Issue 146

Summer & Fall 2014

  • Issue 146 opens with Brian Bouldrey's beautiful and devastating video essay "Dead Christ." Hans Holbein’s painting The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (a detail of which also serves as the issue’s cover art) acts as a gateway for Bouldrey to explore death and grief, pain and suffering, love and hope. “You out there, watching with me, hear me in the dark, and remind me I’m alive,” Bouldrey says.

    If there’s a unifying theme for Issue 146 it’s that pulsing desire to be heard in the dark. The fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in this issue are provocative and gut-wrenching, illuminating the trappings of existence in unique ways. Mystery, pain, grief, joy, love, hope abound.

    Wherever you’re reading Issue 146, whether in bed or beside a stranger on the train, when you’re finished and you've exhaled, allow whoever’s near to wonder where you’ve been and how you’ve changed—come alive—after TriQuarterly.

    Cheers,
    Adrienne Gunn
    Managing Editor: Adrienne Gunn
    Assistant Managing Editor: Noelle Havens
    Faculty Advisor: Susan Harris
    Literary Editor: S.L. Wisenberg
    Director of Planning: Reginald Gibbons
    Film Editor: John Bresland
    Fiction Editors: Carrie Muehle, Dan Schuld, Ankur Thakkar, Stephanie Tran
    Nonfiction Editor: Karen Zemanick
    Poetry Editor: C. Russell Price
    Social Media Editor: Ankur Thakkar
    Copy Editor: Lys Ann Weiss
    Media Architect: Harlan Wallach
    Technical Advisors: Alex Miner, Rodolfo Vieira, Nick Gertonson
    Undergraduate Intern: Brooke Wanser


    Staff: Ahsan Awan, Rebecca Bald, Jen Companik, Jim Davis, Jennifer Deeter, JL Deher-Lesaint, Aaron DeLee, Jesse Eagle, Jeshua Enriquez, Dan Fliegel, Dane Hamann, Ish Harris-Wolff, Beth Herbert, Alex Higley, Martha Holloway, Barbara Tsai Jones, Katharine Kruse, Jen Lawrence, Adam Lizakowski, Robin Morrissey, Marina Mularz, Troy Parks, Amber Peckham, Miyako Pleines, Lydia Pudzianowski, Nate Renie, Mark Rentfro, Paula Root, Caitlin Sellnow, Michi Smith, Megan Sullivan, Adam Talaski, Myra Thompson, Ted Wesenberg, Carol Zsolnay

Image from Dead Christ

Poetry Circe Maia Poetry Circe Maia

Night

Translated by Jesse Lee Kercheval

This detachment is like undressing.

Gestures, looks, voices now appear

as cast-off clothes.

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Poetry Emily Rose Kahn-Sheahan Poetry Emily Rose Kahn-Sheahan

Cake

I baked you a cake. I know it's not your birthday and we don't know each other yet but I made this

for you. I know you're going to like it. I put all my favorite things inside so your tongue can learn

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Poetry Emily Rose Kahn-Sheahan Poetry Emily Rose Kahn-Sheahan

The Problem with Tarot and Online Dating

I draw three cards because I need to believe the fortune

has more weight than what I’m able to accomplish

in an afternoon. The ship is sinking or I am juggling

a hand holding the cup I’m going to refill now.

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Poetry Meg Day Poetry Meg Day

On the Day That He Goes, I Will

for Avery


think of you first.& then I will think of you again:

Your belongings—Stripey, a whoopee cushion—my heart,

stowed in secret—will lurchpitching, heaving, tumbling,

behind my breastbone,will stagger toward an image seared into

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Poetry Tim Krcmarik Poetry Tim Krcmarik

Icon

In the fifteen second span it took

to stretch two hundred feet of hose

down the berth of a burning bungalow,

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Poetry Tim Krcmarik Poetry Tim Krcmarik

Surrender

The customer refreshment zone

of this sweeping dealership

nestled along the Interstate

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Poetry Mira Rosenthal Poetry Mira Rosenthal

The Leach Pond

Sulphur saturates air by the ear

listening to gravel pop under truck tires

slow along the ring road, men surveilling.

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Poetry Benjamin Goldberg Poetry Benjamin Goldberg

Chaos Non Sequiturs

Pour soft drinks into the ground and watch a forest of butterfly wings

descend—understory of veins and dust,

canopy torrential with scales, black and orange.

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Poetry Sara Eliza Johnson Poetry Sara Eliza Johnson

Parable of the Flood

A flood is coming, you know. The forest animals have fled.

The cattle, having broken the fence, are long gone.

Your hands float like the moons of two planets

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Poetry Sarah Blake Poetry Sarah Blake

The Starship

What if you saw a starship?
If you went to a window and there she was.
The countless lights on her.
The endless night behind her.
The world dwarfed. You as well.

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Poetry Ocean Vuong Poetry Ocean Vuong

Headfirst

Không có gì bằng cơm với cá...

Don't you know? A woman's love

neglects pride

the way fire

neglects the cries

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Poetry Jay Rogoff Poetry Jay Rogoff

Enamel Eyes

Paris, 1870


Saint-Léon’s bright new ballet,

Coppélia, showed Peace routing War.

Then the real war hit like absinthe.

Louis, now Bismarck’s captive, lapped

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Poetry William Trowbridge Poetry William Trowbridge

Moloch Tells All

Maybe they had you read Paradise Lost or Howl.

OK, I’ve got this thing about money, wanting

lots of it -- no, all. So Heaven probably helped

me cope, but it was mainly the shits, flapping

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