Issue 144
Summer & Fall 2013
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Next time you see us, things won’t be the same. Our next issue, due to launch in January 2014, will feature an entirely redesigned website that we absolutely cannot wait to share with you. But enough about the future. Let's talk about the present.
Issue 144, our largest online issue to date, is filled with content from emerging and established writers alike. In this issue you’ll find new poems from Marianne Boruch, Kate Braverman, and Stephen Dunn, and potent doses of Americana from Brian Oliu, Annick Smith, and Ron Carlson. We are proud to feature essays from Nicole Walker and Jewell Washington, who celebrates her first major journal publication, and excerpts from forthcoming novels by Juan Martinez and Katharine Beutner. This issue also features another fine series of haunting video essays and cinepoems curated by John Bresland.
A sincere thank you must be given to our dedicated staff of creative writing graduate students and faculty. Issue after issue, they enthusiastically donate their time, energy, and expertise to the journal. They do this not for salaries and perks, but for a passion of the written word and a true appreciation of the TriQuarterly tradition.
When TQ abandoned print to exist exclusively online, we were written off by some in the literary community who suggested “the party was over.” We are happy to report that the party is not over. The poems, stories, and essays (and now video essays and cinepoems) published in TriQuarterly continue to resonate with readers around the world. And, given worldwide electronic access, we can honestly boast our largest readership in the history of the journal. With a complete website redesign on the horizon, the party is just getting started. It goes without saying that digital literature is here to stay. But for those who remain skeptical, I implore you to consider the Internet as a way to access some of the brightest voices in contemporary writing. Great literature is not only a physical thing; it is not something that needs to be shelved like bowling trophies or souvenirs from that family trip to Dollywood. Literature remains the art of all written work, regardless of how or where those writings are experienced.
Since 1964—because of the passion and dedication put forth by past editors Charles Newman, Elliott Anderson, Reginald Gibbons, and Susan Hahn—TriQuarterly has been instrumental in defining the landscape of American literature and beyond. As a result, back issues of the print edition are becoming increasingly rare. Efforts are already underway to digitize our vast archives in order to revive and maintain the rich, ever-important history of TriQuarterly.
As always, thanks for reading, and we welcome feedback at triquarterly@northwestern.edu
Cheers,
Matt Carmichael
Managing Editor: Matt Carmichael
Assistant Managing Editor: Dan Schuld
Faculty Advisors: Alice George, Susan Harris
Literary Editor: S.L. Wisenberg
Film Editor: John Bresland
Director of Planning: Reginald Gibbons
Media Architect: Harlan Wallach
Technical Advisors: Alex Miner, Rodolfo Vieira, Nick Gertonson
Copy Editor: Ruth Goring
Graduate Fellow: Benjamin Schacht
Undergraduate Intern: Erik Tormoen
Book Review Editors: Amber Peckham, Matt Wood
Fiction Editors: Carrie Muehle, Dan Schuld, Ankur Thakkar, Stephanie Tran
Nonfiction Editor: Michelle Cabral
Poetry Editor: C. Russell Price
Staff: Ignatius Aloysius, Rebecca Bald, James Temple Berg, Patrick Bernhard, Jen Companik, Tyler Day, Aaron DeLee, Vincent Francone, Dane Hamann, Ish Harris-Wolff, Noelle Havens, Beth Herbert, Alex Higley, Sarah Hollenbeck, Nath Jones, Jen Lawrence, Patrick LeDuc, Mercedes Lucero, Troy Parks, Lydia Pudzianowski, Lana Rakhman, Nate Renie, Mark Rentfro, Paula Root, Tara Scannell, Maureen Searcy, Caitlin Sellnow, Michi Smith, Virginia Smith, Travis Steele, Megan Marie Sullivan, Myra Thompson, Karen Zemanick, Ben Zimmerman
Image from When Walt Whitman Was a Little Girl
Poe
The well-heeled couple strolling arm and arm discussing the upcoming presidential race had already agreed that General Zachary Taylor would be elected the new president. All the newspapers were extolling the general’s triumphant exploits during the Mexican War, resulting in the annexation of a great swath of land connecting the territory of Texas with distant California.
Some Little Lamb (an excerpt from the novel, Killingly)
All classes have some little lamb / Who loves to go to school
-written on a notecard found in the 1897 scrapbook of Katharine Shearer, Mt. Holyoke student
Pra
Four chords of Earth Wind and Fire’s “You Can’t Hide Love” climbed out of the Canal Street station and into a flat blue sky, blue like if blue were a shade of gray, dusty teal on an endless wall. Skirted and suited behinds switched in Percy Clondon’s face, briefcases swung against his arms and knees, jostling the Walkman in his pocket as he jogged up the stairs.
I Saw a Dream
I saw a dream
which made me afraid,
and the thoughts upon my bed
and the visions of my head
troubled me
(Daniel 4:5)
Sled Cats
Three months before my divorce was finalized, we hit the sales doldrums of January and the department store laid off a quarter of its employees. After seven years in customer service I had some seniority, but was given two months’ pay and a promise that I’d get called back when I was needed.
Contamination
Nkiru entered with the flowers. She set them down on the kitchen counter. They were young roses, petals on the verge of blooming, but suddenly it seemed to her that they smelled rank, like old stems in stale water.
Dove Hunters
On our honeymoon, Martin and I stop in Shanghai to visit my father. One afternoon we go to the market. It is not the tourists’ market, there are no shirts proclaiming joy in machine-inked strokes.
A Few Homologous Traits
The Sidetracked Messenger
Rain caught people by surprise, so they turned their collars up, and looked at the ground as they made their way through the downpour. Nobody was paying attention out on the street, until the crash: a car sped through a light that had just turned red, colliding with a messenger on a bike.
Caracas is not Paris
Caracas is nothing like Paris you said. As if any place could be like Caracas. Cesar Vallejo had also lived in Paris and had died in that massive city of alleys and rancid puddles of human piss stinking up the subways.
The Dream within the Dream
We had a dream together. Something about a checkpoint. The soldier said please and thank you because you told him that he had to and for some reason he obeyed you and he didn’t even point his gun at us and he was only four feet tall. We felt bad for him.
Gray Gumbo
The clay flat at Locomotive Springs on the desolate northern tip of the Great Salt Lake is made of gray gumbo, a clay in which only dog sage will grow, and bitter-leaved weed, which is a dun green and ugly and which no animal can eat.
Domokun in Fremont
Iberia’s mom’s name is the prettiest name. Like don’t even try, don’t even pretend you could find a better name out there. Because you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t even come close.
The Last Place She Stood
“I feel like someone’s put a torch to me,” Lu sighs, from the floor, as if there’s something appealing about that notion. I lie down on the cool, scarred hardwood next to her but don’t touch, my toes an inch from her ankle, stretching into her and away at the same time.