New Qr(.Gans Review
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
New Qr(.gans Review Volume 30 Number 1. EDITOR COVER ART: Christopher Chambers Sun color photograph POETRY EDITOR Andrew Goetz Sophia Stone FRONTISPIECE: ASSOCIATE POETRY EDITOR Louisiana Law Stop Katie Ford black and white photograph Barbara Roberds ASSOCIATE FICTION EDITORS Robert Bell, Jeffrey Chan BOOK DESIGN : Christopher Chambers BOOK REVIEW EDITOR Mary A. McCay ART EDITOR Laura Camille Tuley BUSINESS MANA<";jER New Orleans Review, founded in 1968, is published by Loyola Univer- sity New Orleans. Loyola University is a charter member of the Erin O'Donnell Association of Jesuit University Presses. New Orleans Review reads COPY EDITOR unsolicited submissions of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and transla- Josh Emmons tions year round. Subscriptions $12 per year; $20 outside u.s. No portion of New Orleans Review may be reproduced without written INTERNS permission. Send all correspondence to New Orleans Review, Box 195, Emily Clark, Sophie Dye, Corinne Knight, Zachary McGar, Loyola University, New Orleans, LA 7on8. For more information, Allison Norton, Anita Oubre, Rebecca Quintana, David Rodriguez, and back issues, visit us at www.loyno.edu/ ~ noreview . Contents David Tolar, Bonnie Vidrine listed in the PMLA Bibliography, the Index of American Periodical CONTRIBUTIN<";j EDITORS Verse, and the American Humanities Index. Printed in the United John Biguenet, John Gery, Peggy McCormack, Marcus Smith States. Copyright 2004 by Loyola University New Orleans. All rights reserved. Distributed by Ingram Periodicals. ISSN: 0028-6400 ADVISORY COMMITTEE Lorynne Cahn, Philip Carter, Yorke Corbin, Randy Fertel, Henry Folse, Rodger Kamenetz, Carol Mcintosh, Julian Mutter, Michael Sartiskey, Ashley Schaffer LOYOLA UNIVERSITY FOUNDIN<";j EDITOR NEW ORLEANS Miller Williams CONTENTS Moira Linehan On Notice 58 John Kinsella The Sword ofAesculapius Tess Gallagher 59 My Unopened Life IO Hailey Leithauser Medusas 6o Katie Peterson Daedalus 61 The Tree 12 Grave 13 Rachel Zucker Wife, Wife, Duck 62 Simon Perchik Thought, Anti-thoughts 63 * 14 * IS Susanne Kart * I6 Even So 64 R. DeanJohnson Patricia Suarez (translated by Annaliese Hoehling) The People We Were 17 Arugula 6s Marthe Reed Andrew Miller topos 34 The Youngest Daughter ofSalt 78 His Dossier from Babel Jeffrey Levine 86 Arabic for Travelers 36 Matt Vadnais Green Nile with Ibis 37 The Treesitter 88 Lemon and Sweet Broom 38 A Flowing Spring in the Desert Barbara Roberds 39 [eight photographs] I02 Daniel Tobin Erika Howsare MappaMundi 40 Having Walker no Rita Banerji Rich II2 Pink Turban 41 Brigitte Byrd Patricia Murphy Chained to Char II4 What Good Does a Drop Do 57 Offwith Her Head ns Laurie Blauner Guy R. Beining Allegations II6 what scene, what tense!' I 59 that it is out does not make it appealing I60 Todd Balazic director rabat tests an actor I6I Some Sad Facts ofthe Matter II8 Michael Demos Joshua Wilkinson Fight Songfor Wind and String Instruments 162 Here's What We'll Do 120 Andrew Richmond Ocho Poemas I Eight Poems by Carlos Edmundo de Ory One ofThese Days We're Going Home (translated by Steven]. Stewart) 125 In my poems there are no 127 Rich Ives All ofIt 129 Two Sisters Fail to Die Tragically in Freak Accident I66 Everything Falls I3I J.P. Dancing Bear I Advise You to Sleep 133 Gacela ofHunger I68 Uust as horses snijj out and feel] 135 Gacela ofHunting Season 169 Logo lotus 137 Gacela ofAnimal Wisdom 170 The Lovers 139 Gacela ofa Setting Saxophone I7I A Picture ofthe Soul I4I Stephen Knauth Robert King Little Blue Heron 172 Areola, Aureole 143 Andrey Gritsman Michael Murray Return 173 912 Avocados 144 Michael Heffernan Allison Eir Jenks A Piece ofPaper 174 The Dying Gull I5I To His Ex-Wife I 52 Book Reviews I76 Tara Bray Contributors I90 Motherless I 54 JeffHoffinan Luck 156 TESS GALLAGHER My Unopened Life from whence we do nothing but stare out at the sea, collecting little cave-ins of perception sketched on the moment lay to the right of my plate like a spoon squiring a knife, waiting to make more tender the house of the suicide patiently for soup or the short destiny in which everything was so exactly of dessert at the eternal picnic-unsheltered where it had been left by someone missing. picnic at the mouth of the sea Nothing, not even the spoon he abandoned that dares everything forgotten to huddle near the tea cup, could be moved without at the periphery of a checked cloth spread seemingly altering the delicious under the shadowy, gnarled penumbra universe ofhis intention. of the madrona. Hadn't I done well enough with the life I'd seized, sure as a cat with So are we each lit briefly by engulfments its mouthful ofbird, bird with its belly full of of space like the worm in the beak of worm, worm like an acrobat of darkness the bird, yielding to sudden corridors keeping its moist nose to the earth, soaring oflight-into-light, never asking: perpetually into darkness without so much as why, tell me why the obvious question: why all this darkness? all this light? And even in the belly of the bird: why only darkness? The bowl of the spoon collects entire rooms just lying there next to the knife. It makes brief forays into the mouth delivering cargoes of ceilings and convex portraits of teeth posing as stalactites of a serially extinguished cave KATIE PETERSON KATIE PETERSON The Tree Grave Church bells at the same time as sirens. One could do worse than an unmarked stone. Cold feet in the wake In leaf time it looks even more gray of someone else's umbrella. and in the snow Wet leaves like animal footprints, who knows how covered it could remain. some imaginary animal too unfriendly to be imagined. No one to visit and no one to know. The noon sits down on every stone Cold morning, years past, the same. Hard noon, I leaned upon the great pine tree hot stone. You have to touch it to know. we called the great pine tree and in its branches always It could be in any yard at all. the remnants of a house. One could do worse Why take down what might be than have it here, and leave it unvisited most of all. usable, one parent said, and the other said nothing. Still we never climbed, The rain has no object, it falls and falls. or never built. Over years One could do worse some lost spring the triangular frame grew wet and even to be in love, the wood became contagious rust. love someone most near the smoothest stone, When we played we played around it. look at one person and softly think, Cold winter and a broken pattern wherever you are I will know of warm days on the blank canvas I put you there of inevitable horizon. I will think on my stone Once I sent myself into winter alone. Now it is dexterity that helps me when I am gone and there's nothing to know imagine the tree, not courage. Never that. SIMON PERCHIK SIMON PERCHIK * * Not yet finished melting :the sun You come here to bathe -the dirt -you can hear its sea struggling warm though the ocean underneath spilling over through each morning is breaking apart on the rocks it comes from behind now -you almost drown, crushed brushes against this cemetery gate by the immense light that's still shining, floating past covered over grave after grave -to this day you go home and all these stones adrift the back way -you don't see beneath your hands and one day more your reflection or the ground lower and lower, washed face to face with shoreline with the drop by drop -what you hear are waves :one hand oozing out your shadow reaching for another and in the dark the way roots still flow past you let your fingers unfold end over end for flowers and your hands then close, gather in these fountains filling with hillsides as if they belong one side then another with waves that once had hair. are nearly too much stone -here where this gate is filling its lungs and you tearing it in two. New Orleans Review New Orleans Review 15 SIMON PERCHIK R. DEAN J 0 H N S 0 N II * The People We Were It's a risk, these clouds Two days ago I was leaving Amsterdam for the last time. It was a gathered in the open, grow huge midweek train so I had no problem finding a quiet car, one with take on the shape they need some German families and only three Americans-young guys in their khakis and college t-shirts. though once inside this jar There were farms and pastures filling the windows when one of escape is impossible the Americans came up the aisle to me. I expected him to ask where -you collect a cloud whose mist I was from. It's what Americans do when they think you're from the States or somewhere that seems like an ally, somewhere like no one studies anymore, comes Canada or Australia. But this guy had no idea what I was. He raised from a time rain was not yet the rain his eyebrows and flashed a half-grin, some kind of international pressing against your forehead Hello. Then he asked me, Sprechen sie englisch? I responded the way Europeans who speak English often do, by and your mouth too has aged answering his question with a question: "What can I do for you?" coming from nowhere to open He'd been holding his left forearm with his right hand, and he re- as some mountainside leased it just long enough to show me a small cut so fresh it nearly dripped blood on my hands.