Issue 143
Winter & Spring 2013
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Hello and welcome to the sixth online issue of TriQuarterly. We're excited to feature cinepoems for the first time, in the spirit of Man Ray and Anaïs Nin, but with a few more resources at our disposal than the pioneers of the genre. We are also honored to host a suite of poems from Sterling Plumpp and unpublished work from Toi Derricotte, Angela Jackson, Alexander Chee, Dinty W. Moore, and Kathleen Ossip, among other wonderful writers both familiar and less so. If you thought anything about this issue, please share it with us: triquarterly@northwestern.edu. If you just read and enjoyed, that's perfect too. --L.P.
Managing Editor: Lydia Pudzianowski
Faculty Advisor: Susan Harris
Literary Editor: S.L. Wisenberg
Director of Planning: Reginald Gibbons
Media Architect: Harlan Wallach
Technical Advisor: Alex Miner
Social Media Editor: Ankur Thakkar
Copy Editor: Ruth Goring
Graduate Fellow: Ben Schacht
Undergraduate Intern: Erik Tormoen
Book Review Editors: Amber Peckham, Matt Wood
Chapbook Review Editor: Dan Fliegel
Fiction Editors: Matt Carmichael, Carrie Muehle, Ankur Thakkar, Stephanie Tran
Nonfiction Editor: Michelle Cabral
Poetry Editor: C. Russell Price
Art Director: Laura Svendsen
Staff: Ignatius Aloysius, Rebecca Bald, Jen Companik, Kevin Davis, Aaron DeLee, Vincent Francone, Dane Hamann, Ish Harris-Wolff, Noelle Havens, Elizabeth Herbert, Alex Higley, Sarah Hollenbeck, Martha Holloway, Nath Jones, Jen Lawrence, Phallon Perry, Cory Phare, Jenna Rabideaux, Lana Rakhman, Vanessa Bates Ramirez, Nate Renie, Mark Rentfro, Paula Root, Dan Schuld, Maureen Searcy, Michi Smith, Virginia Smith, Travis Steele, Megan Marie Sullivan, Myra Thompson, Alisa Ungar-Sargon, Karen Zemanick
What to Do When It Happens
Let’s leave our living rooms for the wolves.
When the sky opens into whiteness
and comes down over us, why not go out into it?
On Waking Up the Next Morning with Back Spasms & A Cracked Rib
for Rob K.
I want to align my spine
with yours, I want to get on all fours
and carry you places. I’d be enlightened
if I could with anybody, everybody
IN OUT AZ DJ
for Junot Díaz
Tune in, spoon into, this audio sputter, the din
of my judo-jumped heart—you who make me
no-doubt dizzy. My horizon’s dotted with tidbits and tactics
The One About Regrets
The biggest mistake of your life walks into a bar. Height bestows a certain specialness and he is just tall enough to qualify as special. As usual, he attracts more attention than you.
What's It to You
Inside of Town Hall the townspeople are
having a meeting. What’s it to you, one of them asks
as I walk in and I say very little, smiling as they imagine
whether I mean what I say. Sitting in the corner
Tattoo Theory
My own personal map of America on the back of the airplane seat
where the cartoon plane tells you where you’ve been and where
you’re going is, for some reason, in Spanish. So it reads Montes Apalaches.
In a Mexican Restaurant I Recall How Much You Upset Me
Tonight over casual conversation,
words brought you up or out
from where I keep you,
and you were my stepmom again
and I was telling some of his family,
Funeral of My Character
(paintings by Hikari Shimoda)
What is lost is lost for good reason. Things turn bizarre when the canvas of my feelings is
better off in front of the MacBook at home.
My Father's Prayers
Every morning my father prayed on his knees
at the side of his marriage bed. He bowed
his head and poured his prayers into two loose fists
over his mouth. We watched in wonder
Summer and the City
(Chicago as was, in memory of Robert Hayden and his memory)
Summer nights cool came down
blotting heat like a kiss for colored children.
Heat surged
as we danced jagged up and down the street,
Mississippi Suite
1.
I have crossed over some
where I can buy a cross
road map For mummified worlds with
in words I invent