Issue 158
Summer & Fall 2020
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It would be an unforgivable convenience to begin this editor’s note with a reference to our “unprecedented times.” I have seen these words over the past weeks in emails, tweets, and on the news, but as much as this simple phrase can be well-intentioned, it is also undeniably harmful and lacking awareness. This country’s legacy of anti-Black racism, police brutality, white supremacy, and plunder dates back centuries. It is not unprecedented at all.
TriQuarterly was founded in 1958. We are a literary journal that has published continuously for 62 years. We have always prided ourselves on being “an international journal of writing, art, and cultural inquiry,” but we also recognize that we are part of a publishing industry that lacks racial equity. As managing editor, I worry I personally have neither done enough to challenge the patriarchal, white supremacist tradition in American letters nor given enough critical examination to the lack of diversity in our masthead and editorial practices. We know we must be actively antiracist and are taking action to develop more comprehensive antiracist policies. It is my responsibility to make sure that these actions are implemented.
For the first time since transitioning online, TriQuarterly is hiring genre editors not affiliated with Northwestern’s creative writing programs. I believe this is critical to TriQuarterly’s future, because the magazine can now draw from a far larger candidate pool. We are also in the process of planning TriQuarterly’s 160th issue, slated for summer 2021, which will exclusively feature Black artists, with work selected by Black guest editors. These are important first steps in striving to uphold TriQuarterly’s mission.
I am very proud of the video essays, poetry, and prose featured in our 158th issue. Throughout TriQuarterly’s history, the editors have always prioritized diversity in the artists we publish, and this issue includes a wide range of voices. Every poem, story, and essay was selected from the thousands of submissions we receive in each genre every year. The artists in this issue showcase writing that intrigues, excites, overjoys, and challenges our staff.
And yet, I know we must continue working toward equity. It is my goal during my remaining time with the journal to ensure not only now, but also in the future, that we are worthy of every poet, writer, and visual artist who sends their work to TriQuarterly, that we are a venue where artists feel supported, respected, and proud to publish.
Sincerely,
Aram Mrjoian
Managing Editor: Aram Mrjoian
Assistant Managing Editor: Joshua Bohnsack
Faculty Advisor: Susan Harris
Director of Planning: Reginald Gibbons
Film Editor: Sarah Minor
Fiction Editors: Joshua Bohnsack, Jennifer Companik, Carrie Muehle, Nathan Renie, Erin Branning Keogh
Nonfiction Editor: Molly Sprayregen
Poetry Editor: Daniel Fliegel
Social Media Editor: Josh Bohnsack
Copy Editor: Lys Ann Weiss
Media Architect: Harlan Wallach
Technical Advisors: Alex Miner, Rodolfo Vieira, Nick Gertonson
Staff: Adam Lizakowski, Andrea Garcia, Anne-Marie Akin, Audrey Fierberg, Bonnie Etherington, Dane Hamann, Devin O'Shea, Elijah Patten, Ellen Hainen, Erica Hughes, Erika Carey, Freda Love Smith, Hillary Pelan, Jayme Collins, Jen Lawrence, Jen Companik, Jenn Hipps, Jeremiah Barker, Jonathan Jones, Joshua Bohnsack, KB Zemanick, Laura Humble, Laura Joyce-Hubbard, Madina Jenks, Marcella Mencotti, Megan Sullivan, Michele Popadich, Miranda Garbaciak, ML Chan, Myra Thompson, Natalia Nebel, Natalie Rose Richardson, Nathan Renie, Pascale Bishop, Patrick Bernhard, Rishee Batra, Salwa Halloway, Serena Simpson, Tara Stringfellow
Image from House: A Sonnet: A Palinode
The Exclusion Zone
I am sure you have noticed it, too. People die
and the bereft go into strange quarantine. It is
not, of course, their grief we mean to contain,
sparing the frail and the hale alike. Even we
Whenever Your Wiring Is Faulty, Hit by the Stitches
Listen, that ball looked like a pea to me coming in there once in a while.
Hell, no, I couldn't see the laces.
—Ted Williams
The Last Time I Saw My Father in Prison
I was dressed in red, as if for Christmas.
A child like a ribbon of blood
unspooling into the gray room—
How to Make a Doll Father
My father is a shaft of wheat.
Cut down and collected,
bound into the shape of a man.
Voodoo doll or corn-man,
Study in White¹
He said it was like floating in color
then stepped into the purple air,
and we followed, you and I,
our shoes wrapped in paper booties, our minds
Study in Black²
This time, the man said it was a subtle piece, and together we stepped
into the black box, our hands groping handrails, darkness so thick it
seemed to swallow us whole. And what is human instinct, really, if not
the deep-rooted panic that sets in when we lose our understanding of
Our Daily Breads
As if she waded through brown rivers [ ] clawed
mountains down to valleys expecting something [ ]
potable, a rivulet of mother tears or lake [ ] of children’s,
as if she abandoned wide-open cage [ ] for cage, swollen
The Whole I'm Told We Return To
eventually, // unyoked from wire & // weed, muted to a noun that no
longer // wilds violently // against its box, like horses sleeping
through a barn fire, // like a fire that blackens not // a single rafter or
the dreams of // horses sleeping inside, the words we boys // hurt
The Art that Fails
I also love the art that fails. I love
the Shakespearean extra, doublet inset
with satin flames, loafing stage left
After Working on a Dairy Farm for Six Months, I Realize That I’m a Demon & So Is Everyone I Know
At my summer job on the dairy farm
where I work from 6am to 8pm
I swing my leg over the newborn bull
circle my arm around his neck this
Vi Redd at the Clef Club
Strutting past 2 a.m.
and the manager’s
repeated signals to stop, she
Calligraphy
I remember each furrow of your hand : even as I recite each line of your book.
On the flyleaf, my grandfather's signature is well rendered with a fountain pen. A gesture of holding.
Declaration Form, U.S. Border
Family Name: Peach In An Unlit Orchard
First (Given): Lantern, or Paper Lantern, Not Glass
Feral Trains
grandmother dreams of a pupil of light something
small enough to prophesize loss dreams of pockmarks
on the surface of a pond in a faint rain & since her body
Black Cloth of Sky (seen through a Pabst Blue Ribbon bottle)
father dreams drunk dreams lucent hours of lying on his back
dreams of hollow logs of decades to crawl inside & he speaks
Out of the Woods
I trip up the slope behind
the swing set. I backflip off
the waterfall. I curl under
a teacher's desk as adults
Paths from The First Car
Half-lit by cars, we flick cigarettes
in the parking lot. You point to spokes
& spin them, open the hood, & I see
my father there. Shoulder chipped memory.