Issue 148

Summer & Fall 2015

  • Issue 148 opens with Kelly Sears’ video essay “Pattern for Survival.” Sears juxtaposes militaristic, first aid, and fitness imagery with text from the US Army Survival Manual: “A key ingredient in any survival situation is the mental attitude of the individual(s) involved.” An ensemble of gifted authors study survival and the human experience throughout Issue 148. The fiction investigates characters’ mental attitudes when confronted with devastating circumstances. The poems examine snapshot-like moments imbued with both beauty and violence. The nonfiction observes life’s turning points and draws sense and order out of the small details of life. How do we survive being human? Through this mosaic of experiences, we begin to understand.

    With Issue 148, we say good-bye and thank you to John Bresland, who inaugurated TQ's publication of video essays and cinepoems in Issue 141, and who has made TQ an important participant in that vibrant genre ever since. He's passing the torch to Kristen Radtke, whose "That Kind of Daughter" appeared in John's very first issue.

    This summer, TriQuarterly began a complete upload of all 137 print issues of the magazine. Every cover and page of TQ’s entire history will soon be available to readers around the world. We are thrilled to share decades of ground-breaking fiction, nonfiction, and poetry without any cost to readers. Read our newest issue, or read our archive, but come on in and spend some time with TriQuarterly.

    Cheers,
    Adrienne Gunn

    Managing Editor: Adrienne Gunn
    Assistant Managing Editor: Noelle Havens
    Faculty Advisor: Susan Harris
    Director of Planning: Reginald Gibbons
    Film Editor: John Bresland
    Fiction Editors: Carrie Muehle, Ankur Thakkar, Stephanie Tran
    Nonfiction Editor: Martha Holloway
    Poetry Editor: Dane Hamann
    Social Media Editor: Ankur Thakkar
    Copy Editor: Lys Ann Weiss
    Media Architect: Harlan Wallach
    Technical Advisors: Alex Miner, Rodolfo Vieira, Nick Gertonson

    Staff: Ahsan Awan, Emily Barton, Jen Companik, Aaron DeLee, Jesse Eagle, Jeshua Enriquez, Dan Fliegel, Ish Harris-Wolff, Alex Higley, Barbara Tsai Jones, Katharine Kruse, Jen Lawrence, Robin Morrissey, Marina Mularz, Troy Parks, Lydia Pudzianowski, Nate Renie, Mark Rentfro, Paula Root, Caitlin Sellnow, Michi Smith, Adam Talaski, Myra Thompson, Ted Wesenberg

Image from Pattern for Survival

Poetry Andrea Jurjević Poetry Andrea Jurjević

The Skirt Dripping Sea

The sky has been curdling for days—


the slow-bloom of pale tumors
drifting against the oily lid of slate grey.


Smoke tusks coil from burning leaf piles

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Poetry James Thomas Miller Poetry James Thomas Miller

Backwater Blues, 1927

A man’s life isn’t worth mule piss

in those levee and lumber camps,

skillet-black bears, panthers,

cottonmouths as fat as a dead man’s arm,

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Poetry Anikulapo Poetry Anikulapo

Askr

I am Christ’s overwrought Y chromosome

And Yggdrasil’s sickly branch,

The ouroboros teller.

I am the Ash.

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Poetry Sam Sax Poetry Sam Sax

MDMA

my obedient body becomes wild again

obeisant to salt and plastic water bottles

obese cauldron of a boy whose pupils become planets

obstetrician who midwifes serotonin

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Poetry Dean Rader Poetry Dean Rader

Labor

I am 15. It is the summer

of 1982. I’m working illegally

at the Sonic Drive-In.

Weatherford, Oklahoma.

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Poetry Gretchen Marquette Poetry Gretchen Marquette

Figure Drawing

On the way to your studio, a Cooper’s hawk

dove in front of me. It left clutching yellow leaves

and not a single sparrow. I knew then,

somehow, that I would never take my own life.

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Poetry Raven Jackson Poetry Raven Jackson

axe #6

you’re on a school bus full of ripped-up

papers and a girl with a bleeding nose.

someone hit her and wants to do the same

to you. there’s a cowlicked boy standing

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Poetry Eliot Khalil Wilson Poetry Eliot Khalil Wilson

Ripe

A plastic bag of cherries I'd forgotten

has molded in the fridge from my neglect,

and the sight brings me to their taste again

and the day I found them at the market.

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Poetry Eliot Khalil Wilson Poetry Eliot Khalil Wilson

The Folding In

The mind too has its autumns—the dead hours

that, windblown, gather into canceled years.

Here the failures, of nerve or desire,

accrue, cling with the cold interest of snow.

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