Issue 150
Summer & Fall 2016
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We are pleased to present TriQuarterly’s 150th issue. Throughout these pieces, imagery and movement explore the human condition and its relationship to the physical world. The issue opens with Ander Monson’s video essay, “Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies,” in which he juxtaposes human extinction and technology, joining sounds, images, and words to encapsulate the natural and digital existence. Blair Braverman offers a contrast between grayscale images and layered language in “Two Poems About X, 2009 and 2014.” And Heather Hall creates an echo between the visual and the verbal in her dreamlike “Shark.”
The poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction here also offer imagery that moves between human consciousness and the world that surrounds it. Whether it is experienced hardship and loss in Keveh Akbar’s poem “Unburnable the Cold is Flooding Our Lives,” the discovery of perspective in Marc Nieson’s “Orientation,” or the memory of carefree young love in Bonnie Nadzam’s “The Silver Motorcycle,” the movement of mind, body, and soul come together within the confines of space and time.
This issue could not have come together if not for the talent and dedication of our contributors and staff. My gratitude to everyone who had a hand in this issue.
We present the 150th issue to you. Enjoy.
Cheers,
Noelle Havens
Managing Editor: Noelle Havens
Assistant Managing Editor: Carrie Muehle
Faculty Advisor: Susan Harris
Director of Planning: Reginald Gibbons
Film Editor: Kristen Radtke
Fiction Editors: Carrie Muehle, Mark Rentfro, 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, Lydia Pudzianowski, Nate Renie, Paula Root, Caitlin Sellnow, Michi Smith, Megan Sullivan, Myra Thompson, Ted Wesenberg
Image from Rehearsals for Extinct Anatomies
Coatlicue, c. 1500, Mexica (Aztec), found on the SE edge of Plaza mayor/Zocalo: basalt, 257 cm high (National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City)
I take Coatlicue with me to market,
her rattlesnakes striking each
other beneath her skirt, zoomorphized
Processing
We regret to inform you of your grief.
We apologize for the delay
in the processing of your grief.
We thank you for your patience.
A Brief History of Violence
Boy, born covered in blood—
(Boy because phallus, bullet holes
for eyes; the color of target practice silhouettes: boy. Between his
parents’ complexions: boy. Boy beneath Bible’s thumb. Boy baby-
The Method of Vanishing Cues
For Florida
I got myself a cup. It was the end of water
and I was the last to drink. I was
a revolver at the bed of the dead woman.
It was the cruel month and I was
Listening for the Soothing Sound
Sounds muted in life are raucous in memory. The
nun with the clapper
at St. Joe's prepared me
for the hut-horp of the Army
Unburnable the Cold is Flooding Our Lives
the prophets are alive but unrecognizable to us
as calligraphy to a mouse for a time they dragged
What a Thing Wears
In a vacuum a bird and a feather fall
at the same speed, though this hardly seems
relevant as no one lives in a vacuum. Here
birds drop from the sky all the time (unsinging,
Notes on the State of Virginia, II
February, I am an open wound—woman discarded
and woman emerging. Scars devising scars.
To live here we know precisely how to be haunted.
Notes on the State of Virginia, IV
Love carved me in stained glass
like a new tattoo. Call me a curio, one Hottentot show. Ask
how I learnt to admire the prettiest bruise. Or how a body
can be sold into anything. O what soiled words I could fit my
An Introduction to the Video Essay Suite
The essays in this issue’s video suite present blue-hued bathtubs, greyscaled landscapes and neon thermal images.
Putting on a Play in Wartime Sarajevo
This excerpt is taken from the award-winning novel Elijah’s Chair by Igor Štiks (Fraktura, 2006). Already translated into fourteen languages, it will appear in an English translation by Ellen Elias-Bursać in 2017, published by Amazon Crossing.