resists one’s powers of understanding, a strangeness that becomes the
source of great and terrible wonder. Yet this line of thinking could also be extended
to the various parts of the self, none of which can ever be fully or satisfyingly
excavated. What’s more, these darkened rooms of the mind are furnished with
artifacts that the other has le behind: a forgotten trinket, an old book, a bit of
music.
Two recent performance texts fully and convincingly acknowledge the
many ways that the other is contained within the self. Khadijah Queen’s Non-
Sequitur and Meredith Stricker’s Alphabet eater skillfully dramatize this
ongoing dialogue between the various parts of consciousness, giving voice to the
alterity that is contained within each one of us. ough vastly dierent in form
and approach, Stricker and Queen share an investment in revealing consciousness
itself as performative, as one assumes (and at the same time questions) the roles
of the various archetypes, their voices, their personae, and their possibilities. We
are presented with a consciousness that is divided, not always against itself, but in
dialogue with its seemingly innite and luminous facets. As each work progresses,
we are made to see how conscious experience unfolds through this questioning,
this conversation and exchange.
ough these performance texts might be read as purely interior dramas,
we are shown that the world is contained within each of us. Indeed, Queen
and Stricker envision the mind as comprised almost entirely of found material,
ranging from Hart Crane’s e Bridge to “the voice of Malcolm X.” rough their
36 | Kristina Marie Darling The Laurel Review
skillful curation of language, Queen and Stricker reveal the mind as a social
construct, thought as appropriation, and every idea as an act of the.
❧ ❧ ❧
Queen’s provocative Non-Sequitur takes place everywhere and nowhere. We are
oered a cast consisting of archetypes, what Queen describes as a “large group
of abstract/conceptual characters and objects,” none of which give rise to a
conventional narrative. Instead, Queen delivers “a shiing landscape” and “evolving
interiors,” each conversation taking the form of an excavation of culture and the
psyche. Every act, and every scene, contained within Non-Sequitur confronts a
source tension that heretofore has remained buried, an unacknowledged violence
that we soon nd “engulfed in a spotlight.”
Many of the vignettes presented within Non-Sequitur consider the ways
race and gender are performative, how these concepts of identity exist in
dialogue and in friction with one another. Indeed, Queen calls our attention
to the myriad ways that the “invisible institution” with its constant demands,
“the white appropriation,” the looming “online payments” and the systems of
valuation that they represent, are inevitably internalized. What Queen oers us is
an externalization of the conceptual frameworks we have taken in; it is this visible
and visceral rendering that allows us to see their reach more clearly, to understand
that we are not only subjected to injustice, but it is an “aermath” we carry inside
of us.
Queen writes, for example, midway through the collection,
THE INVISIBLE INSTITUTION
Playing with children, playing with adults—same thing.
THE BROWN VAGINA (points to a door)
Someone le the door open–
THE ONLINE PAYMENTS
Reminder: Please send payment by the due date.
Here Queen portrays the competing systems of valuation that one must
constantly reconcile in the mind: the economies of labor, texts, and goods that
circulate round us, as well as their relationship to the physical body, particularly
the ways dierence is written onto the body. By giving voice to each iniquity, and
Volume 50.1 Kristina Marie Darling | 37
each projection, Queen reveals the impossibility of a harmonious and unied
psyche. She suggests, skillfully and powerfully, that we have not only divided
communities against themselves, but we have divided our own hearts and minds.
As Queen accounts for each ssure, each cleave mark, she reminds us that even
“intelligence is a kind of violence.”
❧ ❧ ❧
Stricker’s Alphabet eater, much like Queen’s work, considers the way that
conscious experience is an essentially social endeavor. She shows us that “even in
dead winter” the “immense bee hum” of a larger cultural imagination is audible.
Culling language from a variety of lexicons, which include Senator Danforth’s
speeches, the poetry of William Carlos Williams, and Milton’s Paradise Lost,
Stricker constructs a theory of mind in which we are constantly reconciling the
texts, images, and symbols that circulate around us. For Stricker, it is in the space
between these received texts, in these luminous apertures, that the individual
begins to exist. As Stricker herself reminds us, “e more a thing is torn, the more
places it can connect.”
As the book unfolds, she reminds us thought is not as simple as “roses calling
roses to mind.” Indeed, she catalogues the seemingly innite forms an inner life
can take, allowing the various modes of knowledge and perception—which range
from lists, to dialogues, staging directions, performance scripts, micronarratives,
imaginary etymologies, and photographs—to illuminate one another. As the
reader traipses through this “still place,” lled with the luminous artifacts of an
inner life, we nd ourselves implicated in the process of forging connections,
narratives, continuities. By involving the reader in such a way, Stricker shows us
that to exist in culture is to enter a room lled with someone else’s belongings; we
are always strangers in our own psyches.
Stricker writes, for instance,
the veins radiant in oreau’s leaf
or life—gladly, willingly—
desire of the world for form, arc to arc—bright white
we suer from this bridge of lightening to loss
Stricker, like Queen, skillfully externalizes the conceptual frameworks—
particularly the structures of meaning making, and the nite conventions of
narrative—that we have taken in. By creating this distance, Stricker is able to
38 | Kristina Marie Darling The Laurel Review
discern more clearly implicit assumptions contained in the “forms” we search
for. She calls our attention to the ways culture has taught us to impose structure,
to create the loveliest “arc” we can from the materials we are given. It is this
distance, the space between Stricker and her subject, that allows her to reveal our
predilection for meaning in all of its beautiful artice.
Queen and Stricker, while diering slightly in form and approach, both
render the inner life suddenly, startlingly tangible, dramatizing the movement
of conscious experience. In doing so, they allow us to perceive the mind, its
“shining” ssures and its “islands” in sharper relief. Even more importantly, these
innovative poets make solitude beautiful and strange again.
Volume 50.1 Mike James | 39
Michael Benedikt’s Suitcase
Mike James
Michael Benedikt’s suitcase of poems. His leather suitcase of poems. Michael
Benedikt’s o white, leather suitcase of poems. His crinkled, o white, leather
suitcase of poems. Michael Benedikt’s dumpster bound suitcase. A suitcase of
poems, number two pencils, and paper clips. No magazine cut outs of air brushed
gloss within Michael Benedikt’s crinkled, o white, ketchup stained, leather
suitcase. e one with the gray trim. A suitcase not out of place on a riverbank,
engulfed in green grass and in the green daydreams of lawyerly voyeurs. A suitcase
that stays full aer a whole day and night and day of unpacking.
40 | Mike James The Laurel Review
In Bob Dylan’s Neighborhood
Mike James
It’s hard to get Johnny out of the basement. He likes it there with his books and
chemistry. If he were a pharmacist he’d mix up medicine. If he were an alchemist
he’d try to make gold. Johnny’s just a big kid with a chemistry set. He used to
work at the factory. Now he’s a laid o genius, smart as Aquinas. He stays in his
basement with his potions and books. Johnny won’t walk the pavement and the
alleyways. He won’t talk about the government. Says it just is. It’s hard to get
Johnny out of the basement, even to go see Maggie (his once and only love) who
is always soot faced from her job and always talking and talking about leaving
town for good. She says Brownville is not for her or for anyone with anything
close to a soul. Maggie wants a place in the country, too small to even be called
a farm, where she can wear sandals all day and use candles as the evenings only
light. She says it’s evening year round in some places where the sky is always dark
or getting there.
Volume 50.1 Eric Pankey | 41
The Apprenticeship
Eric Pankey
In the end, what could he do? He liked to play with matches, to close the cover
and strike, to watch the spark turn inward, crackle, then are, sometimes straight
up into a ame, other times and, only for an instant, into a helix that unspiraled
into a ery teardrop. Sometimes, the matches, so with humidity, bent and tore
and would not catch. He apprenticed himself to re. Heraclitus says, All things are
an exchange for re and re for all things. He braided fuses out of rags, knew the
aer-mark of each accelerant, held his palm open above the candle longer than
was needed, read biographies of the great arsonists. Jesus says, I came to set re to
the world, and I wish it were already burning. Bob Dylan sings, You can play with
re, but you’ll get the bill.
42 | Kyle Norwood The Laurel Review
ere’s so much you’ll need to learn, but basically
here is how you do it: you remove your mind
from where it wants to be, as if plucking it
with your ngers from a table top,
and rmly place it where it needs to be:
in a le drawer, say, or a silverware sorter.
You do this over and over, thousands of times
a day if necessary. It’s dicult, because
very soon you are no longer interested in
the materials you must transform, no matter
how noble the task may have seemed in the abstract.
Or else you are responsible for preventing disorder:
ying sh that jump from an open tank, stray cats
escaping from an alley, oil from an ancient gasket,
prisoners from a poorly guarded compound, and your
job is to catch the strays, plug the leaks, stave o
disaster—in which case, despite your boredom, you
are probably too anxious to let your attention wander.
And there are always so many les, or forks, or sh,
or leaks, or strays: hundreds, thousands, so that
catching up even temporarily is unrealistic
(and in any case, what a small victory it would be),
besides which the management just laid o ve
of your co-workers and gave themselves big bonuses.
On an assigned day, you will nish up what you can,
push the excess into a dumpster (bolting the lid shut),
and write a largely ctional interim report.
You will worry about getting caught, yet fundamentally
you know you’re doing what your employers want:
The Business of Business
Kyle Norwood
Volume 50.1 Kyle Norwood | 43
To have you actually do your job would cost more
than anyone would willingly pay, and they are satised
with your anxious semblance of achievement, which
is cheaper and good enough to fool the auditors
(who are overworked themselves), and if necessary
they will blame it all on you: aer all, it was your
conspiracy of silence that allowed the shameful
conditions that led to the inevitable catastrophe.
Once a month a xed sum of money will show up
in your bank account, which means you can keep eating
and stay in your house. You are lucky, riding the river
to oblivion in comfort. Others suer
hunger instead of boredom, watching ies
settle on their children’s faces.
Sitting slumped in your armchair with the lights o
and the television turned up loud,
the work you brought home still sitting untouched
inside your 50-pound briefcase-on-wheels,
you remind yourself that this beats the alternative,
and anyway you’re already nearly asleep,
a half-eaten chicken leg dropping into your lap
where your cat nds it, gnawing and choking,
gnawing and choking, but surviving,
like you, to do it all again tomorrow.
If you look at your hand, you will nd you have already
signed the contract. Feel free to keep the pen.
We will end our little talk with the appropriate
clichés: Go forth and make your country proud.
Civilization as we know it depends on you.
44 | Alan Robert Proctor The Laurel Review
Butterfly Girl and Mirage Boy
Alan Robert Proctor
Being a playwright paid for my coffee. being a staff
reporter for e Omen paid my rent. I lived paycheck to paycheck. Friends asked
why I settled in upstate New York’s Adirondack Mountains right aer college. “No
poison ivy,” I’d tell them. Or, “Writers work wherever there’s a corner desk.” But it
wasn’t that. It was Sylvia.
Ever since I was a teenager, Sylvia distressed my dreams. A few weeks
might‘ve gone by without a nocturnal visit. But sooner or later, she’d be back.
No matter where the labyrinths of sleep took me, two nights out of seven she’d
show up—undulating against my stomach on an elephant as we shambled down
WalMart’s housewares aisle. en, a week later, she’s next to me in the car’s
passenger seat. I’m white-knuckle-driving down a steep and twisty mountain
road without guardrails. e Honda sails o the road’s edge. Sylvia screams, and
I’m ung into wakefulness.
Actually, the infatuation began before I was a teenager, during my rst year
at summer camp. Even at the awkward age of twelve, I could tell this new girl,
Sylvia—fourteen, lanky and just beginning to bloom—was dierent. When you’re
twelve, “dierent” is conditional. My biological maturity was just beginning, but
I wasn’t emotionally ready for the change. What young boy is? And I certainly
wasn’t ready for Sylvia. e following year she was back at camp.
“Weren’t you here last year?” she asked me aer breakfast the rst day.
“You remember me?” I said.
“Uh huh.” She looked me up and down, a halting appraisal. roughout our
four summers together, she grew from a rather scrawny kid into a striking young
woman. I grew from a boy on the cusp of desire to a young man in the grip of it.
e girls in my junior high and high school classes seemed ordinary, like canned
green beans. Sylvia was seasonal and exotic—mango ice cream with sprinkles.
Volume 50.1 Alan Robert Proctor | 45
I knew when I returned to camp on the last weekend of June, Sylvia would be
there with ironic quips about my physical or mental qualications.
Aer four years, she didn’t return to camp. She sent me a post card on my
sixteenth birthday. “Happy Birthday,” it said. “You’re at camp. I’m in London.
Cheerio.” e following year, my last at camp, she sent a postcard from Paris.
“En’chante,” it read followed by three exclamation marks, no return address—as
usual—never anything more specic than a city. I wasn’t able to write her a witty
reply.
Postcards followed, two or three a year while I was in college. I never had the
nerve to call her up. e closest I ever came to rekindling my obsession was aer I
got my English degree and moved into the forested hills we shared in upstate New
York. Post-adolescent chump, at twenty-two, that was me.
When she phoned me two weeks ago on Friday night—actually spoke to me
aer, what had it been, six months since calling about her split-up with the I-got-
married-too-soon husband—I realized her latest postcard from Rome at the new
Pope’s inauguration was just a continuation of the original tease.
“Blast from the past, Doug. is is Sylvia, your summer camp girl friend.
How’s life?” she had said.
e lilt in her voice, the raspy edge to her consonants, made my scrotum
clench. I don’t remember what I answered to “How’s life,” probably something
brainless. I sat down at my computer and circled the mouse on its pad. “Long time
no see,” I said into the cellphone.
“Yeah,” she said. “My boyfriend showed me that piece you wrote for the
paper about the bears that trashed Camp Pittman’s kitchen. My boyfriend grew
up around there, actually. We’re getting married next month aer my divorce
comes through. I’ll send a wedding invitation with an RSVP card. Guess who my
ancé is. It’s Brad,” she gushed without waiting for a reply, “your Camp Pittman
counselor for goodness sake. How’s that for a coincidence?”
❧ ❧ ❧
My life as a bachelor was jelling. Even aer my Trenton, New Jersey mother
married my Poughkeepsie, New York father, Mom never lost her Jersey attitude.
She wanted another grandchild ASAP. I tried hard to persuade her that my two
previous and inconclusive college relationships had made me a wiser, if not
happier, man. Maybe I’d nd true love at twenty-three, I told her. en it was
twenty-four. en, when I turned twenty-ve last month, she began the cross
examinations.
46 | Alan Robert Proctor The Laurel Review
“You sit around all day at your computer. How can you nd a nice girl when
you sit around all day at your computer?”
“I’m a writer, Mom. It’s what I do.”
“Why can’t you be a husband and a father, too?”
She wasn’t nished. I waited.
“Betty’s nice. You know Betty O’Keefe. She’s pretty—in her own way. Nice,
big Betty Boop eyes. Sincere, you know? You can tell sincere from the eyes. She
works at the cafeteria, a manager no less. You met Betty when you took time out
from your busy schedule to visit me over anksgiving. She lives down the street.
Betty’s–”
“She’s a nice girl Mom, but she’s plain as Spam.”
“You want caviar, Doug? Caviar’s for men who drive a Lexus, have houses
with his and her closets, and live on a beachfront.”
“Betty has bad teeth, Mom.”
“Ha! What do you know? She’s got braces now. e adult kind you have to
get in close to see.”
I could almost hear the gears shiing in my mother’s head. “You know what
the favorite meat in Hawaii is?” she asked.
Favorite meat? “Uh, Bluen tuna?” I said.
“Spam, wise guy. Yeah, Simple Simon Spam. It was good enough to keep
your grandfather ghtin’ against Hitler in Europe. Don’t underestimate Betty
Boop Spam, Doug.”
❧ ❧ ❧
I lived in a tourist town. Winters were quiet, summer vacationers bled money, and
the locals appreciated local art. e high school production of Socks, my latest
play, wasn’t bad—for high school. e novel’s third dra was done and my agent
rejection letters were beginning to roll in. Someday, I thought, I’ll go to Paris and
all the other places Sylvia’s postcards waved in my face, rent a three-oor walk up
with a knock-out lover, and write a Tony Award winner. Sylvia would be in the
audience, of course, watching me give my acceptance speech. Aer the hugs and
congratulatory praise settled down, she’d wait for me outside the back stage door.
DOUG: (Exiting back stage and laughing lightly) Sylvia, I can’t believe it’s
you. How did you nd me?
SYLVIA: I saw Socks at St. Marks Place. I loved it, Doug. e director gave
me your contact info. He told me you were up for a Tony.
DOUG: Did you recognize yourself What did you think of the play?
Volume 50.1 Alan Robert Proctor | 47
SYLVIA: e language was so . . . rich. e character development so . . .
subtle, but strong.
DOUG: I was hoping you I’m grateful the audience understood why Socks
had to leave his jealous lovers and escape to Katmandu.
I’ve been told you can never stamp out the ames of unrequited rst love.
e hurt smolders like a re at the city dump. You can’t see the hot core under all
the trash and oily rags, but it’s there.
❧ ❧ ❧
Camp Pittman, where Sylvia and I rst met, is a still-functioning ne arts camp
twenty minutes up the road from my townhouse. e Omen assigned me to review
their production of the American Indian legend, Buttery Girl and Mirage Boy,
written by somebody who’d been dead for a hundred years and probably never
met a Native American, but I liked the play’s name immediately: supernatural
schmaltz.
at aernoon, Bryn McNeal, the camp’s drama coach, had introduced me
to the players over a hasty reception of Kool-Aid and Girl Scout cookies. He cast
my too-shy nephew, Stewart, as Mirage Boy—a small part despite the play’s title.
is was Stewart’s rst Camp Pittman summer. Intense, geeky, my older sister’s
thirteen-year-old son kneaded his knuckles and contemplated tall, thin, een-
year-old Adele Dunn, who was playing Buttery Girl, the lead. Earlier in the week,
Adele had punched Stewart in the stomach when he suggested they do the nasty.
I think Stewart thought it was new dance step. I could tell by the boy’s spaniel
look he thought Adele was the icing on the Halloween cake—succulent, but with
a one-in-ten chance of hidden razorblades.
“Tonight,” McNeal told his cast and crew, “the press will be watching. Let’s
impress Doug with our theatrical rrrr-resonance.” He had obscenely rolled the “r.”
In the shuttered half-light, the barn theater’s seats lled with campers and
parents like a rising ood. McNeal had reserved a seat for me up front and far
house le where I’d be pretty much alone. e theater hadn’t changed much since
Sylvia and I were campers. And neither had I—inside. Outside, my paint was
thinning and my teenage timbers were beginning to warp.
I turned to where the senior campers sat at the back of the theater and
imagined Sylvia with them in the last row. e years that once separated the kid
from the young woman wouldn’t matter, so I conjured her up, twenty-seven now
with silver earrings that ashed through a curtain of straight hair. She looked
right at me.
48 | Alan Robert Proctor The Laurel Review
DOUG: (Calling) I knew you’d come. You’ve grown even prettier.
SYLVIA: (Calling back) I’m not here, really.
DOUG: Of course not, but stay a while.
I le my windbreaker on the chair back, strolled down the aisle and took
the wing stairs two at a time. Backstage, the play’s butteries were hovering
everywhere, a dozen or so little tykes with droopy wings and bent antennas, their
seven- and eight-year-old faces streaked with gaudy makeup.
“I’m a Swallowtail,” a little girl said to me. “My brother’s a Monarch.” ey
uttered away.
Adele quietly rehearsed her lines. She gestured in ankle leggings, an open lab
coat, and body tights that hugged every inch of her. Construction paper butteries
spotted the coat inside and out. e twins, Macy and Mora, kibitzed each other
like an old married couple. Mora fumbled an attempt to safety-pin her sister’s
hem. Macy paced and snapped the waist band that peeked above a multicolored
Guatemalan skirt. On her brow, two feathers crossed one another in an X behind
a rhinestone headband. I made a note on my writing pad: e costumes, artfully
craed by fourteen-year-old Mora Lott—sister of Macy Lott, who played Buttery
Girl’s sidekick, Burden Maiden—leapt o the stage into the appreciative eyes of the
audience.
SYLVIA: Leapt? Cute!
DOUG: Why did you leave your husband?
SYLVIA: (Sighing) He never really knew me, not the real me. I was lookin’
for love in all the wrong places.
DOUG: (A beat) Go on.
SYLVIA: It was you I loved all along, Doug. I didn’t know it at the time.
You were so much younger–
DOUG: Do you have regrets?
SYLVIA: (Beginning to cry) Yes. I was so stupid!
When McNeal bounded onto the creaking stage, I headed back to my
seat. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, “Camp Pittman is proud to present the
American Indian legend, Buttery Girl and Mirage Boy, an allegory of love’s
power to transcend the earthly sphere through unceasing devotion.”
DOUG: Don’t cry, Sylvia. e past is kaput. We gotta move on.
SYLVIA: (Drying her tears) Did you ever learn to swim?
DOUG: Sure—the side-stroke.
SYLVIA: You were so cute in your bathing suit.
DOUG: You never told me that before.
SYLVIA: I could tell every time you got a boner–
Volume 50.1 Alan Robert Proctor | 49
DOUG: Holy crap!
SYLVIA: –which was a lot.
DOUG: Where am I going with this script?
McNeal waited for the crowd’s attention and then swept to stage le. “Are
we settled in?” He glared at his audience, daring them to misbehave. “Good,” he
said and retreated backwards into the wings. “And now Camp Pittman presents,
Buttery Girl and Mirage Boy.”
SYLVIA: Remember the year we did As You Like It?
DOUG: On this very stage. You were a terric Rosalind. I think that’s
when I fell for you. Was the play our beginning, Sylvia? e awakening of our
hearts?
SYLVIA: (Tapping her chin in thought) You played one of the merry men
in e Forest of Arden. Or were you the wrestler that got beat up?
DOUG: I was both. (Singing) Most friendship is feigning, most loving
mere folly, then heigh-ho the holly. is life is most jolly!
SYLVIA: Shut up . . . Who knew?
DOUG: (Smiling) What?
SYLVIA: You’ve got a great voice. Sing some more.
I was humming as the house lights blinked out. e stage-hand hauled the
squeaking curtain apart. A ute melody sounded backstage. I scribbled on my
tablet: Daphne Tipps’ ute added an unearthly musical glow to the evening’s drama.
Adele glided out with a large jug on her shoulder and four butteries at her
heels. “Yea, but I do hear thee, O ute-musician mine.” She cupped her hands
along an imaginary ute, bobbled, and nearly dropped the pot. “Answer,” she said,
“so I’ll answer thee back.” As the ute answered, Adele set the earthenware down.
She scratched her le calf with the toe of her right shoe. ose leggings must have
itched like hell.
“So each rosy morn, each fragrant eve, Buttery Girl to the water comes.”
She eased the jug sideways with her foot and pulled her coat open. “See my
butteries?” e remaining squadron of butteries swooped in from stage le
and apped around her in frantic circles. As Adele sashayed le and right, cape
spread to display her buttery cutouts, the insect-children scurried underfoot.
In the wings, I caught Stewart staring hard at Adele. She did project a kind
of sinuous invitation.
“Oh, I have butteries that I caught from Earth’s six regions.” One of the
pinned butteries uttered to the oor. She scooted it away with her foot. “Buttery
Girl they call me, girl of the buttery spirit, all because the white, winged-ones
hover about me with light.”
50 | Alan Robert Proctor The Laurel Review
DOUG: ere was a kind of light around you in that two-piece you never
got wet. What was that?
SYLVIA: Your adolescent longing.
DOUG: (Deep in thought) I projected my aching adolescence onto you like
Phoebe’s misguided love for the imposter Ganymede.
SYLVIA: I was Rosalind and Ganymede.
DOUG: Yeah, you had it both ways.
SYLVIA: I could have had anyone at camp I wanted. And did, including
Brad, your counselor, my soon-to-be second husband.
Buttery Girl was pouting. “e village maidens mock me. ey touch their
brows as if to say featherbrains and fancies. Senses own away!” She clasped her
hands to her chest. “But they do not know what Buttery Girl can see over the
edges of the morning.” Adele gestured to the butcher-paper pool and stamped her
foot. “I do hear him,” she said. Her entourage of Lepidoptera ogged the air.
“I do see him.” She stamped her foot again, and her moccasin skidded in
a wet patch the stage-hand had failed to mop dry. Her moist heel tore o the
pool’s shoreline. Buttery Girl hopped one-legged, thrashing the scrap stuck to
the bottom of her shoe. “I am Buttery Girl and Mirage Boy is my lover!” She
tossed the soggy shred into the audience. A kid in the front row caught the prize
and held it up in triumph.
I noted: Buttery Girl, played by Adele Dunn, covered the only obvious
technical error of the evening with theatrical poise. Her performance illuminated
the purity of Buttery Girl’s spirit. Her buttery minions, with expertise well beyond
their young years, oated attentively at her side.
Adele blew a kiss house right where Stewart, the play’s Mirage Boy, waited
in the wings for his entrance. My nephew snatched the kiss from the air and held
it to his throat. I made a note: Buttery Girl’s devotion to her idealized lover was
palpable with every word and gesture.
SYLVIA: You don’t get it, Doug. I was seventeen our last year together–
DOUG: How many others were there?
SYLVIA (Laughing): You never knew, did you? You were just a kid.
DOUG: I was old enough to love you.
SYLVIA: You loved the idea of an older woman.
DOUG: You’re wrong. You were my Buttery Girl.
SYLVIA: And you, Slug-Doug, were a mirage.
I made a mental note this time: With theatrical poise, Mirage Boy wrapped
his hands around Buttery Girl’s throat and squeezed until her eyes bulged and her
tongue lolled from her purple lips like an undercooked sausage.
Volume 50.1 Alan Robert Proctor | 51
To summon Mirage Boy, Burden Maiden had joined Buttery Girl
on stage. e actors danced to the ute in klutzy circles. I noted on my pad:
e choreography, an odd pastiche of Stanky Legg and Cat Daddy e choreography
valiantly attempted to adapt to the magical spirit of the evening. When the music
ended, Burden Maiden pattered across the proscenium, looked at Buttery Girl,
and, sounding like my New York City aunt, said, “Heah? Listnin’?”
“Nay, Burden Maiden, harkening.”
“What hear you besides the pool, a lover’s ute or somethin?” She mugged
to the audience; they enjoyed the ad-lib.
“Yes, my lover’s ute–”
DOUG: (Annoyed) Mirages don’t sing, Sylvia. (Singing) ough thou the
waters warp, thy sting is not so sharp as friend remember’d not.
SYLVIA: (Feigning concern) Oh, Doug. I remembered you. I sent
postcards. I even called you—twice—the rst time six months ago aer my turd
of a husband . . .
DOUG: (Interrupting) You taunted me. Why couldn’t you just let it go?
Adele clasped her hands to her heart. “Oh, Burden Maiden, Mirage Boy is
no specter. Hear his song. Now, and now–” e ute trilled.
Burden Maiden expelled all the air from her chest with theatric overkill.
She turned upstage, back to the audience, adjusting her costume, I think. “What
ears cannot hear, you hear,” and turned back to face the house. “Featherbrains and
fancies. You are droll and quite useless, Buttery Girl.” I made a note: e actors’
vocal projections, while spotty, while uneven, while sporadically delicate, could easily
be heard.
DOUG: Even back then my basso profundo voice thrilled you. Piccolo to
bassoon by the end of tenth grade. Admit it. You were impressed.
SYLVIA: (Using her hands in mock sign language) Mirage Boy stupid
like . . . bow without arrow . . . like . . . wrestler . . . with tiny . . . pecker . . .
DOUG: is is the real you, isn’t it? You didn’t leave your husband; he
couldn’t stand it, so he le you, didn’t he?
SYLVIA: (Caught) He did nothing of the sort.
DOUG: at’s why you called me six months ago and cried on my shoulder.
SYLVIA: You didn’t have a clue, Slug-Doug. Six months ago, you were still
half-baked, a twenty-four-year-old child.
“Ah, Burden Maiden, could you but hear and see as I, lighter would be your
heart, swier your feet.” Buttery Girl scrubbed at her leggings. “Hark! But I hear
him. Come and see.” e apping insects disbursed in all directions.
Burden Maiden drew her head back in aected surprise. “So like to the eyes
of truth, almost you made me see!” She pointed to the closed double doors at the
52 | Alan Robert Proctor The Laurel Review
theater’s exit. Several younger audience members turned. Were they hoping to
catch a glimpse of Mirage Boy?
Hands jointed, the two girls prowled forward. “Look, Burden Maiden,
Mirage Boy comes hither to dance. Join us, Mirage Boy!” Backstage, somebody
began rapidly thumping a tom-tom in four-four time. e frantic downbeat
sounded like rear-ended trac piling-up on the interstate. e girls struggled
to synchronize McNeal’s Native American version of the Mexican hat dance. I
scribbled on my pad: e play’s director, Bryn McNeal, brought ample evidence of
multiculturalism to the performance.
When would this play end?
DOUG: Not a kid anymore, Sylvia.
SYLVIA: So, what have you learned in your pitifully sluggish rise to semi-
and locally-restricted fame?
DOUG: To paraphrase Burden Maiden, So like to the eyes of truth, now
you make me see.
SYLVIA: (Her image is beginning to pixelate) You’re a ve-pound catsh
in a farm pond, Doug.
DOUG: Better than a spring minnow in Lake Erie.
My nephew, awaiting his cue, sneezed. He dragged his sleeve across his
nose. e explosiveness of his breath startled me. As though slapped awake, I
realized the counterfeit exuberance of the review I was writing. Stewart’s pathetic
infatuation, which mirrored my own for Sylvia, wobbled o its axis. e past was
unspooling before me. I had been living my life backwards.
“Oh, the sweet music! Burden Maiden,” Buttery Girl was saying. “Was it
not wonderful?”
“Nay, I saw and heard nothin’. You have made a fool of me, Buttery Girl.
I am ashamed of myself. How the others will laugh!” Burden Maiden threw her
head down and thumped the back of her st against her forehead.
“I am sorry,” Buttery Girl said. “Me you see. Me you hear and answer. But
him, the brightest one, never.”
Burden Maiden encircled her ear with a nger. “Featherbrains and fancies.
We came for water, Buttery Girl. Let us ll our jars.” e girls bent down to the
butcher-paper’s at blue pool and dipped their water jugs.
DOUG: I gave you the best part of my summers, Sylvia.
SYLVIA: (Her image is fading) Summer’s over, Doug.
DOUG: e summers of my discontent. (Suddenly remembering) Wait!
at was the rst summer I had Spam. Spam on white bread with mayo. Spam
chowder.
Volume 50.1 Alan Robert Proctor | 53
“How the living water is made beautiful with reections, Burden Maiden.
Visions are in it. And ripples of sweet song.” Both actors froze in position. e
butteries staggered to a halt.
Mirage Boy traipsed onstage to the largest boulder. My nephew placed an
anointing hand on the paper mache prop. “Such are the,” he took a shuddering
breath and continued, “natures of men.” He turned to Burden Maiden and
gestured at the pond with wooden arms, “For the one, life is but a” (breath) “pool
of chill and heavy water, a burden” (breath) “to be borne.” His pathetic delivery
reminded me of a horse ridden too hard that needed water and a good currying.
e boy crossed to the pool’s other side where Adele hunched over the
puckered paper. “For the other,” he curled his ngers into a claw, “like this pool,”
and then the digits soened into benediction, “life mirrors the beauty of Heaven’s
glow!” e lights came down on the motionless cluster of butteries, boulders,
waterfall pillars, and the three leads. Enthusiastic applause and whistling.
As previously invited, I headed backstage through the moldering curtain.
While the props and insects peeled o their wings and assorted brown or green
pajama bottoms, I sat down next to Stewart at the rickety table and clapped the
boy on the shoulder, “Good job,” I said. Adele glanced at him; he tried not to
smile. Best to just look cool, nod. “Forget the caviar,” I whispered in Stewart’s ear.
“Check out the Spam.” His questioning look made me want to hug him.
While the director debriefed, I took a few notes as a courtesy. Stewart kept
stealing peeks at Adele and then ducking his head. Gawking and ducking. She
looked past him, regally mute. McNeal droned on to the cast and crew.
DOUG: All the world’s a stage, Sylvia.
McNeal’s patter and his players’ replies were incomprehensible to me, like
radio news through oorboards.
SYLVIA: And all the men and women merely players.
I watched my nephew’s body language yearn for recognition. Adele’s silent,
dismissive response.
DOUG: Whining school boys with their satchels.
SYLVIA: e lover sighing like a furnace.
I pulled Sylvia’s RSVP from my back pocket, smiled at her disappearing
image, and ripped it up.
DOUG: And so we play our parts.
54 | Eric Pankey The Laurel Review
Outtakes from
The Newlywed Game
Eric Pankey
In the crowd around the victim, she is the one who admonishes: Give this poor
person room to breathe. He prefers a tender touch to an apology. She thinks he is
the one who should apologize. ey rst met, he says, because he sensed the gaze
of an unknown viewer. ey met, she says, because she had always wanted to be
a contestant on e Newlywed Game. Instead of scaring the crows, she reports,
once he tried to make them feel at home; the crows le in a hu, nonetheless,
over his inept hospitality. She insists that none of the resurrection sightings are
authentic, but are a manifestation of a group hallucination that moved like a
contagion among Jesus’ followers in their grief. Fair enough, he responds, noting
in his daybook yet another non sequitur on her part. Regarding making woopie,
she compares it to an algorithm that collapses into randomness. He compares it
to the water’s surface: fugitive, ethereal, a depth without reection. She shakes
her head no and says, you mean it is like a fog illumined from within, aglow yet
opaque. Yeah, he says. What she said.
Volume 50.1 Simon Perchik | 55
*
Simon Perchik
To not hear her leaving
and though this snapshot is wrinkled
it’s carried o in a shirt pocket
that never closes, stays with you
by reaching out as eyes
waiting for tears and emptiness
—you remember who lled the camera
except there was sunlight—a shadow
must say something, must want
to be lied, brought back, caressed
the way a well is dug for the dead
who want only water and each other
—you try, pull the corners closer
over and over folded till you are facing
the ground, the dry grass, her.
56 | Göran Malmqvist The Laurel Review
The Stone That Eats Sound
Göran Malmqvist
In a glade somewhere in Wales there lies a stone that eats sound. ere is nothing
that stone doesn’t devour—the roar of the storm when it tears through the forest,
the bawling of stags in rut, the calling of birds, the rustle of snakes crawling
through the tall grass, the eager barking of hunting dogs when they catch the
scent of the fox, the patter of pouring rain on the tin roof of the forester’s hut, the
drone of wild bees, the tattle of a young couple seeking shelter behind the stone in
order to make love in peace and the almost inaudible soughing under the wings
of brimstone butteries—all this is swallowed up by the stone. I like to believe
that a wanderer who sits down on that stone to rest will enjoy the greatest possible
silence.
A pregnant stone! A stone pregnant with sounds! What would happen if
a poor farmer who decided to break fresh ground in that glade drilled eighteen
deep holes in the stone and lled each hole with snail-dynamite. As everybody
well knows, snail-dynamite doesn’t explode. it expands sideways and causes the
stone to burst. When that happens, will then all the sounds that have been hidden
in the stone for hundreds or thousands of years suddenly pour forth from its
belly? What would happen then? Would the leaves be torn from the branches of
the trees? Would the wings of the brimstone butteries be torn from their bodies?
And all the animals in the forest, all the birds in the trees and all the reptiles on
the ground, what would happen to them? e mind boggles.
I have never visited that glade in Wales and have therefore never seen that
remarkable stone. But I do know that it is there. On the map of the world that the
Jesuit father Ferdinand Verbiest (1623−88) printed at the end of the 17th century,
when he served as Director of the Imperial Observatory in Peking, there are
several legends, written in Chinese. From one legend, written on that part of the
map that covers Ireland, we learn that there are no snakes on that island. at is
true. ere are no snakes in Ireland. Several other legends deal with matters that
do exist in the material world. Why then should I doubt the veracity of the legend
that says that there is a stone in a glade in Wales that eats sound? I want to believe
in Verbiest who is said to have been a very learned and highly cultivated man. I
would consider the world much poorer if I chose not to believe in him.
Volume 50.1 Louise Marburg | 57
The Querent
Louise Marburg
Though Wallington was considered a suburb of
New Haven, barely a twenty-minute drive from downtown, the xer-upper Joanne
and Lewis bought there sat on eight acres of wooded land. ere was a horse farm
that oered riding lessons a couple of miles down the road, and a roadside stand
nearby that sold local produce and pies. But I-95 was the same distance in the
opposite direction, beyond which was a Walmart and a treeless development of
modest homes. e village proper was further on toward the shore, a charming
collection of historic houses, antique shops, a granite-faced little library; a post
oce, the town hall, and a triangular village green. Joanne and Lewis moved
here from New York City three months before, when Lewis took a job teaching
architecture at Yale. Neither were truly city people: Joanne grew up on the edge of
Saint Louis and moved to New York aer college; Lewis was from Maine. His plan
was to buy a sloop in the spring, and sail it on Long Island Sound. Her plan was to
get pregnant as soon as she could. She would be thirty-six in June.
Black-haired and fair, with rosy lips and jewel-blue eyes, her looks were
the rst thing people noticed about her, and too oen the only thing: she had
discarded a dozen fawning boyfriends by the time she nally met Lewis. He was as
handsome as she was beautiful—blond and brown-eyed, her opposite match—but
he seemed as insensible to her beauty, and his own, as she was conscious of it. He
said he loved her, in part, because he thought she was intelligent, and she loved
him for thinking so. at he was smart was obvious. She wasn’t so sure about
herself anymore. She couldn’t make sense of the blueprints he drew up for the
renovations on the house, and when he described how a room would eventually
look, she couldn’t truly envision it. She was alone all day while he was at school,
the construction workers banging away. e living room was a forest of joists,
cotton candy insulation exploding from its walls, and the room she privately
58 | Louise Marburg The Laurel Review
thought of as the nursery was lled with paint cans and planks of wood. eir
foreman, Jake, a gargoyle of a man with a nose like a ngerling potato, spoke to
her more casually than she liked, but she didn’t want to say anything in case he
got oended and quit. Instead, she gave him the cold shoulder when he tried to
chat with her about anything other than the house, pretending that something
required her immediate attention: a phone call, and errand, a chore le undone.
“When will the house be nished?” she said as she and Lewis ate dinner in the
half-dismantled kitchen. “I’m tired of having these guys all over the place. I’d give
anything for a little privacy.”
“By summer?” he said.
She smiled. “You’re asking me?”
“No, I mean I’m guessing by summer. Hoping, anyway.”
“at seems like an eon,” she said. She twined spaghetti around her fork. A
dra from a nearby window blew across her neck. She shivered and said, “I can’t
wait until it’s done.”
“You’re reminding me of an Arab proverb I once heard,” he said. “‘When a
house is nished, death walks in.’”
“at’s awful!” she said. “Where did you hear such a terrible thing?”
“Egypt,” he said. “Or Dubai. I can’t remember.” He had worked for an
international architecture rm before joining the faculty at Yale. “It does sound
morbid, but I understand its meaning. A house can never truly be nished, there
is always something more to do—or redo, like that mess of a pool out there.”
He cocked his head toward the window over the sink and the kidney-shaped
swimming pool in the darkness beyond that hadn’t been lled in years. It was old
and cracked, moldy scum plugging its drain, its cement scarred by the skateboards
of the former owners’ three sons. “How they could stand looking at that ugly thing
every day is a mystery to me.”
“I look at it every day,” Joanne said, then regretted it. She knew what Lewis
would say next.
“How’s the job hunt been going?”
“Pretty fruitless,” she said. She had worked in public relations in New York.
“You might want to change your tack,” he said lightly. “Maybe look for
something a little dierent than straight up PR.”
“I guess so,” she murmured as she rose from the table and took their plates
to the sink. She had made a stab at nding a job in her eld when they rst moved
here in September, but since then she’d mostly been pretending to look, which she
realized Lewis very likely knew but didn’t mind enough to really press it. She’d
been successful and energetic when they lived in New York, but a lassitude had
crept over her the last couple of months, as if her thoughts were mired in the
Volume 50.1 Louise Marburg | 59
shoe-sucking mud that led up to the back door steps. Besides, there didn’t seem
to be any point in starting a new job when her most urgent ambition was to be
a mother. She liked hanging around in her yoga pants all day, cruising Facebook
and shopping online, culling information from pregnancy sites. If she held her
legs to her chest aer intercourse, the sperm would ow freely to her cervix,
and being entered from behind was more eective than any other position. She
used an ovulation predictor called, hopefully, Fertile Friend, a plastic stick like
a pregnancy test that read YES! in a little window on the days she was meant to
have sex.
“So what’s your preference?” Lewis said. “Resurrect the pool or bury it?”
She looked out the window at the ghostly outline of the pool and imagined
herself oating in it while a baby oated in her. “Let’s restore it,” she said. “I always
wanted a pool.” She hadn’t, in fact, but now it felt true.
❧ ❧ ❧
Instead of going to the gargantuan Stop and Shop and wandering the over-bright
aisles like a zombie, she oen drove the extra mile to Mike’s Grocery in the village.
Seasonal fruits nestled in tissue paper were displayed in boxes in the window, and
the only cookies Mike’s sold were various “biscuits” imported from England. It
reminded her of a specialty shop in New York where she used to buy a particular
brand of Indian chutney. Mike himself manned the meat section, a slim, youngish
man who wielded his knives with incongruously brutal hands.
“Have you seen who moved in next door?” he said as he wrapped her grass-
fed ground beef in white paper. “Where e Ivy bookstore used to be?” He rolled
his eyes and pointed his thumb. “A fortune teller,” he said in a disgusted tone.
“at’s what it’s come to in this town, a nice business goes bust, then they rent the
place to any nut-job who comes along.”
Joanne wondered who “they” were, but understood that was beside the
point. She paid for her meat and fancy cookies and walked through the February
slush to her car. Squinting up at the empty blue sky, she felt a eeting presage of
spring. As she put the groceries in the car’s trunk, she looked at the storefront
where e Ivy used to be. In New York, fortunetellers advertised themselves with
blinking neon hands, but the only sign here was a small placard in the window.
Delia Mann, Tarot, it read, By Appointment Only. A lace curtain obscured the
inside of the store. Joanne took her phone out of her purse and dialed the number
on the placard. Aer a few rings, a gravely voice answered.
“May I make an appointment?” Joanne said.
“Sure,” the voice said. “When would you like to come in?”
60 | Louise Marburg The Laurel Review
“Now,” Joanne said. “I’m standing outside.”
“Ring the bell,” the voice said. “I’ll buzz you in.”
Joanne pushed the door open when she heard a buzz. e bookshelves
and register counter had been removed, and now the shop was an open room. A
tapestry of a giant eye was tacked up on the back wall, while nail holes and pale
patches where pictures had hung marred the glossy eggshell paint on other walls.
e sunshine that ltered through the lace curtains dappled the room with jigsaw
shapes of light. ere was a sagging sofa covered by a owered slipcover, a low,
round brass table and a metal folding chair. e bookstore’s warm, papery smell
still lingered in the air.
“Excuse the décor,” the gravely voice said. “I just moved in last weekend.” A
woman appeared at a door in the corner that must have led to a storage room. She
was forced to step sideways across the threshold because she was too wide to walk
straight through. When she emerged, Joanne suppressed a breath of surprise: as
well as being astonishingly obese, her scalp was plainly visible beneath a sparse
covering of downy red hair. She waddled over to the sofa and plopped down on it
with a sigh. “And don’t pay attention to this ridiculous tapestry either, it’s covering
a hole in the wall. She turned to scowl at it. “It was a gi from a grateful querent,
I didn’t have the heart to throw it out.”
“What’s a querent?’ Joanne said.
“You are,” the woman said. “I’m Delia, by the way.” Joanne sat down in the
metal chair. She could feel its coldness through her jeans. She’d expected Delia to
be a black-eyed wraith with a scarf around her head.
Delia picked up a deck of brightly colored cards and expertly shued them
with bloated hands. Joanne felt a shiver of disgust. It was wrong of her, she knew,
but she disliked unattractive people.
“So, Joanne. What can I do for you?” Delia said.
“Oh, nothing specic,” Joanne said. “I’m just curious. I’ve never had my
fortune told before.” Delia put the cards on the table and dealt three. ey had
pictures on them, Joanne saw now.
“You’re not from here, are you,” Delia said. Joanne shook her head. “And
you’re not so happy here, either.”
“Oh, no, I am,” Joanne said in a bright voice. “I’ve been here ve months
already. Everything is great.”
Delia handed her the deck. “Shue these a few times and give them back to
me.” Joanne did as she asked. Delia laid out the rst ten o the top of the deck in
a formation like a cross.
“I see stasis,” Delia said. “Frustration. You want something you aren’t
getting.” She touched a card. “Oh my, you really are in a funk.”
Volume 50.1 Louise Marburg | 61
“No I’m not,” Joanne said. “Lots of exciting things are happening. We’re
xing up the house, and my husband has a new job. It’s all new, really. I’ve never
lived in the country before.” She craned her neck to look at the cards. Delia waved
her away.
“Listen. I can’t read your cards if you’re going to deny everything I say.
You’re not happy now, but you were happy in the past. ere’s a problem with
your man, though he looks like a nice enough guy.”
Joanne sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. “I want to get pregnant.
He doesn’t know I’m trying.”
Delia frowned. “Just out curiosity, why doesn’t he know?”
“Because he doesn’t want children,” Joanne said. She felt her eyes grow hot at
the memory of the bitter argument she and Lewis had about his refusal to consider
becoming a father. He was adamant. ey almost broke up. He’d had a miserable
childhood, his parents had neglected his simplest needs; he was afraid he’d be like
them, and hate himself if he was. Nothing she said made any dierence, so in the
end she pretended to accept his decision while planning to eventually change his
mind by giving him no choice in the matter. Her placid suburban upbringing had
prepared her for a conventional life. Childless women were pitiable or selsh, and
she didn’t think of herself as either. e face of their child appeared in her mind’s
eye: her blue eyes and unblemished skin, Lewis’s golden hair, his mischievous,
dimpled smile. Delia spread the deck across the table and asked Joanne to pick
three cards and give them to her. “I will tell you what I see,” she said as she looked
at the cards, holding them in her hand like a fan. “You will get pregnant soon, but
not by this man of yours.”
“at’s impossible,” Joanne said.
“Some things seem impossible until they happen,” Delia said. “And even
then they can be hard to believe.”
“Okay, for argument’s sake, say I wanted to have an aair,” Joanne said.
“Who would I have it with? I don’t know anyone in this town except the workers
at my house and the grocer next door, and I’m certainly not interested in them.
I love my husband; I wouldn’t consider cheating on him. I’m not that kind of
woman.”
“I can see that as well,” Delia said, placing the cards face down on the table.
Joanne picked up her purse from the oor. She’d made a mistake coming in here,
but she hadn’t had anything better to do. e aernoon yawned like a lazy cat. She
would go home and eat her cookies. “What do I owe you for this?”
“is?” Delia chuckled. “Nothing. You haven’t been here more than ten
minutes.”
62 | Louise Marburg The Laurel Review
Joanne zipped up her parka and turned to go. Delia called to her as she
walked out the door, but she kept going as if she didn’t hear. As she stood on the
sidewalk in the blinding sunshine, she forgot where she was for a moment. en
she recognized her car, a forest green Jeep Lewis bought her when they moved to
Wallington. Mike came out of his store wearing a blood stained white apron.
“Did I just see you go into that fortune teller’s?” he said. “Why in the world
did you do that?”
“I was curious,” she said.
“So, what did you nd out?”
“Nothing,” she said. “She’s a phony.”
❧ ❧ ❧
YES! read the Fertile Friend one morning in early March. It was thirteen days past
her period. Swathes of brown grass had appeared in the snow, and the pool was
half-full of murky meltwater and humps of rotten leaves. She wrapped the stick in
toilet paper, buried it in the trash, and got back into bed with Lewis.
“Let’s fuck,” she said to his back.
He turned over and looked at her with sleep-crusted eyes. “But you hate
having sex in the morning.”
“Not always,” she said. “Not today.”
“I have to get up, I have an early class.” Even so, he rolled onto her.
“at’s what I’m taking about,” she said with a laugh. He didn’t take very
long, but the weight of his body was satisfaction enough; pleasure wasn’t the
point. When he was done, he got up and went to take a shower. She pulled her
knees to her chest and lay still for ten minutes. She had read on the internet that
it could take a year to conceive, and her doctor said it might be dicult because
she wasn’t young and had never been pregnant. What the doctor didn’t know was
that she’d had an abortion when she was in college. Lewis didn’t know it either.
She was ashamed and regretful now that she wanted a baby so much: she could
have had a teenage son or daughter. But the father had been her Ancient History
professor, forty-two and married. He hadn’t even been especially good-looking,
but he was crazy about her and she’d had an urge to be wild. She cringed when she
thought about how promiscuous she’d been in her twenties, reveling in her power
to attract men. But she only had sex with the professor once. “Once is all it takes,”
the doctor at the clinic had said.
“Yeah, I wish,” she said, remembering. Bespectacled and pimply-faced and
embryonically young, he’d looked more like a math club nerd than a doctor. Elliot
W. Graham, M.D. had been his name. She didn’t think she’d ever forget it.
Volume 50.1 Louise Marburg | 63
Releasing her knees, she stretched out her legs beneath the covers.
“You wish what,” Lewis said as he came out of the bathroom.
She thought a beat. She heard one of the worker’s trucks pull up outside.
ere was a whining creak, then a bang. “I wish we had the house to ourselves.”
Lewis looked out the window. He loved the house and the surrounding
acres; he was proud of his renovations. “You’ll have your wish before the grass in
that eld is green. Even before then, if we’re lucky.”
“I’m lucky already,” she said. “I’ve got you, haven’t I?” She sat up in bed. “Do
you love me?”
He grinned at her as he tucked in his shirt. “More than life itself.”
Aer he le, she got up, took a shower, and put on her yoga pants and a thick
turtleneck sweater. She went to the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coee,
took her time reading the newspaper at the table. She had absolutely nothing to
do until Lewis came home: the directions that came in the Fertile Friend box
suggested she have sex at least twice on the day the test stick read YES!
A workman was installing the backsplash behind the sink with multicolored
tiles she and Lewis had carefully chosen and ordered from a factory in Italy. She
watched him smear grout on the walls with a at trowel and place the tiles side by
side. His jeans drooped as if they were barely tacked on to his narrow, bony hips.
He couldn’t have been older than eighteen, she thought, and probably related to
Jake somehow by the look of his dishwater hair and beady dun-colored eyes.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “You’re lining up those tiles in the wrong order.”
She got up and went to the sink. “Look. ey’re meant to form a picture of fruit in
a bowl. First that one, then that one next to it—oh my God, this is all wrong.” She
clasped her forehead and sighed. “Quick, take them o before the grout sets.” As
he peeled the tiles o the wall, she said, “Where is Jake?”
“Out in the garage cutting molding,” he said.
She stalked out of the house, slamming the door behind her. ough it was
only a short walk to the garage and the day was relatively mild, she was surprised
by how windy it was and wished she’d put on a coat. She ducked low beneath the
partially raised door and shouted Jake’s name over the high whine of the table saw.
He turned o the saw and removed his goggles. He wiped his potato nose
with the back of his hand. “What’s the prob?” he said in the familiar tone that
drove Joanne around the bend.
“e prob?” Joanne said. “I’ll tell you what the prob is. You’ve got that kid
in there setting the backsplash tiles all out of order. Why didn’t you tell him how
they’re supposed to go?”
“You’re sexy when you’re all riled up,” Jake said.
Joanne blinked and stepped back. “Excuse me? What did you just say?”
64 | Louise Marburg The Laurel Review
“I said you’re sexy when you’re mad,” he said
“How dare you speak to me like that,” she said.
He smiled as if they had a secret between them. “Tell the truth, Joanne, I
know you’ve heard it before. I bet you get a lot of compliments.”
She stared at him in disbelief. She wished she had her phone with her so she
could call Lewis. “You’re red,” she said. “Take your equipment and go.”
“Oh, come on,” Jake said. “I’m just joking around. Can’t you take a joke?”
He put down the molding strip he’d been cutting on the saw. His hands were gray
with grime, the half moons of his ngernails black. “I thought we were friends,
you and me.”
“I can’t imagine why you thought that,” Joanne said, and turned to go. She
felt his hand on her shoulder. “Get o,” she said, pulling away. Her sweater was
marked by a greasy smear.
“Aw, don’t be mad,” he said. “Truce, okay? You’re a nice woman. I’ve done
a great job for you, haven’t I?” He squeezed her upper arm. His touch enraged
her; she wanted to slap his ugly face, which had turned from genial to stony like a
cloud passing over the sun. “Aren’t you the princess,” he said in a disdainful voice.
“You ounce around here in your tight pants all day as if me and my guys don’t
exist. But we see you, darlin’; you’re an eyeful. A cock tease is what you are, and I
bet I’m not the rst man to say so. Your shit doesn’t stink, that’s what you think.
Can’t take the time to even say hello.”
“is is my house!” she said confusedly. “I can wear whatever I want.”
“Say, why don’t you go to work like everybody else?” he said. “You don’t do
diddly all day. I’ve seen you fooling around on the computer. I bet you’re looking
at porn.”
“What?” Joanne said. “Porn? Only disgusting men like you --” She stopped
herself. His face was a mask, inhuman and surreal.
“You know what?” he whispered, pulling her roughly to his chest. “I think
about you when I jerk o.” ere was a sickly-sweet scent on his breath that
brought a gag to her throat. e startlingly yellow whites of his eyes were shot
through with crimson tributaries. He was ill, she realized; something was rotting
inside him. His skin was colorless, his cheeks sunken hollows.
She turned her face away from the stench of his breath, truly frightened
now, and said, “Stop it, Jake, please. I’ll pay you whatever you want to make up for
the lost work, okay? I’ll pay your guys, too, you don’t have to worry.”
Abruptly, he reached out and wrenched up her sweater so that its turtleneck
covered her head. He grabbed her wrists and pulled them painfully behind her
back, kicked her behind her knees so she would drop to the frigid concrete oor.
She couldn’t see and could barely breath through the impenetrable knit of the
Volume 50.1 Louise Marburg | 65
sweater; she felt the heat of her own breath as she screamed. He pushed her head
to the oor with one hand and dragged o her pants with the other. His sandpaper
ngers rasped her hips. She crawled away from him; he pulled her back. Grasping
at the concrete as if it were cloth, she ailed out with one leg and kicked him hard
in the stomach.
“Cunt,” she heard him say through a groan. Something heavy hit the side of
her head.
When she came to, he was gone. So was the saw. e oor was furred with
yellow sawdust and littered with shards of wood. She touched her head and felt
a pain so searing it was as if the skin beneath her hair was on re; there was a
sticky wetness between her legs that she didn’t immediately understand. With
aching arms, she pulled on her pants, got to her feet, and pressed the button that
lied the garage door. Sunlight poured in; she stepped dizzily into the wind and
felt an overwhelming urge to vomit. She took a moment to steady herself before
staggering across the yard, a blur of gray snow and muddy grass, her ragged
breathing the only sound. Her phone was on the kitchen table. With trembling
ngers, she dialed 911 and recited her name and address. Now she would have to
wait. Pressing her hands against her roiling stomach, she stood as still as a startled
doe.
66 | Gary McDowell The Laurel Review
Marriage and
Gary McDowell
Wooden slats and a woman and.
Here is where the ocean moves,
linen as host, as roost—limbs
poured through. Mercenary is what
water is. Hug the lampshade,
gather in sts the below her
skirt. Don’t be afraid—the walls
of this room wear moonlight and.
Even if you never never. e froth
made by hard rain stokes the miles
you walked to nd me, the bridge
you crossed ecked with passers-by.
Volume 50.1 Paul Dickey | 67
Be Careful What You Desire When
in Despair
Paul Dickey
No doubt he had asked for it. ough it is not the kind of thing one admits freely.
If he were given a true choice, he would of course deny it all. He would say there
were circumstances. He was a little down and out. No big deal. A wrong man sat
in front of him on the bus and a woman had disagreed with him about a movie.
He had dug himself into a deep hole. He was facing a brick wall, which was a
cliché but that didn’t make it any easier. He had painted himself into the famous
corner. He had lost his own way rushing home in the rain. His mother had to be
somewhere. It was just this job. He had made a poor judgment and what could he
do? His father might own the stock market but that was no help. In retrospect he
could see that it was just when things were starting to work out for the best, too—
when he found himself on the train heading for a suburb. He was sweating
profusely, relatively speaking. It was totally Hollywood. He was a continent
away from Hollywood. In some versions of the story recently discovered in his
old manuscript les donated to the library aer his death, there were noises of a
frightful nature. It was enough to confuse anyone about things like love. Someone
on a bench was writing a letter that we know now no one will ever read. Someone
spoke in tattoos. A couple was obviously French kissing, but he is pretty sure he
was not involved in any of that. A glass window kept asking the time. Oh yes,
and there was a God who kept talking and talking, questioning him about what
exit he might take. Or a Ph.D. committee wondered but at some point could stop
wondering if there was an auto repair shop or perhaps a Dairy Queen close by.
A story like this could go on forever and almost does. So a breathtaking but still
a normal young lady—perhaps a goddess to him—and of some future is seen
shortly thereaer and looks at him, it would seem to many, happily ever aer.
68 | Christopher Citro The Laurel Review
The Low Crumble of
Distant Applause
Christopher Citro
In this new house we’re visited regularly by giants.
Some explanation. e giants, for one, are very small.
At least that is how they appear to us—so close to the sky,
etched against blue folded into clouds. And by visit
I mean, of course, watched over. But it can feel like
a visitation when, for instance, you are standing
on the red deck high above the lawn waking up,
and your new haircut utters in the breeze.
From inside the kitchen, standing above greasy water,
I look through the screen and see you—frightening
in your precisely dened beauty, your white shirt
a sail catching and inging back the sun and wind,
through this window screen, through the thin bone of
my forehead. And through the mile of heavy air
above us where the miniature people eating peanuts
look down and feel glad because of a eck of light
against the red and green and do not even know
why. I know why.
Volume 50.1 Mark Halliday & Martin Stannard | 69
The Visitors
Mark Halliday & Martin Stannard
(A humdrum big old house in a humdrum suburb. Brendie and Jock are at the
kitchen table. e kitchen smells of eggs. Brendie and Jock are y-something.)
Brendie: Another egg?
Jock: I’m ne with just a bit of toast, now.
Brendie: I wonder if Percy will be down.
Jock: Sleeps later and later, doesn’t he?
Brendie: If it’s sleeping. When I pass his door . . .
Jock: Scoot me the jelly, love.
Brendie: He’s talking, sometimes. To himself.
But in two voices, like.
Jock: A nervous sort of man. But he pays regular.
(Loud knock at the front door. Brendie is startled. She goes to answer it.)
Brendie: Gentlemen—what can I do for you?
(Enter Goldbuck and McCrum. ey are large beefy men wearing dark suits. eir
manner is casual and brusque.)
Goldbuck: It’s a bed and breakfast, isn’t it?
Brendie: Certainly it is. But–
McCrum: I adore breakfast. Favorite meal of the day.
Brendie: e thing is, gentlemen, I only have one room free,
as it happens.
Goldbuck: Because you have lodgers.
Brendie: Two lodgers, yes. Miss Adelaide, and–
70 | Mark Halliday & Martin Stannard The Laurel Review
Goldbuck: And Mr. Percy.
Brendie: Oh, do you–
McCrum: We’re friends of old Percy, in a manner of speaking.
(Goldbuck and McCrum walk past Brendie and sit down in the kitchen, ignoring
Jock who is uneasy, almost choking on his toast. Two hours pass, during which time
Jock eats toast, Brendie making sure he has a constant supply of toast and jelly, and
Goldbuck and McCrum sit silently.)
(Enter Percy, yawning and scratching his groin area. He is a small weasel of a man,
around 45, wearing a teeshirt and boxers. He ignores everyone, although they are all
watching him, and helps himself to coee from the pot simmering on the counter. He
stands sipping his coee and staring out the kitchen window. en he puts down the
cup and exits up the stairs.)
Jock: He’s not very sociable, I’d have to say.
Brendie: I do wish he’d put more clothes on if he’s going to wander
around the house.
McCrum: He’s changed.
Goldbuck: He’s lost a lot of weight.
McCrum: He doesn’t look like the same person.
Goldbuck: Can people shrink that much?
McCrum: Well, losing weight I don’t have an issue with. A man can
lose weight over the years. But I never heard of a man
getting six inches shorter before.
Goldbuck: So what you’re saying is–
McCrum: Wrong man.
Goldbuck: at’s bloody odd cheese.
Brendie: Is our Mr. Percy not your Mr. Percy, then?
McCrum: Not precisely.
Goldbuck: But he might do.
Brendie: Do? Do for what? All he cares about is the football scores
and his pet hamsters. I can’t think what he could do for you.
Goldbuck: He can go to a certain oce, and say he’s Percy, and
deliver a certain bag, and collect a certain briefcase.
at’s what he can do.
McCrum: You talk too much.
Volume 50.1 Mark Halliday & Martin Stannard | 71
(Enter Miss Adelaide, a tall angular woman who believes she has supernatural
intuition and visionary powers. She speaks to Goldbuck and McCrum.)
Miss Adelaide: If you want my advice you’ll abandon your dastardly plan
and go straight, or it’s prison for both of you. I can see it
as plain as plain can be.
Brendie: at’s right. Miss Adelaide is never wrong.
Miss Adelaide: I predicted Chernobyl. Months in advance.
I could smell it, like.
(Goldbuck and McCrum glance at each other. ey both pull large black guns from
their jackets and place the guns on the table.)
Miss Adelaide: You won’t be using those. I’m not frightened at all!
Brendie: She’s never been wrong, our Adelaide.
Jock: Not once. I might enjoy a bit more toast, Brendie.
Goldbuck: You people don’t seem to get it.
McCrum: We represent something. We represent dark forces.
Dark forces lurk behind the façade of middle-class culture,
in a manner of speaking. Like nightmares.
Goldbuck: Rising up.
McCrum: From the depths of the repressed.
Goldbuck: We are overwhelmingly ominous.
Miss Adelaide: Not to me! Because I know who’s about to knock at the door!
(Two hours pass. Nobody moves.)
Miss Adelaide: I can’t think what’s happened. I was sure somebody was
going to knock at the door.
Goldbuck: Now do you get it?
McCrum: If you don’t get it I can spell it out for you, but I think
you get it.
Goldbuck: You must get it now. We don’t like having to explain it.
McCrum: Explaining it can get messy.
Goldbuck: And complicated.
McCrum: Very complicated.
Goldbuck: Words oen seem inadequate when it comes to explaining it.
Brendie: It’s a bit chilly in here, I think. Jock, is it chilly?
Where’s my shawl?
72 | Mark Halliday & Martin Stannard The Laurel Review
Miss Adelaide: Shhh. I’m listening for a knock.
(A loud gunshot is heard upstairs. Goldbuck and McCrum stand up and move a step
toward the stairs with their guns. A second gunshot is heard.)
Goldbuck: First one went askew, it might be.
McCrum: Had to tidy up, he did.
Jock: A nervous sort of man.
(Goldbuck and McCrum move to the door.)
Goldbuck: ink you can forget us?
McCrum: Erased, so to say it. Wiped clean. Like Jock’s crumbs
o the table.
Goldbuck: at’s the ticket.
(Goldbuck and McCrum suddenly exit.)
Miss Adelaide: Upstairs—upstairs–
Brendie: Hush now, Adelaide. Your show comes on in ve minutes.
e day went fast!
CURTAIN
Volume 50.1 Don Zancanella | 73
The Badger
Don Zancanella
Last summer i discovered a badger living in the field
behind my house. If you don’t know what a badger looks like, think of a small, at
bear with a pointy nose, razor-sharp teeth, and large front feet capable of digging
fast and deep. Or maybe an ill-tempered, subterranean raccoon.
e house wasn’t technically mine—it was a rental my husband Roger and I
owned, into which I’d moved aer he told me he was in love with a woman named
Paige. I wasn’t surprised to learn about Paige. I’d managed to marry a man who
was self-centered and abusive, so why not add unfaithful to the list? Walking out
on him felt more satisfying than letting him walk out on me, even if the place I
went to was a crappy little two-bedroom bungalow on the edge of town. As for the
badger, his burrow was in the vacant lot between the bungalow’s back door and a
stretch of blacktop where high school kids raced their cars on Saturday nights.
You can tell if a hole belongs to a badger simply by its size. ey’re usually
about the diameter of a dinner plate, with a well-sculpted berm around the rim.
e rst time I noticed the one behind my house I’d been having trouble sleeping
and had gone outside just before sunrise, hiking up the legs of my pajamas as
I walked through the dew-soaked weeds. When I came upon the hole I looked
inside but couldn’t see beyond the rst bend. I gured it must belong to an
unusually large rabbit because I knew nothing of badgers and there is in the minds
of most urbanized Americans a hierarchy of animals one can reasonably expect to
encounter: rst, dogs, cats, and birds; followed by rabbits and the smaller rodents
such as squirrels and mice; or, if you live in the West as I do, prairie dogs. Which
is to say, when you glimpse an animal near your house you’ll consider many other
possibilities before the word badger comes to mind.
I heard him before I saw him. It was a fearsome snarl, directed at me because
he was coming home aer a night of hunting and I was between him and his
74 | Don Zancanella The Laurel Review
hole. At rst I assumed it was a dog but then I turned and thought “How novel,
a badger,” and then, “Shit, I’m going to get bitten by a badger,” by which time I
was backpedaling and trying to remove a ip-op because I wanted something
to defend myself with even if it was only a rubber shoe. As I retreated, he began
to advance, moving in the odd, low-to-the ground manner I’ve come to think
of as badger-motion, like a big hairbrush on wheels. I said “shoo” or “get away,”
or something equally inane, and then, just as I was about to scream, he dashed
toward his burrow and disappeared underground.
As soon as I caught my breath, my fear disappeared and was replaced by
exhilaration. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t get excited about encountering
wildlife, especially when it happens in or near town.
I think humans have a need to connect to the natural world that is seldom
adequately met. You don’t have to be a conrmed nature-lover to feel it—just an
ordinary suburbanite who stumbles upon a creature—not a moth or a mouse, but
a creature of substance—running free.
At work the next day, I told Sue about the badger but she didn’t seem very
interested. I wasn’t surprised. Hearing about someone else’s encounter with a wild
animal isn’t much more interesting than looking at a photo in a magazine.
“Have you ever seen one?” I asked.
“I haven’t. Aren’t they supposed smell bad?”
“Like a skunk? I don’t think so. is one didn’t. At least not that I noticed.”
“What about rabies? You’ll be sorry if you get bit.”
“I don’t plan to get close enough for that to happen. I just thought it was
interesting. Not y feet from my back door.”
During my break, I looked up badgers on the internet and discovered that
they are “nocturnal, omnivorous, and reclusive.” So I felt an immediate kinship:
for the last few months, I’ve been all three.
at night I went down to the burrow again but the badger wasn’t there.
Over the next few days, in an eort to get him to show himself, I started leaving
food. Half a peanut butter sandwich, some tuna salad, whatever I had on hand. I’d
set the plate on the ground at dusk and then back way o, almost to the deck. Sure
enough, he started coming out of his hole to gobble it up. However, before he ate,
he always surveyed the area with great care. He was as aware of me as I was of him.
At rst I wasn’t sure whether to call the badger it, her, or him but eventually
I settled on him. I’m not sure why. Is there something inherently male about
badgers? Roger was not at all badger-ish. If I had to liken him to an animal, it
would be a cockroach. ere was a particular hideousness about him. His jaws
where like mandibles, his back was like a carapace, and when he was on top of me
during sex, I oen felt as though he had six multi-jointed legs, all of them
Volume 50.1 Don Zancanella | 75
ailing. ey say that when the human race has been annihilated by some human-
caused event, cockroaches will inherit the earth. Centuries from now, aer global
warming has burnt us or boiled us or skin-cancered us to death, all that will
remain are the descendants of Roger and his cockroach-mate Paige.
Once my nightly feedings had begun drawing the badger out of his hole on
a regular basis, I placed my lawn chair halfway between his burrow and the deck
so I could observe. I discovered he liked spaghetti best. It was quite a spectacle—
he’d emerge from his hole, patrol the area, feast on the spaghetti with gusto, and
then disappear into the trees that bordered the eld—where, if the internet was
correct, he’d hunt all night. His front feet were enormous. I wished I could see him
dig.
In another life, I’d have been a good zoologist. Or better yet, a director
of wildlife documentaries for public television. at would certainly have been
more fullling than working in a paint store. “Which do you think is better, Apple
Orchard or Sea Mist?” the customer would ask. “I’d go with the Sea Mist but
you’re the one who has to live with it,” I’d reply. Compare that to hiking into the
wilderness to get some footage of a pack of wolves.
So taken was I with my badger-watching that I could occasionally get
through an entire evening without thinking about Roger. But then, almost as if
he knew I was beginning to forget about him, he started coming to the house
unannounced. e rst time it was to mow the lawn.
“I drove by here the other day and saw the grass needed to be cut,” he said.
“It won’t take long.” He was standing on the front porch, still in a shirt with his
name on it from work. I wanted to tell him to get o my property but he was part
owner of it and telling him to get o our property wouldn’t have packed the same
punch. Instead I said, “No it’s okay, I can handle it. I’ve been busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Doing whatever I feel like doing. As oen as I want.” I didn’t tell him about
the badger so as not invite ridicule. He’d have considered it evidence my life had
gone o the rails.
“If this place goes to hell we won’t be able to sell it,” he said, shaking his head
in disgust. “Of course if you want to stay here permanently, you can buy my half.”
“Once the lawyers get involved, you may not have a half to sell.” I had no
idea if that was true but it was the sort of thing I thought one was supposed to say.
“Don’t be such a bitch,” he said. en he went to the garage, got out the mower,
and started pulling on the starter rope in a manner I was quite familiar with—a
manner that said, “Seeing as you’re a lazy slut, I’m going to take care of this for
you, but you‘d best stay out of my way.”
76 | Don Zancanella The Laurel Review
I stood on the front porch and watched him cut the grass, marching back
and forth and muttering. I wondered what Paige thought about him coming to
see me. Maybe he hadn’t told her. Or maybe she was so secure in her position she
didn’t care.
Aer he was gone I went out back and looked for the badger. I didn’t see him,
but I could feel his presence. It occurred to me then that I liked having something
Roger didn’t know about, something that was mine and not even partly his, a
secret animal friend.
Roger and I met when he worked at the paint store. But he didn’t like the
owner so he quit and got a job managing the plumbing department at a big home
center. at’s where he met Paige. I was rst attracted to Roger because he rescued
me from another guy. But that meant I didn’t evaluate him as rigorously as I
should have. By the time I gured out what he was really like we were married.
I kept expecting him to mellow, but somewhere deep inside him was a reservoir
of anger that was always full. For the last six months we were together, I was
genuinely afraid. Split lip, black eye, sprained wrist afraid. Aer we separated,
I felt a deep sense of relief. erefore I was not at all pleased when I realized
the lawn-mowing visit was the beginning of a trend. Aer work, just when I was
sitting down to relax, the phone would ring:
“Is there a bag of fertilizer in the garage or should I bring one from the
store?”
“I think there’s some in the garage, but I don’t know how much. I’m heading
out to a movie so if you’re coming over, I won’t be here.” I hadn’t intended to go to
a movie but to avoid contact with him I was willing to change my plans.
“By yourself?”
“By myself. But feel free to fertilize. Fertilize away.”
When I got home from the movie it was dark, but there was enough light
from the moon for me to see the white granules of fertilizer on the sidewalk where
he’d overshot the lawn. Before our separation, when we’d rented this place to a
young teacher and his wife, he hadn’t cared what condition the grass was in. But
now he seemed to have an unrelenting urge to keep it manicured and green.
e next day something interesting happened. I was talking to Sue about
Roger and she said, “Guess what! I met Paige. It turns out she’s taking the same
exercise class as me. We were chatting and I discovered who she was. She said
some pretty funny things about Roger.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t remember her exact words, but it was something to the eect that
she started dating him because she wanted a man she could feel superior to. And
Volume 50.1 Don Zancanella | 77
then as soon as she realized what she’d said, we both laughed. I think you’d like
her if you met her. It sounded to me like she’s over Roger or will be pretty soon.”
“Ah, now I understand. Paige isn’t working out. at explains his sudden
obsession with my lawn.”
“I’d stay away from him. You’ll end up calling the police again.”
“He comes over without being asked. e place is partly his so he uses that
as an excuse.”
“Can’t you just go inside and lock the door.”
“at would really piss him o. He doesn’t like obstacles. He hates being
told what he’s not allowed to do.”
I was pretending to be unconcerned, but now that I knew Paige was backing
o, I was alarmed. He was planning to come back to me, whether I wanted him or
not.
Aer work, fearing he’d call again, I turned o my phone and drove to the
public library where I asked the librarian if she could help me nd some books
about badgers. For some reason she assumed I wanted children’s books. In a
matter of minutes she came back with Wind in the Willows and a picture book
called Bedtime for Frances. She was so pleased to be able to help me I couldn’t
bring myself to tell her they weren’t what I had in mind. But it didn’t really matter.
e main reason I went there was to avoid Roger. e books were just to keep me
occupied while I killed time.
“Do you want to check them out?” the librarian asked.
“Not yet. I’d like to sit down and look at them rst.”
“at’s ne. If I think of any others I’ll bring them over.”
I started with the picture book. It was about a little girl badger named
Frances who kept coming up with new reasons not to go to bed. Like many
animals in children’s books, Frances had almost no animal characteristics—she
was simply a child with fur. Next I opened Wind in the Willows. Before I’d nished
reading three pages, I realized I’d read it before, when I was a child myself. It all
began to come back to me—how Toad tells Mole not to bother Badger because
he’s a recluse and a grouch, how Mole goes to visit him anyway and is welcomed
into Badger’s home, and how Badger eventually helps them defeat the weasels
and stoats. Once again the characters dressed and talked like humans but in this
book, I had a sense the author knew something about real badgers, acquired from
actual encounters in the wild. When Rat and Mole show up at Badger’s door, he
says, “Who is it this time, disturbing people on such a night? Speak up!” But as
soon as he realizes who it is, he welcomes them inside. It reminded me of how my
own badger seemed suspicious of me at rst but then became more tolerant of my
presence. Of course I’d helped things along with plates of food.
78 | Don Zancanella The Laurel Review
Both books made me think about anthropomorphizing—how oen we all
do it and how dicult it is to avoid. My badger didn’t wear pajamas and sleep in
a human bed, but I certainly pictured him thinking about the world in ways not
so dierent from my own. Surely he mused about the weather and about the tasks
ahead of him on any given day. Surely he had memories of his past and, if not
hopes in the human sense, then something like desires and fears.
When I got back from the library, Roger’s car wasn’t there, but the side gate
was open. Once again, he’d been doing yard work. However, this time I wished
I’d been there to stop him. For some reason he’d run the mower across the eld
almost up to where the badger lived, stopping only a few feet short of the burrow. I
felt sorry for the badger. He’d probably been terried to have such a loud machine
come so close to his home.
I put out some spaghetti but he never showed. I hoped he’d gone hunting
early, before Roger arrived. It occurred to me that even if a human had no lawn
mower, no weed-whacker or rake, it still must be disconcerting for a creature to
have its face at ankle-height. A big part of how we relate to others is based on
looking them in the eyes. With a dog or cat we crouch down or pick them up in
our arms when we want to really communicate. I wished I was brave enough to lie
down in the weeds and approach the badger on his own level. But I was afraid I’d
get my nose bitten o.
Later that night, when I was getting ready for bed, Roger called. I picked up
because if I hadn’t, he might have decided to come over yet again. He’d have said
he was worried about me and I denitely didn’t want that.
“anks for mowing the weeds,” I said.
“You’d just let ‘em grow, wouldn’t you?”
“It’s a vacant lot.”
For a moment I considered telling him about the badger—I wanted him to
feel guilty about disturbing it—but I knew that would be mistake.
“I suppose you were at a movie again,” he said. “Maybe next time I can come
a l on g .”
“Roger, that doesn’t make sense. Why don’t you take Paige to a movie?”
“Don’t talk about her. Do not.”
At lunch the next day, Sue said, “Paige is coming here this aernoon. We’re
going to class together. is is your chance to see what she’s like.”
Before she arrived I spent some time in front of the mirror. I knew we’d be
sizing each other up. But she wasn’t as attractive as I expected. She had a pretty
face but needed a more appealing hair style. On the other hand, compared to her
I dressed like a frump.
Volume 50.1 Don Zancanella | 79
“I’m probably more fascinated to meet you than you are to meet me,” I
said as I shook her hand. “When you live with someone for six years you lose
perspective. I’m curious about what another person thinks.”
At rst she seemed taken aback but then she shrugged. “He’s okay. But we
don’t share many interests. I guess I’m not even sure what his interests are. One
thing I’ll say, he needs to get rid of that temper. I can’t imagine how you put up
with that.”
Aer she was gone, I found myself feeling almost sorry for Roger. Paige was
less tolerant than me, as well as better at perceiving his aws. It seemed obvious
she was nearly done with him. He wouldn’t take well to being told he didn’t
measure up.
I went home looking forward to my upcoming day o. But when I woke up
the next morning Roger’s car was parked outside. Apparently he’d decided that
one way to keep me from avoiding him was to start working on the yard while I
was still in bed.
He puttered around for an hour or two, cleaning out gutters and repairing
the garden fence. en just before noon I looked out and saw him uncoiling the
hose in an alarmingly purposeful manner.
I opened the back door and said, “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m going to get rid of that badger for you. I plan to drown it out.”
I was shocked. I didn’t think he even knew about it. e casualness with
which he spoke was pure Roger—vicious and nonchalant at the same time. I had
a strong urge to get in my car and drive away. But I needed to think about the
badger’s well-being as well as my own.
“You don’t need to do that. He hasn’t caused any problems. I like having him
ar o u nd .”
Roger pretended he hadn’t heard me—an unmistakable sign his temper was
heating up. I watched in dismay as he dragged the hose to the burrow and shoved
it down inside. en he went back toward the garage where the spigot was.
I came down o the deck, pleading as I went: “Please Rog, don’t do this. I
told you, he’s not hurting anything. Why do you care? You have no right.”
“I don’t want an animal like that on our property,” he said, opening the
valve. “ey carry diseases. It’ll get into the trash.”
By then I’d reached the hose and tried to pull it out of the burrow, but he
jerked it away from me and shoved it back in.
“Goddamn it, stop,” I said. “You’re going to hurt the badger. I can see why
Paige is losing interest. You don’t fucking listen and you don’t fucking care.”
I didn’t think I’d said anything remarkable, but it was enough to rattle him.
He dropped the hose and came at me. “You pathetic cunt,” he said, grabbing the
80 | Don Zancanella The Laurel Review
front of my shirt. en, just as I was beginning to consider how I could avoid
getting hit, I heard a scrabbling in the undergrowth beneath the trees nearby,
followed by a noise like a garbage disposal chewing glass—a noise that seemed to
be coming toward us at a high rate of speed.
Roger’s face was inches from mine and I watched his expression change. His
eyes got wide and fearful as the muscles in his cheeks drew back. An instant later
the badger made contact and Roger started to shriek:
“Get it o me, get it o. Jesus fucking oh my god get it o.”
His knees began to buckle and he ailed wildly as he went down. I wrenched
his hand o my shirt and let him fall. What I saw when I stepped back was a
brown ball of fur in a frenzy, tearing at the esh below Roger’s knee. Roger kicked
and tried to scramble away but the badger kept at him. en suddenly the badger
released him and disappeared into his burrow.
Roger remained on his back, holding his knee with both hands. Blood
surged through his ngers. “Goddamn it, get me something,” he said.
But at that moment all my sympathy was with the badger. He must have
found it upsetting—horrifying even—to see his home being attacked. While
Roger lay there quivering, I unearthed a stone and held it above my head. e
stone was the size of a soball, just large enough, if I used all my strength, to crack
his despicable skull.
“What?” he said.
“What? I’ll tell you what. Leave the fucking badger alone.” en I tossed the
stone aside, turned o the spigot, and watched from the deck until he was gone. I
hoped the water hadn’t damaged the burrow much.
at evening Roger called. He said, “I spent half the day at the emergency
room. I had to get eleven stitches. Now I need to catch that thing so it can be tested
for rabies. Otherwise they’ll have to treat me as if I’ve got the disease.”
“I’ve heard that can be painful.”
“So have I. And fuck you. I’ll be over tomorrow with a trap.”
e instant I was o the phone, I drove to Walmart and bought a pet carrier,
the heavy-duty plastic kind with a metal door. en I cooked up a pot of spaghetti.
I placed the carrier near the badger’s hole, put the spaghetti in the carrier, and set
up my lawn chair to wait. I wanted to be far enough away to avoid scaring him but
close enough to get the door shut aer he went in. I sat for a long time. It got dark
and the stars appeared. I slept and woke up and slept again. Just as the sun was
coming up, he emerged from his burrow. I’d been assuming he was o hunting,
but Roger and the hose had upset the poor thing so much he’d remained in his
half-ooded home all night.
Volume 50.1 Don Zancanella | 81
As usual, he couldn’t resist a plate of spaghetti. He waddled straight over
to the carrier, spent a few seconds checking it out, and disappeared inside. I was
able to sneak up, swing the door closed, and get it latched before he turned. Of
course he was enraged. ere was growling and spitting and snapping and such
furious lunging I was afraid the carrier would break at the seams. But eventually
he calmed down. I sat beside the carrier and spoke to him in a soothing voice:
“What a handsome fellow you are. I’ll take you out in the country, to a place he’ll
never nd. If he gures out what I’ve done, I’ll deny it.” But as I spoke I could
picture him coming at me, lled with rage.
Before I loaded the carrier in to my car, I looked at the badger through the
door and made eye contact. It was intense. I felt like we were communicating, like
he knew I cared about him and would do my best to keep him from harm. If we’d
been in a fairy tale, he would have spoken to me then. He’d have said, “Now that
we have vanquished the cockroach man, we can be together forever.” And I’d have
said, “If this is the point where you turn into a man, let me suggest an alternative.
How about I become a badger? I feel I have the proper temperament and I’m
curious about life underground.”
82 | Dana Roeser The Laurel Review
Desert Heart
Dana Roeser
Animals, I get. I feel
connected to every dog
on the street. I smile and
it smiles back. And I feel
guilty about the so shell crab I
ate last night. With its
edible rosy shell, little
ippers in the
back, segmented legs, fat
claws; its searching
eyes. I know it scurried and
scuttled hard
to stay alive. Likewise,
the spider scaling the
walls in the bathtub of the rental
place. Little and black—it does look
nasty, but I wouldn’t guess it’s
poisonous. I leave it
alone. Maybe it’ll nd
its way back
down the drain.
Meds meds
meds—methotrexate
Macrobid—
is that’s what’s between me
and a love aair
with the land? I feel sad,
metallically so,
but, no, the sight
of a white
German shepherd in its
harness or a fuzzy furred
mixed breed lab in the surf
laughing away, delivering
Volume 50.1 Dana Roeser | 83
its stick to me instead of
its owner
makes me
happy. So, no.
I just do not have
that lover, the land.
Or the land is not my
“fella” as it is to
the very old Weaver Jack
in Daniel Walbidi’s
lm about his aboriginal
homeland, Desert Heart.
An artist, he is caught between
two worlds and none of the
elders he took back there
had grown up there.
Save one. And she wept a
an apology
to the land, and to Wilna,
the waterhole. Her homeplace
looked like more bush
to me. But to
her it was not only the
landscape
of her childhood, in every
variation of
plant, seed, and furrow. It was a
person—who had been
waiting for
her all those years
since she had been taken away
along with the rest of
her tribal group to
work at a whitefella’s
cattle station far to the northwest
many years before. Weaver Jack,
being elderly, was brought
in a helicopter. ey all
84 | Dana Roeser The Laurel Review
sat under a
canvas tarp with Daniel.
I would say they worked under
his tutelage, but
every painting they made
was expert, with its
ve views of the
source and parent
of their dreaming. eir
storyline. Aerial, subterranean,
historical, metaphysical,
and actual.
I saw Daniel’s paintings
at the Short Street studio
in Broome. One was foaming,
eervescent, with yellow,
orange, pink, pearly white
in kind of an upward
geyser or fountain. ere were
splattered dots of
pink paint. A fascinating ri,
I thought, on the
more traditional diagrammatic
patterned paintings
I had seen. I could see how
it could be a map,
a storyline, a teaching. On this
painting, as on his
other brilliantly colored
paintings, there was a large,
incongruous, black spot.
near the bottom. Circular
or maybe slightly oval,
an anti-moon. I asked
the gallery owner who said
that Daniel puts one
in each painting, as it is the waterhole,
source of sustenance
Volume 50.1 Dana Roeser | 85
and grief. I learned a snake
lives there sometimes,
the Rainbow Serpent in
Aboriginal mythology.
It can take bystanders who
are standing near. I thought
of my own grief I am trying
to touch, in hopes
of not hovering forever in this
dry apprehension. e malevolent
forces it might be
better to greet. It’s
like an oversized burn from
a cigarette. It’s
that incongruous. at
gorgeous. Daniel
Wilbidi will
never abandon Wilna.
Without Wilna the people
will quickly die
in the desert. I am
at the ocean.
rush song follows me
in the morning,
and at evening,
twilight. I’m caught
surprised by the aming
sunset outside
my room. I smile
at it, and it says hello.
86 | Meridian Johnson The Laurel Review
Souvenir Said
Meridian Johnson
Searching in another city for a face just like yours I wake and the ceiling droops
with cobwebs some spider poisonous leaks strands of web and weeps when the
sun strikes the weave I am captured a pillar of dust and sun one grain of ne sand
blowing gone to the breezes on this island on this mainland everywhere I am
blown apart like a war and I think of nothing to myself just that I am a hammer
lying still a tool waiting for the carpenter’s hands nails and wood forget what I
have said beneath these ceiling boards it was love I threaded through the machine
my body—it was priceless
Volume 50.1 Maryfrances Wagner | 87
The End of Pink
by Kathryn Nuernberger
Maryances Wagner
Not many poets can make readers shudder and laugh,
gasp and grieve, look away and peer deeply in a single poem. In e End of
Pink, Kathryn Nuernberger does that over and over with sometimes brutally
open admissions and observations like of a scientist. She examines carefully.
She digresses. She speaks in metaphors. She tells stories. She nds uncommonly
apt connections. She unites dissimilar topics, tones, and ideas, and these layered
poems are about more than their apparent subject matter.
Fantasy, surrealism, folklore, debunked ideas, historical facts, and a cast
of unexpected characters permeate these poems that convey painful truths and
wisdom. Even though the reader encounters Bat Boy, Peter the Wild Boy, Saint
Girl, peacocks, badgers, and a Fiji zombie mermaid, this is not a bizarre or quirky
book. e End of Pink is a serious book of psychic struggle, grief and recovery.
Whether she’s relaying the story of being a Teach for America cum laude
white woman instructing a room of thirty-two inner city teens, a mother losing
patience with a bouncy child and pushing her into a wall, the rituals of the Bacabs,
or sitting in a bathroom, passing a delayed placenta, Nuernberger pulls readers
right into the poem beside her. e details are stunning. In “Zoontological
Sublime,” while she tells about a time she allowed a lab assistant to “sucker [her]
head with electrodes,” she states that she wants to “know / how it is to be an
octopus, / which keeps 2/3 of its neurons / in its arms,” and the poem becomes a
series of painful moments in the animal world as well as metaphors of her own
suering. She reveals the agony of lobster silence when their claws are bound:
To call for each other
they must clatter their claws
against surrounding stones and shells.
e plea rings through the waves
88 | Maryfrances Wagner The Laurel Review
for miles. When dropped in boiling water
they beat their banded sts
against the sides of the pot.
In another moving moment a doe licks the face of her stillborn fawn:
and that nuzzle alone
should have shattered all the leaves
and all the stars. Deer don’t have
great conch shells to slam their hooves against.
e doe made no sound, the air
lled with the small ripple
of her tongue passing across
those still eyelids.
In “About Derrida, If You’re Into at,” she parallels two stories—one of the
ruthless badger who when weaning “brings a carcass back to the burrow/so she
can cut at the faces of her pups as they try to eat,” thus passing on her ruthless
survival tactics—and one of Derrida, a student in her inner city classroom of 32
black students, who, like the others, isn’t interested in the conjugation of French
verbs as staplers and pencils y across the room. Derrida already has to worry
about her own daughter. On the last day of school, a ght breaks out, and when
the police arrive, “Derrida was one of the students on the roof throwing bricks.”
e magnitude of this poem represents so much of the problem of inner city
schools and the society that perpetuates the system, forcing students to become
badger survivors.
A number of the poems in the rst section are about trauma, loss and
miscarriage—haunting moments of dealing with aermath, of not talking about
it, even to the point of not knowing there is an aer birth until, in “Wonders and
Mysteries of Animal Magnetism Displayed (1791) As What I Want Is,” she is
having contractions you think are not,
because six weeks ago you were pregnant
and ve weeks ago you were not, and what
you didn’t learn in health class is everything
you would ever want to know like how big
a placenta is and how veined and how
purple and how when you birth it
in a bathroom outside the classroom
where you were trying to explain
the dierence between logos and pathos . . . .
Volume 50.1 Maryfrances Wagner | 89
Everyone else does not think being
yourself a con is the only last act to do
for a child you couldn’t . . . .
I buried over a blue-and-white china bowl
with milkmaids and a maypole because it was
the prettiest I had, how they never stop dancing
around the center of it.
e second section oers a series of persona poems about e Saint Girl.
e rst section’s poems are more narrative and stream of consciousness writing,
and the second more distanced but still personally gripping. Here the Saint Girl
learns to deprive herself, to suer silently, to do without because the devils are
always all around her with their pitchforks and “Without shame they skip, sopping
wet and dripping peach, all over the piano keys, spark their nervy little tails in
sockets, fornicate in cereal bowls. ey “reduce themselves to the tiniest shoots of
green beneath the snow of her winter garden.” ey follow her to heaven. Finally,
she says:
Look up. You could say they infest the sky and clamber each other as
before, only with the ponderous slowness and weight of the world’s
water in those puss-gutted bellies, but why linger over such a thought.
eir nacreous diractions pearl across the lenticularis strosphere like
the rainbow of a happy ending.
e third and nal section is a coming to terms with what happens in life, a
leaving behind and moving forward. A few of the poems in this section are about
her peacock:
I keep a white peacock behind my ear,
a wasn’t, a fantail of wasn’ts
nevered feathers upon evered
falling all over the grass.
e peacock grows into a ghost of a peacock, “a tassel of grass/and a eld, a wind,
and also a ower./It was so sad when she le/and said, No more now.” In this
section she writes of burying her child and moving on, of healing, sacricing, and
forgiving.
ere is much more to say about this accomplished book with its refreshing
and varied styles and forms, but readers have to experience these poems
themselves. While facing psychological struggle and grief in this collection,
Kathryn Nuernberger also extends a hand into the well of all those struggling to
get out.
90 | Christopher Miles The Laurel Review
You realize the thoughts you keep having aren’t thoughts. ey’re sounds.
ere’s a man in your head, and he’s dancing, and the sounds are his boots
hitting the oor of your mind. It’s a wooden oor; looks like maple.
But you hear no music. What is he dancing to then? Does this man
in your mind have a man in his mind, and is it he who is making the music?
Or is it a woman? And if it were, would her music be dierent
from the man’s because she once knew him? When she was younger?
When they were lovers? Or maybe they were brother and sister
and they fell in love with the same man, and this same-man rented porta potties
and hauled them to and from his customers with a trailer
behind a one-ton dually truck? I could use a truck like that, you think.
But you’re overtaken by the sound again. Only this time you don’t hear it.
You see it. In black letters on the ceiling. ey appear to be cut from tissue paper.
Now things are coming right. You return to mis-interpreting the sound
as thought. You relax. To celebrate your relief, you open the window.
You hear the crash of aluminum. It’s the goats, banging the lid
of their watering tank. In the morning, you will feed them ground corn.
In the morning, they will eat from your hand.
The Sun Goes Down at Last
Christopher Miles
Volume 50.1 Robin Fulton Macpherson | 91
“If” in Spring
Robin Fulton Macpherson
Crows keep their balance on bucking branch-tips.
Perhaps they imagine they're on rough seas.
If they imagine.
Soaked birch-bark glistens, imagines the sun
has chosen to smile on it, if sun smiles,
if bark imagines.
I balance well on earth that knows its place.
e sun gives, the sun never takes away.
If I imagine.
92 | Robin Fulton Macpherson The Laurel Review
Summer without
Words
Robin Fulton Macpherson
In a grey part of summer I watch
a gull-shadow on harbour ripples:
an alphabet is splintered so fast
it could never be halted and whole.
In a sharp ochre part of summer,
with a taste of something that's been stored
and a presence about to leave us
and another one waiting for us,
I watch a cypress twig-shadow write
on a red gable, a shaky hand.
ere's no alphabet for the writer.
ere's no alphabet for the reader.
Volume 50.1 Robin Fulton Macpherson | 93
Summer Solstice
Robin Fulton Macpherson
Earth leaned south so soon this year.
I didn't have time to save
darkness, the good kind that heals
undiluted by the sheen
of galaxies.
Earth leaned north so soon this year
and something like an angel
(unseen, of no xed abode)
has balanced one more weightless
stone on my cairn.
94 | Robin Fulton Macpherson The Laurel Review
Surface
Robin Fulton Macpherson
Yacht masts are dgety and zig-zag.
Crowding wings are black, belong to crows.
A world that can't be still. And rumours
of an unspecied upper air
where the masts are straight, the crows are gulls.
Volume 50.1 Henry Israeli | 95
Alone with Only Our
Thoughts to Destroy Us
Henry Israeli
We set the booby traps before the guests arrive,
trip wires, trap doors, spiked pit,
broadax suspended above the marked exit signs.
Much to our chagrin no one we invited
shows up. e elf owl perched on a maple
hoots out the cruelest obscenities
while clematis creeping across the windows
cloaks us in darkness... e pipes freeze.
My love, I am sorry to inform you, that even
the vodka and cans of gasoline have frozen.
By the time we set out to dismantle the traps
we’ve forgotten where we put them.
96 | Gary McDowell The Laurel Review
Palindrome
Gary McDowell
On our backs planning envy.
e two of us in secret twice
every week, censoring
the good sense to fall
in love. How you dream your
religion, your midnight human,
but that I’m a part of how you
vowel, your tongue so against
the roof of your mouth against
my ngers taken deep against.
is year, we keep winter,
meaning each other, company.
We aren’t up in the mountains.
But last night, the violence.
Volume 50.1 Elizabeth Jackson | 97
Mountains Hidden in
Mountains
Elizabeth Jacobson
Always my right side tugging me on,
my right eye weeping,
the furious liver, shouting.
Always a rising,
a mountain inside a mountain.
Always an uproar
above the mountain.
e full moon
pulling everything through.
Always the vacancy.
I promised to be naked,
to walk on my knees up the mountain
and if the mountain doubts me,
I promise to take more o.
98 | Elizabeth Jackson The Laurel Review
I was staying at a farmhouse with no doors on the door openings, no windows on
the window openings. Every night I slid a dresser behind the curtains hanging in
the bedroom door frame, then rolled the heavy oil lled space heater behind that.
is was near the Rio Grande gorge bridge, and most days I went to stand on the
pedestrian walkway. Crisis hotline boxes had been installed at every pylon with
signs: ere Is Hope Make e Call. Underneath the signs were big red buttons
which lit up at night. It is tempting to push a big red button when you see one!
I put my ngertip on it and circled the circumference. At the gorge bridge,
the barrier is low and it would be easy to hop up on a cross rail and dive over.
I thought of my friend who wrote a poem about standing at the spot on the famous
bridge in Minneapolis where a celebrated poet had leapt into the Mississippi.
When I travel a bridge on foot, I always consider jumping, even if it is a low bridge
and I simply want to cool my feet. Most people I imagine have this impulse.
I know two individuals who jumped from the gorge bridge. One was a friend
of a friend who le a note saying he could not nd another way up. e other,
a seventeen-year-old, called his mother from the bridge to tell her he was going
to jump. He waited the two hours it took for her to drive there, and as she ran
pleading from her car, he leapt. Now she is trying to get the county to raise the
railings, but I don’t see how it matters. Anyone can walk to the rocky ledge of the
gorge and soar into the ravine.
Getting back into the car, I remembered what my friend told me about that poet
who dove to his death from the Minneapolis bridge. At the instant of his descent,
he caught the eye of someone driving by, and he smiled, and he waved.
On Foot
Elizabeth Jacobson
Volume 50.1 Kathryn Smith | 99
Chronic and Nameless
Kathyrn Smith
e cat is dying—though I know we all are, since the day we’re born or before
that, when we’re that cell-knot of an embryo, that hoped-for thing or mistake.
But the cat is dying more so than usual, and I have become a person who follows
a cat around the house with a handkerchief, hoping to catch the strings of snot
that trail so pitifully from his nostrils since cats can’t say what they need. And they
hate to breathe through their mouths, the veterinarian says, and she emphasizes
the word hate the way preteen girls do when discussing their morphing bodies.
In h grade we all wanted to be veterinarians, but by sixth we were over it and
planning our pop-star careers. Discovered so young, the magazines would say. By
then we’d learned something about animals, but nothing about death, except that
sometimes a father will leave a note that says I didn’t think any of you loved me
anymore, which they’ll nd with him at the beach cabin, the tide outside receding
before it comes in.
100 | Eliza Rotterman The Laurel Review
Dirt Eaters
Eliza Rotterman
I asked the law if it knew anything Populist and free of irony,
about gravity, osmosis, trees employ special chemical processes,
women walking home at night. transduce light into sugar, sugar into time.
Law was quiet as a pumpkin Women labor to maintain
then oered to buy me a drink. an aboveground appearance,
When I woke, the light was orange. fresh and unstressed.
Volume 50.1 Eliza Rotterman | 101
It’s troubling what you might call e home in America
transcendence. is the most dangerous place
Or, it’s winter. for women. Pregnancy
Survival, a red bell when we are most likely to be kicked
behind the sun. slapped, pushed.
102 | Eliza Rotterman The Laurel Review
We grow towards it, A woman can’t help but aberrate.
this out-of-body light. Just look what she does
e body of your mother in that glaciated bedrock.
a frequency, a wavelength. She’s practically naked.
Her mind Lactating
glinting like a spoon in a drawer in the oce
in a wall made of wood. at eleven and again, at two.
Volume 50.1 Eliza Rotterman | 103
I overhear two women remark I turn diagrammatic, margins, months.
on the slaughter of horses. A splayed anatomy book.
But they’re still good, one exclaimed. A pair of persimmons on the counter
en, Like sorry, is melancholic, depending on the hour.
thanks for all the work you’ve done. It’s 3 a.m.
You’re no longer needed Everyone is sleeping.
104 | Eliza Rotterman The Laurel Review
e town where the law grew up I make a bed
wasn’t anywhere special, beneath the table, remember,
and the story, nothing beyond a pair of shoes, their complimentary eld.
the usual trajectory Clicking rudiments,
of acquiring power through fawns pulled from the highway.
incremental acts of self-deception. Conclusions to suck.
Volume 50.1 Eliza Rotterman | 105
e law spoke A woman complains,
as if the voice of reason I wish I could pull that o.
had found no truer outlet A sensational dress that didn’t t
e law wore khaki and light blue. the occasion. She was seventeen,
How old are you? twenty-one, thirty-four, y-nine.
How old were you She was walking alone
the rst time a man touched you? every night in America.
106 | Eliza Rotterman The Laurel Review
Bands of dark light waver. Show me the marks, she asks.
I walk in the middle of the street, I li my shirt,
singing for the same reason an anthem blazes above this orchard
a dog raises the fur on her neck. I am pregnant and America,
you are pregnant with me/us.
Volume 50.1 Darren Dillman | 107
The Abortionist’s Daughter
Darren Dillman
The first time i see the fetuses is the day jiang’s mother
comes into my father’s clinic.
I’m seven years old, playing in the storage room of Zhongshan Women’s
Medical Facility Number 2. It’s a Saturday in late December, and the weather has
turned cold, but short of freezing. I’m snug in my yellow school windbreaker—
which is part of my uniform—and my tight ponytail is pulling on my face. I’ve
been skipping through the building as usual, trying to nd something of interest.
Dad is the kind of doctor who helps women with their problems. My mom, a
nurse, is next door in the operating room, helping him perform a procedure. Even
though I’m not allowed in either room, I’ve developed a penchant for breaking
superuous rules.
e fetuses are kept in thick glass jars that stand on a black laboratory
tabletop. In each jar, peach- and plum-colored slivers of esh, some more
diaphanous than others, lie suspended in clear liquid, oating like single-celled
organisms of the deep. I’m sitting on a stool, eyes glued to the jars. Even though
I don’t yet know what a fetus is, Grandma Lin, who lives with us, will explain it
to me when I get home. Cold air is blowing from the standing air conditioner in
the corner, and my skin has broken out in goose bumps. Despite the chill, I stare
xedly at the specimens, which sway in their own secret dominion.
“Ni Shi!” Dad says. “What are you doing?”
I inch on the stool—I didn’t hear the door open. Dad is wearing his white
lab coat, surgical mask and gloves.
“Looking at something,” I say.
“You’re not supposed to be in here,” he says. “Go sit in the lobby.”
❧ ❧ ❧
108 | Darren Dillman The Laurel Review
ere are three patients waiting in the aseptic-scented lobby, which consists of
twenty adjoined yellow plastic seats, a wall-mounted 32-inch LCD TV, a hot/cold
water dispenser with paper cups, and a semi-circular reception counter. I sit in
my seat doing my math homework, which Mom makes me nish before I can
play games on her iPhone. Grandma Lin detests this because she says iPhones are
made by Chinese slave girls who lack the skills to do anything else, and that if I
don’t learn how to do something useful—like hack into a computer or invent an
ingenious method to reduce air pollution—I’ll become a slave girl, myself.
I work on math problems until the numbers are practically howling at
me. When I look up from my book, Li Jiang, my best friend, wearing the same
green coat and pink snow cap she wears at school, walks into the clinic with her
parents. Jiang stands at her mom’s hip like a forgotten pet. Two men, one with
thick sideburns and bulldog jowls, follow behind them. With the help of Mr. Li,
her mother plods toward the reception counter like it’s the guillotine, her face
red as raw stew meat. e man with thick sideburns says something to Xu, the
receptionist, and she starts to lead them into one of the examination rooms, but
before reaching the hallway Jiang’s mother pauses, closes her eyes, and begins
trembling.
“I can’t do it,” she squeals, clenching her sts, and breaks down into shaky,
horrible sobs.
Mr. Li clutches her with his arm and whispers into her ear. Awkwardly,
Mrs. Li moves forward, no more comforted than before, disappearing down the
hallway. Jiang takes a seat beside me while the two men plop down in front of the
T V.
“What’s wrong with your mom?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Jiang says. Her sullen face looks pitiful.
I snatch Mom’s iPhone from her purse behind the counter and hand it to
Jiang, but the games don’t interest her, and my subsequent attempts at small talk
go nowhere. Jiang simply stares at the TV. e man with the sideburns lights
a cigarette, but Xu tells him he can’t smoke in the hospital. Nevertheless, he
continues smoking for a minute or two, drops cigarette ash onto the oor, and
puts out the cigarette, icking it onto the oor, as well.
An hour later, when Mrs. Li comes out of the operating room, I’ve nished
my homework and Mr. Li has an arm around Mrs. Li’s waist, steadying her as she
paces through the lobby like a zombie, her eyes dopey and distant.
❧ ❧ ❧
Volume 50.1 Darren Dillman | 109
At home I tell Grandma Lin about Jiang’s mother and the fetuses. Mom and Dad
are in their room, talking. e smell of ox bone soup was from the kitchen, the
metal pot rattling from the burner. Grandma Lin, my mother’s mother, is bony
and stooped; most of her front teeth are brown and black, and I don’t sit too close
to her because of her breath, which smells like molded bread. Although she was
the best student in her high school, she never attended university. She worked for
many years as a seamstress. Her husband, my grandpa, died more than a dozen
years ago of lung cancer.
Grandma Lin sets my bowl on the kitchen table, and as I slurp the broth
from a porcelain soup spoon the warmth cascades into my belly. e tender meat
falls o the bone as I bite into it, and I grin at the old woman, who sips from her
own bowl and smacks her lips with approval.
“So what are they?” I ask, regarding the fetuses.
Grandma Lin groans, tightens her lips, and looks down at her soup. She acts
as though she doesn’t want to explain, which is unusual for her, since she always
tells me everything—especially when I ask her a question.
“I don’t know how to tell you,” Grandma Lin says.
“Just tell me!” I say impatiently.
Grandma Lin groans and looks up from her bowl.
“You know where babies come from?” she asks.
“A woman’s tummy,” I say.
“Hm,” she says.
“So?” I say.
“What you saw are fetuses,” she says. “Babies who haven’t been born.”
My spoon stops in mid-air as I try to comprehend this.
“Oh,” I say. “When will they be born?”
Grandma Lin gently shakes her head and looks back down at her soup.
Aer dinner, I ask the old woman if she will brush my hair and sing “e
Emperor’s Daughter,” a nursery rhyme she and Mom have sung to me since I can
remember. But lately Mom says I’m getting too old for it. We sit on the sofa, and
I lay my head against Grandma Lin’s shoulder. e old woman’s voice warbles out
the tune, and as the plastic bristles crawl along my scalp, I doze o and start to
dream of Ms. Gronkowski, my English teacher from Wisconsin.
❧ ❧ ❧
On Monday I see Jiang on the playground, sitting on a concrete bench in a bright
green knitted sweater, her hair disheveled. My backpack is heavy from my math
book and homework papers, so I heave it onto the space next to her and sit down.
110 | Darren Dillman The Laurel Review
e Zhongshan sky is hazy, and the scent of a re carries in the cold air. Five
kilometers away, thick gray smoke mushrooms from a shoe factory smokestack.
“Is your mom okay?” I ask.
Jiang gives me a blank look.
“She’s been sleeping,” Jiang says. “When she wakes up she starts crying.”
“What do you do?” I ask.
“About what?” Jiang asks.
“About her crying.”
Jiang shrugs. She gazes at the playground equipment. Her hair, usually done
up neatly, hangs loosely and frayed, missing its jasmine smell.
Ms. Song, the dowager on recess duty, moseys by, her jade whistle hanging
from her neck. She has beady black eyes and graying hair. She teaches sixth grade,
and the older students say she’s the meanest teacher in the school and that she
never married because she’s too irascible, instead of being amenable like women
are supposed to be.
“Why aren’t you girls playing?” Ms. Song asks, her face expressionless.
“We’re talking,” I say.
Ms. Song shakes her head, mumbles something inaudible, and saunters
past.
“Did you do your math homework?” I ask.
“No,” Jiang asks.
I think of asking her if she wants to go down the slide, but I know she’ll say
no, so I just sit with her and listen to the hum of the wind. Finally, Ms. Song blows
the whistle and we go inside.
❧ ❧ ❧
In the aernoon, in English class, I’m staring at Ms. Gronkowski, who is wearing
an amber cotton blouse and dark blue skirt. Young and beautiful, she teaches
us twice a week. Because my English is poor, her undecipherable words it past
me like reies. Nevertheless, I’m mesmerized by her blue angelic eyes and
shimmering glint of unbound blonde hair, which smells of honeysuckle. When
she gives us worksheets, I constantly raise my hand for help just to get a whi of it,
and when she asks if I understand, when her eyes peer into me, I’m too dazed to
answer. I just smile. Before she arrived, I’d never seen anyone with natural blonde
hair. Not in person. I’d never spoken to a foreigner.
Today she is talking about something called an innitive. As she drums
amber chalk across the chalkboard, I lose myself in the hem of her skirt, in the
pristine ivory of her skin, and I imagine she is my big sister, or my aunt, and she’s
Volume 50.1 Darren Dillman | 111
lying on a large round bed, the kind I’ve seen on TV and once at a mall in Hong
Kong, her hair silky and glimmering, just like the bed’s comforter; but instead of
teaching attire, she’s wearing a lilac gown, and I’m lying beside her, snug in my
pink cotton pajamas, my head cradled in the nook between her shoulder and
breast; she brushes her hair with her hand, inging it over my face.
My brief escape into paradise ends when Hui Min, the boy in front of me,
passes me the new worksheet, dangling it in front of my face. I take one of the
papers and pass the others behind me. en, as usual, I raise my hand for help.
❧ ❧ ❧
e next weekend I spend Saturday at the clinic. Not many patients come in;
the place is deserted for hours. Aer I nish my homework I wander about the
building, skipping along the hallway, happy to be free of math problems and
Chinese writing. A mouse scurries down the hallway, away from me, and in an
empty examining room I watch a black cockroach scoot through the loops of a
pair of forceps.
Bored, I leave the room and meander down the hallway. e storage room
door is unlocked, so I open it and turn on the light. e jars of fetuses, however,
no longer stand on the tabletop, and the air conditioner is o. I turn o the light
and step back out into the hallway.
e door to the operating room stands ajar, and a sliver of light, in the shape
of a ruler, spills through the crack. I step closer to the door and listen. Cold. Quiet.
e sign on the door says “Sta and Patient Only.”
I step toward the adjacent examining room and hear Mom and Dad talking
through their food, their words mued. I traipse back to the operating room,
push the door open, and step inside.
A pungent aseptic odor burns my nose. Glass cabinets and a counter lie
against the opposite wall. In the middle of the room, against the wall, lies a reclining
patient’s chair with gray vinyl padding and rubber ankle stirrups dangling from
two rods at one end. My little feet creep toward the chair, my heart pounding like
the Haer washing machine at home. I don’t know why, but it’s something I have to
do, something I need to see, even if it gets me in trouble.
A rolling metal table stands on the other side of the chair. On top of it, a tray
of silver instruments: forceps, tongs, a scraping tool. Next to the tray lies a syringe
and several ampules, and beside them stand dark brown vials of anesthetics and
antiseptics.
I climb up onto the seat and lean back. e lights above icker, humming
their electrical song. Is this what the women see and hear? I wonder. I grab the
112 | Darren Dillman The Laurel Review
pair of forceps from the tray, hold them with my nger and thumb. Clamp them
together. Release.
My parents’ voices crescendo in the next room, their chair legs scooting
against the oor, so I wrestle myself out of the chair and scamper out of the room.
❧ ❧ ❧
Later, at home, Mom and Dad are yelling at each other in their bedroom.
Grandma Lin sits in a chair at the table, knitting, as I eat a bowl of rice with
chicken, mushrooms, ginger, and watercress that she has steamed. e old woman
cooks better than Mom, but I keep this to myself, unlike the story Grandma Lin
told me yesterday—that Dad’s frequent visits to Hong Kong when I was a toddler
were due to a girlfriend he had there.
Mom and Dad don’t ght very oen. As far as I can tell, when they do, it’s
almost always because of Grandma Lin, and they always ght in Cantonese.
“at saber-toothed bat needs to watch her mouth!” Dad says. “If she makes
one more dirty remark to our daughter, she’ll nd herself on the street!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mom says. “She’s my mom. We’re responsible for
her!”
“She’s poisoning Ni Shi’s mind!” he says.
“Since when is the truth poison?” Mom asks.
“ere are some things you don’t tell a seven-year-old!” he says. And so on.
I look at Grandma Lin with humility.
“Are you mad at me?” I ask.
Grandma Lin laughs. “Why would I be?”
“I didn’t keep your secret,” I say.
Grandma Lin coughs up a laugh.
“Secret?” she says. “ere are no secrets, Ni Shi. Everyone is into everyone
else’s business. Someone is always watching. e government knows everything
about you. Someday they’ll know what you are thinking.”
I bite into a slice of ginger, and the juice burns my throat. I chew each bite of
chicken slowly, seeing how long I can savor the taste. Grandma Lin asks about my
school lessons, and I tell her that, in addition to math and writing, we’re learning
about Chairman Mao, the concept of unity, and that Taiwan is part of China.
“Mao,” Grandma Lin says in gravelly disgust. “ere’s a true vampire. He
drank more blood than a hundred Draculas.”
❧ ❧ ❧
Volume 50.1 Darren Dillman | 113
During the next few days, Jiang starts to look like her old self. She dons her hair
in pigtails and works diligently on the math worksheets, her pencil bearing down
against the paper, knuckles clenched, with determination and focus. She brings
her completed homework assignments on time and answers teachers’ questions
in class.
I ask her about her mom.
“She quit her job,” she says. “She stays at home now.”
“What does she do?” I ask.
“She watches TV.”
I think about it for a moment.
“en who did your hair today?” I ask.
“My auntie,” Jiang says. “She’s been coming over. And one of my older
cousins helped me with my math.”
❧ ❧ ❧
At night I dream Mom and Dad are ghting. ey’re in the kitchen. Dad is holding
a small sharp knife, and Mom throws a frozen chicken that smacks him in the
nose. Suddenly Dad turns into a clown, his nose a big red ball, and he’s riding
away from Mom, down the street, on a unicycle.
“I’m going to Hong Kong!” he says. “My girlfriend’s waiting for me!”
“What about your daughter?” Mom asks.
“Who?” Dad asks.
I wake up with a start. When I pull the comforter and blankets o, a chilled
vacuum of winter air swallows me. I rise from the bed, step into my slippers,
and pad into the kitchen, the cotton fabric of my pajamas clinging to my skin. A
nightlight beside the toaster beckons. I’m thinking of pouring myself a glass of
water from the water dispenser, and my hand is on the dispenser’s lever, an empty
glass beneath it, when the wan shape of a ghost glows from the living room.
My stomach sinks, and for a moment I’m breathless. My heart pounds away
for seconds before I recognize the ghost as Grandma Lin, pacing in front of the
living room window, the moonlight spilling a milky radiance onto her alabaster
night gown, the soles of her slippers scraping across the wooden oor.
As I pour the glass of water, Grandma Lin turns toward me.
“Ni Shi?” she says.
I take the glass of water and join her in the living room.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I say.
I tell her about the nightmare. She stays quiet, looking at the oor. In the
.
114 | Darren Dillman The Laurel Review
moonlight her wrinkled face pales with a hint of contrition. I can tell she blames
herself for my nightmare.
“I don’t know why I said anything,” she says. “When you get old, you’ve
got one foot in the grave. You feel useless and say hateful things. Don’t pay any
attention to me.”
I drink my water. We both stare at the moonlight.
“You’re my grandma,” I say. “You’re not useless to me.”
Grandma Lin hugs me and I reach my hands up and around her bony
shoulder blades, her skeleton-like ngers clutching me.
We talk a while longer, and I sip the last of the water. en, because of the
intimacy and euphoria I’m feeling, I tell her my own secret version of the Moon
Lady story.
e Moon Lady was American. Her hair was silky blonde, smelled like
honeysuckle, and reached down to her waist, whipping around her hips like a
pet cat. e other women, who were Chinese, had only black hair and, being
jealous, banished the American to the moon. But because the American had
a Chinese friend, a girl who she thought of as her own daughter, who brought
her the greatest joy and comfort by brushing her hair, she visited the girl’s home
regularly, in secret, outing this most absurd rule and laughing during her days
on the moon at her enemies’ inability to contain her.
❧ ❧ ❧
e next weekend I’m in the clinic doing my homework. Xu is sitting behind the
reception counter, huddled over her iPhone, texting. Two women are sitting in the
lobby, and one of them starts having a seizure. Xu rushes to the woman and tends
to her, helping her to lie down.
“Ni Shi!” Xu says. “Go get your dad!”
I shove my book and worksheets aside and spring from my seat into the
hallway, toward the golden sprawl of light beneath the operating room door. Even
in an emergency, I’m afraid to intrude upon my dad during surgery, and I briey
pause when I reach the door. Hurry!, my conscience urges, and I open the door.
A patient lies in the chair, in a white gown, her legs spread and holstered
by the stirrups at the ankles. A fuchsia mask made of plaster covers her head.
Dad and Mom are wearing white surgical masks and operating gloves, and Dad
is holding some kind of probing instrument. Blood glistens against the silver tool,
and the sight steals the breath from me.
Volume 50.1 Darren Dillman | 115
My parents’ eyes immediately home in on me: Dad’s dark and serious;
Mom’s calm and attentive. Instead of berating me, Dad waits for me to speak,
patiently holding the instrument.
Somehow I manage to get the right words out, and Dad hurries from the
room, pulling his gloves o along the way. But I can hardly move—I remain
standing and staring at the masked patient.
“Ni Shi,” Mom says with a tone of warning.
Finally, I back up and close the door.
❧ ❧ ❧
At school I try as politely as possible to glean more information about Jiang’s
mom, but Jiang shows little interest in disclosing the details.
One day she tells me she’s going home for dinner, and I ask if I can join her.
It’s been several weeks since I saw her mother at the clinic. Before that day, Jiang
and I would visit each other’s house oen, at least once a week.
Jiang’s house is in a smaller building than ours. e outside walls are grayed
and discolored by mold, and you have to walk six oors up a cold dark stairwell
before you see the red good luck sign in Mandarin attached to the front aluminum
door. When Jiang opens it, a fresh aroma of steamed rice hits me, irting with my
palate.
“Dad, Ni Shi came with me today,” Jiang says, pulling her backpack from her
shoulders.
“All right,” he says from the kitchen.
As I step inside, I see Jiang’s mother sitting on the sofa, staring at the LCD
TV, wearing a curt smile. Her feet rest at on the oor, her hands folded properly
in her lap. Her hair is coarse, and I notice a brown stain on the sleeve of her
blouse. She briey looks at me, then her head swivels back toward the TV.
“Hi, Mrs. Li,” I say. I lower my own bag of books to the oor.
Mrs. Li doesn’t answer.
“Hi, Ni Shi,” Mr. Li says, appearing at the edge of the sofa. “Glad you could
come over. Mrs. Li isn’t feeling very well today, but she’s happy to see you. Try to
make yourself comfortable.”
Jiang sits on a cushion by the coee table, and I take my seat in the corner of
the sofa. Jiang grabs the remote and changes the channel to a TV show featuring
child singers.
“Wasn’t your mom watching something?” I ask.
“She doesn’t care,” Jiang says. “She watches everything.”
Mr. Li serves the three of us bowls of rice with pork, eggplant, and seaweed.
116 | Darren Dillman The Laurel Review
Mrs. Li glances at her bowl, the steam spiraling like a genie from a lamp. Jiang
notices me staring.
“Don’t worry about her,” Jiang says through a mouthful of rice. “She’ll eat it
later when she gets hungry.”
Mr. Li eats at the kitchen table. Jiang laughs at a girl who butchers a New
Year’s folk song. I take a few bites of the rice and pork, but like Mrs. Li, I suddenly
don’t feel very hungry, although the food is palatable. I do my best to eat three-
fourths of it, and then I set the bowl on the coee table. While waiting for Jiang
to nish, I notice a green hairbrush lying on the other side of the table. I grab it,
sit closer to Mrs. Li, and begin brushing her hair. As I do, I sing “e Emperor’s
Daughter,” smoothing out the tangles and massaging her scalp with the bristles.
Mrs. Li seems to enjoy it and smiles just like she did before. When I nish, I set
the brush down and lay my head against her shoulder. A minute later, she begins
sniing, and she looks at me with astonished, mournful eyes.
“ank you, Ni Shi,” Mrs. Li says, holding my head against her. “ank
yo u .”
Volume 50.1 Martin Ott | 117
Mission
Martin Ott
e blow-up alien dolls, one blue, one green, were a joke to represent middle
management. ey stare out from the old temp’s workstation. eir eyes are the
exact color and shape of despair. Without mouths, they observe the computer
monitors and the creatures making love to them. e data is incomplete. e
trash is carried away. e people wrappings are recycled. Oces hum in lights not
unlike the distant sun cawing for them to slingshot home. e Chinese factory
that “made them” was a ruse, deep cover. e aliens wheeze as the human breath
inside leaks in the perambulations of routine. ey learn that bagel Mondays do
not ll the holes callously slathered and devoured. Movie trivia Fridays too oen
makes their own kind seem two-dimensional. At day’s end, the sun pours through
their torsos and swathes the creatures in the essence of grass and sky. Two aliens,
two metaphors. e joke is karmic, for future generations. Every day the aliens
wait, like the humans, to be saved.
118 | Emily Borgmann The Laurel Review
When the Dreams Know
More Than You Do
Emily Borgmann
I woke up dreaming of Play-Doh green hands
too so to slap the pavement
I wanted to drum in noonday sun,
woke like nightmare crashed me, and it was,
but I don’t recall fear that tasted so close to confusion,
like taller-than-me girl with braided hair
had stomped on my new jewelry-making kit,
and I was relieved before I was mad at her,
like my mother screaming at my father
when he wasn’t home, surely she had reason to curse him,
but timing, like with betta sh, is always a factor,
my hands are solid as they’ve ever been,
but I need to let go, as they say, of the tooth I never lost,
the beaded bracelets I stopped making aer the stomping,
the woman I didn’t make myself into,
and these crumbling ngers are exactly right.
Volume 50.1 Carrie Shipers | 119
Divas’ Division
Carrie Shipers
When I was on the road I didn’t eat. I threw up at every show, but no one seemed
to notice. Your shelf life only lasts until you’re 30. I was 26, spent half my pay
on Botox and bigger lips. My implants made it hard to li my arms. Women
who came up on their own don’t like us very much. ey think we’re getting a
free ride. My trainer wouldn’t teach me how to fall, said I was used to being
on my back. If we don’t know what we’re doing, we’re easier to re. My bruises
wouldn’t heal. I covered them with makeup so I wouldn’t look tough. Guys
in the locker room aren’t used to hearing no. When you get called a slut, you
have to laugh it o. My angles always involved men—who thought I was hot,
broke my heart or learned I was a whore. My boyfriend complained about
my schedule, so the oce let me go. ey gured he’d just date another Diva.
My hair was falling out. I took so many Xanax I got lost backstage. At the end
of my rst year, I couldn’t catch my breath, move fast enough for matches. I
was afraid I’d die if I kept going. Quitting was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
120 | Mary Biddinger The Laurel Review
Dregs Week
Mary Biddinger
It was like fashion week but without the threads, shark week minus the mouths.
Most of the sponsored content was targeted at millennials, though every four or
ve channels aired an old fashioned sack race or historical think piece. I would
describe my desires as typical click bait. How to fantasize about money without
feeling like a punctured yogurt carton le in a backpack. How to remember
your old body without resentment about your present state, which resembles an
unclaimed free couch more than an egret landing in its home marsh. Dregs week
avenged the mostly-used body wash, married the ketchups, mixed all the leover
uncooked pasta shapes (even the novelty dicks) into one boiling pot. It meant
lunch with a least favorite colleague, the one whose breathing you can pick out
from yards away, the one who prompts you to hide beneath your desk. Dregs
week occupies only one cell in the spreadsheet, but it’s maximized to t all the
exceptions and counterarguments. No week is more like a gorgeous blouse that
shows blotchy sweat stains before it’s even on. It’s a new job that feels exactly
like the old job except you never quit the old job, and who needs sleep, isn’t it
an abstraction rather than an action? All the photographers on the subway were
headed to dregs week with their jouissance, which made the rest of us feel like
caged bison. Gone were the charm necklaces of our youth, which weighed more
upon our breasts than our breasts would ever weigh.
Volume 50.1 John A. Nieves | 121
Tarnish
John A. Nieves
Ghost blood across your knuckles—
the sticky nostalgia of a sidewalk
prizeghter. I never dreamed curbs
as high as the one I’m on now, but
I know that on the other side
of my eyelids you are murmuring
obscenities in your sleep. Your teeth
and sts clenched. You hold me
like an auction. If there are bidders,
they’re buried so far in the shadows,
the room’s bitter corners, that they
border on myth. I see myself displayed—
a reection on smoked glass. I am darker
than me, but translucent from both
sides. Outside, a buzzard pulls on
scraps in black snow. I catch its eye.
It sees itself in my chest, cranes its neck,
opens its wings. For a second,
I am an angel. ey beat once
and leave me for soot-laced sky. Luckily,
stains don’t show on black. e night
forgets me into daylight. Morning
erases me. Leaves a thin pane, a hairline
fracture and dust impersonating rust.
122 | Jeff Alessandrelli The Laurel Review
“The Meaning of Life Is That It
Stops.” - Franz Kafka
Jeff Alessandrelli
A great writer, Franz Kaa despised writing, oen washing his mouth out
with soap to prevent his linguistic trysts. Friend and fellow writer Max Brod
discouraged this. But not understanding Franz Kaa’s plight and wishing to
write like him, eventually Max Brod too started washing his mouth out with soap,
albeit with a slightly more expensive brand. Learning of this Kaa immediately
discontinued the practice, soon perishing of tuberculosis. In protest Max Brod
sulked and lamented and grieved. en published the writing Franz Kaa asked
to have burned following his death. “I am made of literature; I am nothing else
and cannot be anything else,” Franz Kaa, despiser of literature, once said while
alive. An explanation isn’t an answer. A word means neither its origin nor the
dumb letters that contain it. Nothing is Kaaesque.
Volume 50.1 Henry Israeli | 123
and when they tore out your teeth no one cried
and when they removed half your organs no one cried
and when your veins came to the surface
swollen and pock marked, they dug still deeper into your esh
and oh how they courted you, pretending to care
as you lay in your hospice bed
but under it all dreaming of what you would leave them
but you‘ll leave them nothing and were trying to tell them all along
that nothing comes from nothing
so they were nothing without you
but they laughed because they’d heard that a million times before
and cared nothing for false attery
for you always managed to keep giving and giving
even aer you lost the ability to feel pleasure
and grumbled and vomited and bled on the inside too
while you kept trying to explain how you were still young
as Keats in his little eciency o the Spanish steps in Rome
coughing delicate petals of blood into a kerchief
while begging his doctor for just a drop of laudanum
to numb his lungs that hung like tattered rags
and still dreaming all the while of truth and beauty,
beauty and truth
Reflections at the End
Henry Israeli
124 | Eric Pankey The Laurel Review
What Is the Purpose of Your Visit?
Eric Pankey
To attend an uncle’s funeral. To enter the precinct of the sacred. To have a boil
lanced. To return an overdue library book. To track the Nile back to its source. To
turn myself in. To seek asylum. To take monastic vows. To party. To destabilize
the government. To see Paris in springtime. To escape a bad marriage. To claim
lottery winnings. To take hostages. To negotiate the release of hostages. To restore
a fresco. To catch a glimpse of the coronation. To evangelize. To see again Turner’s
“Rough Sea with Wreckage.” To cut down a paratrooper caught in the highest
branches. To donate a kidney. To experience rsthand a state of emergency. To use
frequent yer miles before they expire.
Volume 50.1 Maryfrances Wagner | 125
The Dead Don’t Hear
the Songs
Maryances Wagner
Studies into human decomposition help answer
four questions: who is the victim, how did the victim
die, where and when did the victim die?
~ Arpad Vass
On the lawn of the Oak Ridge Research Facility,
beneath canopies of trees and unfazed squirrels,
cadavers nish their death in an outdoor natural
setting with the help of forensic scientist,
Arpad Vass. At rst, Vass turned them
face down, but he’s long since hardened
to self digestion. e haciendas move
in a nice rice waltz below the surface of frenzied
fat eating. When he explains decay, he prefers
hacienda instead of maggots, skin slippage,
or gloving for when skin disembarks
from a hand. Bacteria colonies swell and canoe
through the body of food goo into bloat
until the body collapses into itself, seeps
into soil, and oers over 400 body vapors.
e vapors help identify clandestine burials,
so Voss wants to add a fourth mortis to algor,
rigor, and livor: odor mortis. e dead don’t mind
the stench and the way it stays with you,
sometimes for months, or the Rice Krispie sound
of feeding maggots. rashers and warblers
stick around for blowies and carrion beetles,
though it’s doubtful the dead hear their songs.
126 | Jeff Alessandrelli The Laurel Review
“At the Present Time, In All
Honesty, I Am Interested In the
Longevity of Fecal Matter.”
- Sir Richard Walnen
Jeff Alessandrelli
Night by dawn the stars
will never nish what they
st- art in my life-
time.
e world entire
I will
die
but only in one
geographically-destined place.
Certain piles of dinosaur excrement—
I mean dinosaur feces— I mean
dinosaur shit—
lasted for hundreds of years
on this earth.
Immortality’s ephemerality exists
half as long.
And this month and this month only
it’s National Truck Month
again—
I hope it lasts forever!
Special International Translations
{ Swedish >> English }
128 | Tomas Tranströmer The Laurel Review
Orgeln slutar att spela och det blir dödstyst i kyrkan
men bara ett par sekunder.
Så tränger det svaga brummandet igenom från
traken därute, den större orgeln.
Ja vi är omslutna av trakens mumlande som vandrar
runt längs domkyrkans väggar.
Där glider yttervärlden som en genomskinlig lm
och med kämpande skuggor i pianissimo.
Som om den ingick bland ljuden från gatan hör jag en
av mina pulsar slå i tystnaden,
jag hör mitt blod kretsa, kaskaden som gömmer sig
inne i mig, som jag går omkring med,
och lika nära som mitt blod och lika långt borta som
ett minne från fyraårsåldern
hör jag långtradaren som går förbi och får de sex-
hundraåriga murarna att darra.
Här är så olikt en modersfamn som någonting kan
bli, ändå är jag ett barn just nu
som hör de vuxna prata långt borta, vinnarnas och
förlorarnas röster yter ihop.
På de blå bänkarna sitter en gles församling. Och
pelarna reser sig som underliga träd:
inga rötter (bara det gemensamma golvet) och ingen
krona (bara det gemensamma taket).
Kort Paus I
Orgelkonserten
Tomas Tranströmer
Volume 50.1 Göran Malmqvist | 129
e organ ceases to play and the church is dead silent but only for
a few seconds.
en the faint humming noise penetrates from the trac outside,
a greater organ.
Yes we are surrounded by the muttering of the trac that moves
along the walls of the cathedral.
ere the external world glides by like a transparent lm with
struggling shadows in pianissimo.
I hear one of my pulses beat in the silence as if it mingled with the
noise from the street,
I hear my blood pulsate, the cascade that hides within me, and that
I carry along,
And as close as my blood and as far away as a memory from the
age of four
I hear the heavy lorry that passes by, causing the six-hundred-year
old walls to tremble.
Nothing could be more dierent from a mother’s embrace than this,
yet right now I’m a child
who hears the grown-ups talk far away, the voices of winners and
losers blend.
A sparse congregation sit on the blue benches. And the pillars rise like
strange trees:
no roots (only the shared oor) and no tree tops (only the shared
vault).
Short Interval in the
Organ Recital
Tomas Tranströmer | Translation by Göran Malmqvist
130 | Tomas Tranströmer The Laurel Review
Jag återupplever en dröm. Att jag står på en kyrko-
gård ensam. Överallt lyser ljung
så långt ögat når. Vem väntar jag på? En vän. Varför
kommer han inte? Han är redan här.
Sakta skruvar döden upp ljuset underifrån, från marken.
Heden lyser allt starkare lila—
nej i en färg som ingen sett . . . tills morgonens bleka
ljus viner in genom ögonlocken
och jag vaknar till det där orubbliga KANSKE som
bär mig genom den vacklande världen.
Och varje abstrakt bild av världen är lika omöjlig som
ritningen till en storm.
Hemma stod allvetande Encyklopedin, en meter i
bokhyllan, jag lärde mig läsa i den.
Men varje människa får sin egen encyklopedi skriven,
den växer fram i varje själ,
den skrivs från födelsen och framåt, de hundratusentals
sidorna står pressade mot varann
och ändå med lu emellan! som de dallrande löven i
en skog. Motsägelsernas bok.
Det som står där ändras varje stund, bilderna retuscherar
sig själva, orden imrar.
En svallvåg rullar genom hela texten, den följs av
nästa svallvåg, och nästa . . .
Volume 50.1 Göran Malmqvist | 131
I re-live a dream: I stand in a church-yard alone. Everywhere the light of
heather
as far as the eye reaches. Whom do I wait for? A friend. Why doesn’t he
come? He is already here.
Slowly death screws up the light from underneath, from the ground.
e shimmer of the heather grows more intensely lilac—
no a colour that no one has seen . . . until the pale light of morning
seeps in through the eyelids
and I wake up to that staunch PERHAPS that carries me through the
tilting world.
And every abstract image of the world is as impossible as the
blueprints of a storm.
At home the all-knowing Encyclopaedia occupied three feet in the
bookshelf, I taught myself to read from it.
But for every person an encyclopaedia is being written, it grows in
every soul,
it is being written from birth, and onwards, hundreds of thousands of
pages are pressed tight
and yet there is air in between! Like trembling leaves in a forest. A book
of contradictions.
What is written there changes with every moment, the pictures retouch
themselves, the words icker.
A well rolls through the entire text, followed by another swell, and
another . . .
132 | Ingela Strandberg The Laurel Review
Kom
ropar den svarta
hingsten I bäcken
Kom
Manen blåser ut
Hovhåret yter
Jag lossar hans betsel
Bäckahästen
Ingela Strandberg
Tar med mig sjön hem
De långa våderna vatten
Tar dem med långt in i sömnen
Huvudet under mörkret
Nu syns jag inte längre
Sjön
Ingela Strandberg
Volume 50.1 Göran Malmqvist | 133
Come
the black stallion
shouts in the brook
Come
e mane blows up
e hoof hairs oat
I loosen his bridle
The Stallion in the Brook
Ingela Strandberg / Translated by Göran Malmqvist
Taking the lake with me home
e water of the long widths
Taking them with me far into sleep
e head covered by darkness
Now I can no longer be seen
The Lake
Ingela Strandberg / Translated by Göran Malmqvist
134 | Ingela Strandberg The Laurel Review
Rået lärde mig
att dölja det svarta
hålet i ryggen där
allt djup förvaras
Skogsrået 1
Ingela Strandberg
Rået lärde mig att kroppens
vackraste del är nacken
Övergången eller avståndet
mellan huvud och ryggrad
Där eggen sätts
Där ensamheten bor
Skogsrået 3
Ingela Strandberg
Volume 50.1 Göran Malmqvist | 135
She taught me
to hide the black
hole in my back
where all depth is kept
The Siren of the Woods 1
Ingela Strandberg / Translated by Göran Malmqvist
She taught me the body’s
most beautiful part is the neck
e transition or distance
from head to spine
Where the edge is applied
Where loneliness lives
The Siren of the Woods 3
Ingela Strandberg / Translated by Göran Malmqvist
136 | Ingela Strandberg The Laurel Review
Rået lärde mig
att mjölka
Vi satt ute på fälten
med pannorna mot bågnande kött
medan den ljuvligaste mjölk
vätte vår hud blank
Vi stal både törst och mjölk
Sköljde sen våra kärl i
strömmande vatten
och drog oss skrattande
tillbaka in under barken
Skogsrået 4
Ingela Strandberg
Rået lärde mig
tidigt ordet hora
Det lät som ett förlupet rop från göken
när den mäter ut maj
Därför vände jag mig om och log
när det första gången kastades
mot min rygg
Skogsrået 5
Ingela Strandberg
Volume 50.1 Göran Malmqvist | 137
She taught me to milk
We sat in the elds
our foreheads leaning against the bulging body
while the most delicious milk
moistened our skin bright
We stole both thirst and milk
then rinsed our vessels in
owing water
and laughing withdrew
under the bark
The Siren of the Woods 4
Ingela Strandberg / Translated by Göran Malmqvist
She early taught me
the word whore
It sounded like a stray cry
of the cuckoo when it measures May
erefore I turned around
and smiled the rst time
it was thrown against my back
The Siren of the Woods 5
Ingela Strandberg / Translated by Göran Malmqvist
138 | Ingela Strandberg The Laurel Review
Jag ser på ett stycke kött
som vrider sig över elden
Det höll ihop en buk
en rygg ett huvud ett språng
i mörkt klirrande gräs
i en sluttning som frihet
Fångades hungrade kvävdes äktes
Vid klingan
mindes det mig när jag
stod på vägen och såg
transporten gå förbi
Kött
Ingela Strandberg
Volume 50.1 Göran Malmqvist | 139
I look at a piece of meat
revolving over the re
It kept together a belly
a back a head a leap
in darkly jingling grass
on a slope like freedom
Caught starved choked split
By the blade
it remembered me when I
stood on the road and watched
the freight pass by
Now black the soot
like the short message
through the grid in the morning
when all was already too late
Meat
Ingela Strandberg / Translated by Göran Malmqvist
140 | Ingela Strandberg The Laurel Review
Kvinnan under locket
avklädd allt räckhåll
Jag slår på trumman
Men all klang är myt
Jag väntar på att locket ska brista
Brist brist
I dörren står ljuset
Locket
Ingela Strandberg
Jag kommer att dö
som en långt utdragen celloton
Jag kommer att dö i A-dur
Musik
Ingela Strandberg
Volume 50.1 Göran Malmqvist | 141
e women under the lid
rid of all reach
I beat the drum
But all clang is myth
I wait for the lid to burst
Burst burst
e light stands in the doorway
The Lid
Ingela Strandberg / Translated by Göran Malmqvist
I shall die
like a drawn-out cello tone
I shall die in A major
Music
Ingela Strandberg / Translated by Göran Malmqvist
142 | Ingela Strandberg The Laurel Review
I den lilla stan som skvalpar
i havet sov jag om nätterna ute
eller i bilen
Vågorna lallade
Alla hotellrum
var fullbelagda
Jag bodde ingenstans
Stan
Ingela Strandberg
Stolt bar jag barnet
inne i mig genom hopen
men spetsades av medlidande
Fattig och utkörd
såg jag månen nå ända
ner till dyningen vid Subbe fyr
Lycklig fångade jag
ett splitter ur oändligheten
och stoppade det innanför tröjan
Sen lyste vi på katter
och onanister som vaktade
på hjärtats rytm i sina trånga källarhål
Genom Hopen
Ingela Strandberg
Volume 50.1 Göran Malmqvist | 143
In the little town that splashes
in the sea I spent the nights outside
or in the car
e waves mumbled
All hotel rooms
were taken
I lived nowhere
The Town
Ingela Strandberg / Translated by Göran Malmqvist
Proud I carry the child within me
through the crowd
but was pierced by pity
Poor and turned out
I saw the moon reach all the way down
to the swell by the Subbe lighthouse
Happy I caught
a splinter of eternity
and put it under my sweater
en we shone on cats
and the masturbators who watched over
the rhythm of the heart in their cramped cellar-vaults
Through the Crowd
Ingela Strandberg / Translated by Göran Malmqvist
144 | Ingela Strandberg The Laurel Review
I den lilla stan som skvalpar
i havet fanns ett litet rum
för upplysning och bildning
Där vägde jag upp tid
När jag gick över torget
hem var stan tom
En konservburk utan innehåll
Om nätterna ylade
stjärnorna som vargar
från en plats varifrån
man kommer ensam
och i splitter nya kläder smidda
av eonernas smeder
Som jag längtade dit
Att Väga Tid
Ingela Strandberg
Volume 50.1 Göran Malmqvist | 145
In the little town that splashes
in the sea there was a little room
for information education
ere I weighed time
When I crossed the square
on my way home the town was empty
a can without content
In the nights the stars
howled like wolves
from a place where truth
and lies are the same
From there a man appeared alone
and in brand new clothes forged
by the smiths of the eons
How I wished I was there
To Weigh Time
Ingela Strandberg / Translated by Göran Malmqvist
146 | Kjell Espmark The Laurel Review
Evangelist
Kjell Espmark
Ett dis som är genomlyst av sol
drar över Galileiska sjön
där vi står i den lutande båten
och långsamt, långsamt drar upp vårt nät.
Relingen farligt nära vattnet
när det sprattlande glittret far över durken.
Nej, det är inte sk—det är människors själar.
Det här är det svåra året 1749
då min syn går förlorad bland smärtorna.
Det är då jag samlar all min fångst,
mina infall och andras glittrande tankar,
suckar, minnen och ällig vrede
i en mässa som trevar eer rockskörten
på den vi i brist på ord kallar Gud.
Jag vet att när jag slutat andas
kommer ingen notis i de tyska bladen.
Och när senare plågade samveten
söker mig hittar man ingen Bach.
De vänner som strömmade genom vårt hem
tjatade på mig—Skriv ner dina minnen.
Begrep de inte att jag gjort det?
Allt jag varit och allt jag minns
har skrivits in i mitt partitur
som ett hjärta lagt i dômens golv,
som en bröstkorg fogad i dess valv.
Ni vill pressa på mig en lärorik biogra,
en lekamen i styv peruk
och anletsdrag av anspråksfull sten.
Kalla mig gärna den femte evangelisten
men låt mig behålla blygsamma mått—
ni glömmer att vi var enkla skare
Volume 50.1 Robin Fulton Macpherson | 147
Evangelist
Kjell Espmark / Translated by Robin Fulton Macpherson
A haze shone-through by sunlight
hovers over the Sea of Galilee
where we stoop in the tilting boat
and ever so slowly drag up our net.
e railing perilously close to the surface
when the wriggling glitter spills on the boards.
No, they're not sh—they're the souls of men.
is is the bad year 1749
when my sight is lost among the pains.
at's when I gather all my catch,
glittering thoughts of my own and others,
sighs, memories and scaly wrath
in a Mass that gropes for the coat-tails
of what for lack of words we call God.
I know that when I've stopped breathing
the German press will not carry the news.
And later when troubled consciences
come looking they'll nd no Bach.
e friends who streamed through our home
would nag at me—Write your memoirs!
Couldn't they see that's what I'd done?
All I've been and all I remember
have been written into my scores
like a heart buried in the cathedral oor,
like a rib-cage built into its vaults.
You'd impose an instructive life-story on me,
a body in a rigid wig
and features of pretentious stone.
You may call me the h evangelist
but let me keep my unassuming ways—
you forget we were simple shermen
148 | Kjell Espmark The Laurel Review
i tjänst hos den som kom över vattnet
och andades fram en rimlig värld.
Och lammen som sprang framför benen på mig
var vanliga lamm med jordiska lortar.
Mina sju exakta toner besvärjer
ett kaos av oljud och villrådighet.
Deras stränghet har nära till dansen
och säger upp varje lydnad
mot en alltför mänsklig överhet.
Det skymmer.
Europas karta är äckad av blod.
Men violoncellen insisterar.
Och kören skapar den ordning
som världen har misslyckats med.
Volume 50.1 Robin Fulton Macpherson | 149
in the service of him who came across the water
and breathed forth a reasonable world.
And the lambs that frolicked before my feet
were earthly lambs with earthly droppings.
My seven exact tones master
a chaos of noise and irresolution.
eir severity is kin to the dance
and refuses all obedience
to an all too human higher power.
Darkness is gathering.
Europe's map is stained with blood.
But the cello insists.
And the choir creates an order
the world has failed to create.
150 | Kjell Espmark The Laurel Review
De som överlevde Förintelsen
skulle mötas här vid Hotel Lutetia
där Rue de Sèvres korsar Boulevard Raspail.
Det var vårt motstånd mot historien.
Barackerna var ett språk från Bayern
som reducerade oss till hår och skor.
Våra tankar hängde brända på stängslen.
Sjok av himmel och landskap var borta
liksom varje begriplighet.
Men vår dröm om ett möte bortom tiden
fanns kvar bland de trasor som var vi,
sammantryckta i skitiga sovbås.
Också vi som var brända ben
drömde om den avlägsna dag
då vi skulle resa oss rasslande
och komma de andras ben i möte.
Nu är vi till sist på avtalad plats
och ser de våra nalkas på avstånd
med steg som inte brinner längre.
Men vi tror inte på deras verklighet än,
inte starka nog att känna igen.
Därför stirrar vi in i hotellets fönster
för att se dem komma i spegelbilden.
Vi måste möta varandra försiktigt
för att glädjen inte ska bli för häig
för oss som så länge saknat den.
Till sist går vi mot varandra, beslutsamt
som ville vi skingrade som församlats
hjälpa den hejdade Skapelsen.
Kör
Kjell Espmark
Volume 50.1 Robin Fulton Macpherson | 151
De som överlevde Förintelsen
skulle mötas här vid Hotel Lutetia
där Rue de Sèvres korsar Boulevard Raspail.
Det var vårt motstånd mot historien.
Barackerna var ett språk från Bayern
som reducerade oss till hår och skor.
Våra tankar hängde brända på stängslen.
Sjok av himmel och landskap var borta
liksom varje begriplighet.
Men vår dröm om ett möte bortom tiden
fanns kvar bland de trasor som var vi,
sammantryckta i skitiga sovbås.
Också vi som var brända ben
drömde om den avlägsna dag
då vi skulle resa oss rasslande
och komma de andras ben i möte.
Now at last we're at our rendez-vous
watching our people approach from afar
with steps no longer burning.
But we don't believe in their reality yet,
not strong enough to recognise.
So we stare in the hotel windows
to watch their mirror-images arrive.
We must meet carefully
so that our joy won't be too great
for us who for so long had none.
Finally we near each other, determinedly
as if, scattered but now gathered,
we'd help Creation into motion again.
Chorus
Kjell Espmark / Translated by Robin Fulton Macpherson
152 | Kjell Espmark The Laurel Review
Eer ett ögonblicks tvekan
smeker ett svartnat fragment av en hand
en alltför länge saknad tinning.
Och rök som kan ha varit ett barn
kramas av rök med form av en mor.
Volume 50.1 Robin Fulton Macpherson | 153
Aer a moment's hesitation
a blackened fragment of a hand
strokes a temple missed for too long.
And smoke which could have been a child
is hugged by smoke in the shape of a mother.
154 | Kjell Espmark The Laurel Review
Döden, mästaren från München,
strök ut himmel, landskap och ansikten
ur en förtrogen bruntonad tavla
som trott sig stamma från Bonde-Bruegel.
Här och var ligger väven bar
med långa trådar som kallas lydnad.
Det är troligen här jag är född.
Kan främlingar erövra språket
som cancern erövrar våra celler
och vänder dem mot oss själva?
Tills det som en gång var vårt språk
fräter i lever och lungor.
Mitt armbandsur vet besked.
Medan jag yter längs Seinen ur tiden,
med ansiktet nere i vattnet,
ligger klockan kvar på nattduksbordet
och tickar fram berättelsen
om far som dog av tyfus i lägret
och mor som sköts med ett nackskott.
Klockans dröm är att en dag få stanna
eller hellre: ha tillåtits stanna före historien.
Den har oxiderats av sina minnen.
Vad den vill visa är språk, inte tid,
språk som reser sig ur sin sjukdom.
Kan orden brinna?
Vår stora ordbok tvekar om svaret
bak ryggar nötta av erövrarna.
Här och var har den brandplatser,
ställen där ord har mist sin mening
och det som är mening är svårlästa agor.
Språket
Kjell Espmark
Volume 50.1 Robin Fulton Macpherson | 155
Death, the master from Munich,
blotted out sky, landscape and faces
from a familiar brown-hued painting
that claimed descent from Peasant Brueghel.
e canvas is exposed here and there
with long threads called obedience.
Most likely it was here I was born.
Can foreiginers conquer the language
the way cancer conquers our cells
and turns them against us?
Until what was once our language
corrodes into liver and lungs.
My watch knows.
While I oat along the Seine out of time,
face down in the water,
my watch is still on the bedside table
ticking out the story
of father dead of typhus in the camp
and mother shot in the back of her neck.
e watch has a dream—to stop one day,
or rather, to have stopped before history.
It has been oxidised by its memories.
What it wants to show is not time
but language rising out of its disease.
Can the words burn?
Our multi-volume dictionary has no clear reply
behind spines scued by the conquerors.
It has scenes of re here and there
where words have lost their meaning
and meaning itself, near-illegible akes.
Language
Kjell Espmark / Translated by Robin Fulton Macpherson
156 | Kjell Espmark The Laurel Review
Ett sådant slocknande ord är ”minne”.
Ett ännu pyrande ord är ”hem”.
I en sådan värld är begreppet “änglar”
ingenting annat än tystnad.
Som änglarna i Vézelay, i det översta rummet
med utsikt över korstågen:
mänskliga fåglar som fångats i putsen
med ansiktet vänt mot väggen, som jag
med ansiktet vänt mot odens botten,
en uppgiven tystnad
i azurblått och slocknande rött.
Jag bröt mig ut ur mitt verk
som just brutits sönder bakom mig.
Jag hörde dess knotor och revben
rasslande pröva att resa sig
för att rasa ihop i depressiv stumhet.
Men det är en stumhet som inte ger sig.
Jag är på väg, virvlar runt,
sjunker och stiger,
yter allt längre in i den glömska
som till sist är vårt hem.
Och vårt envisa språk.
Volume 50.1 Robin Fulton Macpherson | 157
One such guttering word is ”memory.”
Another, smouldering, is ”home.”
In such a world the idea of ”angels”
is nothing but silence.
Like the angels in Vézelay, in the top room
with a view over the crusades,
human birds caught in the plaster,
faces to the wall, like me
facing down to the river-bed,
an exhausted silence
in azure blue and expiring red.
I broke out of my work
which had just broken up behind me.
I heard its knuckles and ribs
rattling, trying to raise themselves
to tumble then into depressive muteness.
But it is a muteness that won't give up.
I'm on my way, swirling round,
sinking and rising,
driing further into the oblivion
which is at last our home.
And our unrelenting language.
Contributor Notes The Laurel Review
CONTRIBUTOR NOTES
Je Alessandrelli is the author of the full-length collection THIS LAST TIME
WILL BE THE FIRST (Burnside Review, 2014). His work appears or is forthcoming
in Denver Quarterly, e American Poetry Review, and Witness, among other
journals.
Mary Biddinger is the author of ve full-length collections of poetry, most recently
Small Enterprise (Black Lawrence Press, 2015) and e Czar (with Jay Robinson,
Black Lawrence Press, 2016). She is a professor of English at the University of
Akron and edits the Akron Series in Poetry at the University of Akron Press.
Bruce Bond is the author of 16 books including For the Lost Cathedral (LSU,
2015), Immanent Distance: Poetry and the Metaphysics of the Near at Hand (U of
MI, 2015), Gold Bee (Crab Orchard Award, SIU, 2016), and Black Anthem (Tampa
Review Prize, U of Tampa, 2016).
Emily Borgmann is a poet, essayist, and writing educator. Her poetry and
nonction have appeared in such journals as Salamander, Green Mountains
Review, Skidrow Penthouse, and Alligator Juniper.
Christopher Citro is the author of e Maintenance of the Shimmy-Shammy (Steel
Toe Books, 2015). He won the 2015 Poetry Competition at Columbia Journal, and
his recent and upcoming publications include Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Best
New Poets 2014, e Journal, Sixth Finch, and many others.
Kristina Marie Darling is the author of twenty-seven books of poetry, most
recently Ghost / Landscape (with John Gallaher; BlazeVox Books, 2016) and the
forthcoming Dark Horse (C&R Press, 2017). Her awards include three residencies
at Yaddo and three residencies at the American Academy in Rome.
Paul Dickey is the author of two poetry books: ey Say is is How Death
Came Into the World (Mayapple Press, 2011) and Wires Over the Homeplace
(Pinyon Publishing, 2013). His work has appeared in 32 Poems, Potomac Review,
Valparaiso Review, Superstition Review, and many other journals.
Darren Dillman has published one novel, e Preacher (David C. Cook, 2009),
and his short ction has appeared in Shenandoah, the Tulane Review, George
Washington Review, Southwest American Literature, Consequence, the High Desert
Journal, Prole, and Best of the West.
Kjell Espmark has published fourteen volumes of poetry, recently Den inre
rymden (e Inner Space , trans. Robin Fulton Macpherson, Marick Press). He has
also published ten novels, notably Glömskans tid (e Age of Oblivion), and ten
volumes of literary criticism. He has been translated into some twenty languages.
Volume 50.1 Contributor Notes
Robert Long Foreman is the author of Among Other ings, published this year
by Pleiades Press, and a winner of the Robert C. Jones Prize. His essays and
short stories have appeared in Agni, Copper Nickel, e Cincinnati Review, and
e Utne Reader, among others. He has also won a Pushcart Prize.
Mark Halliday teaches creative writing at Ohio University. His sixth book of
poems, resherphobe, appeared in 2013 from the University of Chicago Press.
Wynne Hungerford has had work published in Epoch, Smokelong Quarterly, and
Clackamas Literary Review, among other places. She is an MFA candidate at the
University of Florida.
Henry Israeli has three poetry collections: god’s breath hovering across the waters,
(Four Way Books: 2016), Praying to the Black Cat (Del Sol: 2010), and New
Messiahs (Four Way Books: 2002). He is also the translator of three books by
Albanian poet Luljeta Lleshanaku and the founder and editor of Saturnalia Books.
Elizabeth Jacobson is the founding director of the WingSpan Poetry Project
which conducts poetry classes at local shelters. Her recent work has appeared or
is forthcoming in the American Poetry Review, Hinchas de Poesia, Indolent Books,
Orion Magazine, Ploughshares, Plume, and Women's Studies.
Mike James has been published in over a 100 magazines across the United States.
Among his nine poetry collections are Peddler’s Blues, e Year We Let e House
Fall Down, Elegy In Reverse, and Past Due Notices. He has previously served as the
Visiting Writer In Residence at the University of Maine, Fort Kent.
Meridian Johnson is the author of Kinesthesia (New Rivers Press, 2010.) Her
work has appeared in AGNI, Bellevue Literary Review, BPJ, Gettysburg Review,
North American Review, NPR’s On Being, and elsewhere. She lives in northern
New Mexico and is, among other things, a roller derby mom.
Robin Fulton Macpherson is a Scottish poet and translator who has lived in
Norway for many years. Maríck Press (Michigan) recently brought out his A
Northern Habitat: Collected Poems 1960-2010. He has translated work by Kjell
Espmark, Harry Martinson, and Tomas Tranströmer, among others.
Al Maginnes has published seven full length collections of poetry, most recently
e Next Place (Iris Press, 2017) and four chapbooks. New or forthcoming poems
are in North American Review, Spry, and several others. He is music editor of the
website Connotation Press: An Online Artifact.
Göran Malmqvist was born in 1924. He has translated Swedish poetry by Ingela
Strandberg, Kjell Espmark, and Tomas Tranströmer into English and some
English poetry (by William Blake and T.S. Eliot) into Swedish.
Contributor Notes The Laurel Review
Louise Marburg has been published in e Louisville Review, Briar Cli
Review, Cold Mountain Review, e Lascaux Review Prize Anthology, Day One,
e Carolina Quarterly, Folio, and others. Her collection of short stories, e
Truth About Me (WTAW Press) is forthcoming in September 2017.
Kyle McCord is the author of ve books of poetry including National Poetry
Series Finalist Magpies in the Valley of Oleanders (Trio House 2016). His work
has been featured in AGNI, Boston Review, Crazyhorse, e Gettysburg Review,
Harvard Review, and elsewhere.
Gary McDowell is the author of a collection of lyric essays, Caesura: Essays (Otis
Books/Seismicity Editions, 2017), and ve collections of poetry, including, most
recently, Mysteries in a World that inks ere Are None (Burnside Review Press,
2016). His work has appeared in journals such as American Poetry Review.
Christopher Miles is originally from southeast Minnesota. His work appears
in e Cincinnati Review; Salamander; Sugarhouse Review; War, Literature, and
the Arts; and West Branch. From 2001 to 2005 he served in the United States Navy.
He lives in Fairbanks, Alaska.
John A. Nieves has poems forthcoming or recently published in journals such as:
Cincinnati Review, Pleiades, Alaska Quarterly Review, e Literary Review, and
Carolina Quarterly. He won the Indiana Review Poetry Contest and his rst book,
Curio (2014), won the Elixir Press Annual Poetry Award Judge’s Prize.
Kyle Norwood is the winner of the 2014 Morton Marr Poetry Prize from Southwest
Review. His poems have also recently appeared in New Ohio Review, Birmingham
Poetry Review, Carolina Quarterly, Devilsh Review, Innisfree Poetry Journal, e
Lake (U.K.), and the anthology Poems for a Liminal Age, among others.
Martin Ott has published a recent book titled Spectrum (C&R Press, 2016).
He is the author of seven books and won the De Novo and Sandeen prizes for his
rst two poetry collections. His work has appeared in more than two hundred
magazines and a dozen anthologies.
Eric Pankey is the author of many collections of poems. A new book, AUGURY,
is forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in Fall 2017. He is the Heritage Chair in
Writing at George Mason University.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review,
Forge, Poetry, Osiris, e New Yorker, and elsewhere. His most recent collection is
e B Poems (Poets Wear Prada, 2016). Information, free e-books, his essay titled
“Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” are available at www.simonperchik.com.
Volume 50.1 Contributor Notes
Alan Robert Proctor has had his work appear in Chautauqua, Crosstimbers,
Kansas City Voices, I-70 Review, and others. His memoir, e Sweden File: Memoir
of an American Expatriate (Westphalia Press, 2015), co-authored with his late
brother, Bruce Proctor, was named by the Kansas City Star as a 2015 “best read”.
Sandra Ramirez received a Notable Mention in Best American Essays 2014 for
her essay "Stray," which was published in Free State Review. Her most recent work
can be found at Puerto del Sol and LARB online. She's currently at work on a
collection of poems and a memoir about driving for Uber.
Dana Roeser is the author of e eme of Tonight’s Party Has Been Changed,
recipient of the 2013 Juniper Prize, as well as Beautiful Motion and In the Truth
Room, both winners of the Morse Prize. Her recent work has appeared, or is
forthcoming, in Poetry and e Southern Review, among others.
Eliza Rotterman has had poetry appear in Volta, Quarterly West, Colorado
Review, and Poetry International, among others. She has received fellowships from
the Vermont Studio Center and she was the 2016 recipient of the Snowbound
Chapbook award from Tupelo Press. Currently she lives in Portland, Oregon.
Carrie Shipers has had poems appear in Crab Orchard Review, Hayden’s Ferry
Review, New England Review, North American Review, and others. She is the
author of Ordinary Mourning (ABZ, 2010), Cause for Concern (Able Muse, 2015),
Family Resemblances (University of New Mexico, 2016), and two chapbooks.
Kathryn Smith has had poems nominated for Best American Poetry and the
Pushcart Prize; they have also appeared or are forthcoming in Mid-American
Review, Bellingham Review, Southern Indiana Review, and elsewhere. A mini-
chapbook, Tracing the New Stars, was published in Rock & Sling in 2016.
Martin Stannard is an English poet and critic. A former Royal Literary Fund
Writing Fellow at Nottingham Trent University, he has been living in China since
2005, where he teaches at a university in Zhuhai. His most recent collection is
Poems for the Young at Heart (Leafe Press, UK, 2016).
Ingela Strandberg was born in southwestern Sweden. She has published three
novels, one short story collection, a children’s book, and eleven collections of
poetry in Sweden. In 2014, she was the recipient of e Bellman Prize, Sweden’s
highest honor in poetry.
Tomas Tranströmer won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2011. His books
sell thousands of copies in Sweden, and his poetry has been translated into 60
languages. He is considered one of the most important Scandinavian writers since
the Second World War.
Contributor Notes The Laurel Review
Maryfrances Wagner has written several books, including Salvatore’s Daughter,
Light Subtracts Itself, Red Silk (winner of the orpe Menn Book Award for
Literary Excellence), Dioramas, and Pouf. Her poems have appeared in New
Letters, Midwest Quarterly, and others.
Marcus Wicker is the author of Maybe the Saddest ing, which was selected by
poet D.A. Powell for the National Poetry Series and was a nalist for an NAACP
Image Award. His second book, Silencer, will be released in 2017. He is a recipient
of the Pushcart Prize and fellowships from Ruth Lilly, Cave Canem, and others.
Don Zancanella has published a collection of stories titled Western Electric
(University of Iowa Press), which won the John Simmons/Iowa Short Fiction
Award. He has also had a story appear in the O. Henry Prize volume and has one
forthcoming in e Beloit Fiction Journal.
Volume 50.1 Contributor Notes
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
"Hands" from Sacrum (c) 2017 by Bruce Bond. Appears with the permission of
Four Way Books. All rights reserved.
"e Ghost in the Shape of an Unnamed Flower" from Sacrum (c) 2017 by Bruce
Bond. Appears with the permission of Four Way Books. All rights reserved.
e four poems appearing in this issue by Robin Fulton Macpherson are reprints.
ese were mistakingly printed in our 49.2 issues as translations.
