Issue 149
Winter & Spring 2016
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With Issue 149 we welcome our new video editor, Kristen Radtke, who introduces a trio of videos exploring the spaces between public and private. In these pieces, homes and lives are both haunted and haunting, as domestic, artistic, and personal histories are reviewed, interrogated, and restored. José Orduña details the intimate history of a house, yet denies all claims to either dwelling or memories; Margaret Singer and Max Freeman witness Steve Martin's attempt to revive an artist's reputation after years spent in his partner's shadow; and Sarah Viren meditates on the conception, birth, and existence of a child, and points along the continuum.
The poetry, fiction, and nonfiction here also move between past and present, charting journeys both actual and emotional. From Elliot Ackerman's expat in Istanbul to Monica Sok's deracinated daughter visiting Angkor Wat, to Karen Brown's refuge for tired travelers, to Craig Bernardini's mother's sacrifice in Argentina, you'll find characters seeking to restablish and redefine family and home.
In her introduction, Kristen refers to "the exact point of greatest anticipation and possibility." It is at this point that we present this issue and invite you to join the many journeys here.
Cheers,
Noelle Havens
Managing Editor: Noelle Havens
Assistant Managing Editor: Dane Hamann
Faculty Advisor: Susan Harris
Director of Planning: Reginald Gibbons
Film Editor: Kristen Radtke
Fiction Editors: Adrienne Gunn, 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, Andrea Garcia, Ish Harris-Wolff, Katie Hartsock, Alex Higley, Barbara Tsai Jones, Katharine Kruse, Jen Lawrence, Adam Lizakowski, Robin Morrissey, Marina Mularz, Troy Parks, Lydia Pudzianowski, Nate Renie, Mark Rentfro, Paula Root, Caitlin Sellnow, Michi Smith, Megan Sullivan, Adam Talaski, Myra Thompson, Ted Wesenberg
Image from This is Not My Home
Vanishing Acts
This morning, two things vanished. The first disappeared while I was in the front yard watering a young crab-apple tree we planted this spring. Absent-mindedly, I let the hose wander to a nearby bush and startled a chipmunk, who dashed out in front of me and vanished into thin air.
Chemistry of Sacrifice
In the spring of 1987, as I was getting ready to go away to college, my mother was preparing to return to medicine. She had stopped practicing eighteen years before, the year that I, her second child, was born; the year she had conceded that raising children and working at the hospital were not compatible, at least with the devotion she believed each deserved.
Murder Ballad in the Land of Nod
And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod.
—Genesis 4:16
In a story with many firsts, the first man and the first woman committed the first sin and had two sons—one who offered fruit to God, one who offered blood in a garden.
Grief and Wonder
The call came in the dark in the hour of sleep when you don’t know your own name. It came from a voice so fragmented that I thought at first it was two animals baying down the phone line. I kept asking: What?
Excerpts from People to Run From
Notes for White Girls
Roaches bubbling out of drawers and dirty cabinets, so many that each time a boyfriend asked for something to eat, I’d run to the kitchen, turn on the light, and squash whatever was running with the palm of my hand. They thought I asked them to sit in the living room and wait because I liked serving them.
Gustave and Emma
Artists: All hoaxers.
—Flaubert, Dictionnaire des idées recues.
For me a book has always only been a way of living in some particular milieu. That is what explains my hesitations, my anguish and my slowness.
—Flaubert, letter to Mlle. Leroyer de Chantepie, December 26, 1858