Issue 141
Winter & Spring 2012
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Welcome to the fourth issue of TriQuarterly Online. We are excited to present our first-ever collection of video essays, curated by accomplished video essayists John Bresland and Marilyn Freeman. We also have fiction from Bonnie Nadzam who recently received the the 2011 Center for Fiction's Flaherty Dunnan First Novel Prize for LAMB (Other Press, 2011). We are excited to showcase translated pieces from two international contributors. The first is prominent, Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtan. His work was translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah who also has poetry in this issue. The second is a short story from prolific Senegalese writer Boubacar Boris Diop. Finally, we have some new, young voices that we are eager to share. Please enjoy these writers as well as the rest of our outstanding new fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. We look forward to receiving your comments at triquarterlyonline@northwestern.edu.
EDITOR’S NOTE
One could argue that text, onscreen, feathered with images and sound, is becoming more like video. And video is becoming more like text. How are writers to contend with this? How does the visceral nature of digital technology—sound, image and the sometimes cruel edgelessness of the screen—alter the writer’s relationship to language? The seven video essays in this collection, curated by John Bresland and Marilyn Freeman, raise a host of thrilling questions, not least: How is writing today different than it was yesterday? What does it mean for writers to build a text with, as Virginia Woolf once cannily advised, whatever pieces come your way?
Managing Editor: Amanda Morris
Faculty Advisor: Susan Harris
Copy Editor: Ruth Goring
Graduate Fellow: Ben Schacht
Book Review Editors: Karen Zemanick, Leigh Arber
Fiction Editors: Matt Carmichael, Schuyler Dickson, Cathy Gao, Tedd Hawks, Sarah Kalsbeek, Ankur Thakkar, Stephanie Tran
Nonfiction Editor: Sarah Hollenbeck
Poetry Editor: Lana Rakhman
Chapbook Review Editor: Anthony Opal
Art Director: Patrick Allen Carberry
Staff: Emily Ayshford, Rebecca Bald, Danielle Burhop, Michelle Cabral, Matt Carmichael, Jen Companik, Vincent Francone, Cathy Gao, Amanda Gebhardt, Barbara Ghoshal, Eric Grawe, Dane Hamann, Noelle Havens, Elizabeth Herbert, Russ Hicks, Gretchen Kalwinski, Adam Kovac, Nath Jones, Jen Lawrence, Eldad Malamuth, Carrie Muehle, Dana Norris, Tien (Mimi) Nguyen, Hana Park, Cory Phare, Lydia Pudzianowski, Nate Renie, Mark Rentfro, Paula Root, Tal Rosenberg, Virginia Smith, Megan Marie Sullivan, Amanda Tague, and Myra Thompson
Beauvoir, at the Louisiane (Paris)
Beauvoir’s art was fiction
or Sartre’s love for her was fiction
or both. And so
how to arrive at love—
the human instinct,
simple, tender desire.
nina we pretty
nina we pretty
much could do
exactly what
we want wherever
we are, if you’ve brought
your bellybutton, and i’ve got my gun.
rusty nails & rat poison
miri come murmur
in my american ear;
israel is a muddle of men &
you are a woman winnowing out the
scraps, collapsing
Charm Against Insomnia
Little mouse, little
gray hunger
that nibbles
the night to a bony
toothpick,
Reincarnation
The boy the others teased
all through elementary school
for his angel-cake pallor and Coke-bottle glasses
In the Picture
In the picture that wasn’t taken
I lost my arthritis and started running
But was still
Overrun by the sea
Crossing the Whole Country
There’s turbulence, the plane suffering mood swings,
the good ones floaty, but you can’t count on them.
Always trust your pilot, says the Air Force flier beside me,
commuting to war, to this war,
Impossible Grace
I
At Herod’s gate
I heap flowers in a crate
Poppies, moist lilies—
It’s dusk, I wait.
The One You Accidentally Found in the Mirror
Translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah
The one you accidentally found in the mirror
in its dark corner to be exact
was there alone thinking of you
befriending your solitude
The Camp Prostitute
Translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah
The intentions of those heading to her house
could be touched by fingers
chaste and proud.
Preliminary Sketch
Translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah
The talk that remained in the house, when we went out,
remained alone
and agitated
pacing its domains
like a stubborn wolf.
A Graphic 1995
Translated from Arabic by Fady Joudah
The endings are not ours
not anyone’s.
Endings belong to strangers
who weren’t born on wagons,
people we find in the dust of corridors
and who happen in speech