STRANGER SPECIES by DEVIN LATHAM B.A. University Of

STRANGER SPECIES by DEVIN LATHAM B.A. University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2011 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in the Department of English in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Spring Term, 2014 © 2014 Devin Latham ii ABSTRACT Stranger Species is a collection of interconnected personal and lyrical essays that illustrate and dissect the biological and psychological forces that drive humans to act. While essays in the collection prove the narrator’s need to believe that we are animals first and human beings second and that sex and persistence to survive are proof of our animalism, essays simultaneously counter-argue that humans—our emotions, weaknesses, and consciousness—are unique to our species, separating us from the animal world. Throughout the collection, fear resonates that we do not control our desires and ultimately our lives, that biology and our deep seeded psychological inadequacies drive us blindly and often recklessly towards our species’ survival never asking for our permission, leaving us to wonder why we do the strange things that we do. The narrator uses research and her experience to explore genetics, reproduction, desire, loneliness, binding societal constructions, control, and loss. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you, Jim, for your books, your time, your knowledge, your love and patience, and your honesty. Everyday you help me mature as a writer and a human. Thank you, Terry. You put up with my obnoxious emails and endless revisions. You encourage and support me, giving me confidence and hope as a writer. Through this process, you have become my friend, and for that I am most thankful. I want to thank my family: my father and mothers, my brother and sister, my sweet grandparents, and my uncles. Thank you for loving me and taking care of me. I am indebted to each of you always. Thank you to my committee of poets, Don and Russ. Thank you to my teachers, Jim and Adam. Thank you, friends and readers. Thank you, Harlem and Spore, for your strange distractions and occasional lap warming, and thank you, Oliver, for taking me for much needed walks and being patient with my newness to dog ownership. I am grateful for the opportunity to have spent the last two years reading, writing, and growing at UCF. iv “to be tough is to be fragile, to be tender is to be truly fierce.” --Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................... vi LOBLOLLY LOVE ........................................................................................................................ 1 ANIMALIA .................................................................................................................................. 18 “A WET SEED WILD IN THE HOT, BLIND EARTH” ............................................................ 32 SKIN AND CAGES ..................................................................................................................... 43 WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GET WHAT YOU CAN’T HAVE ........................................ 54 LET ME BE BORN ONE MORE TIME ..................................................................................... 58 SWAILING ................................................................................................................................... 80 CRACK AN EGG ON MY BELLY ............................................................................................. 97 NITS, MONO, & MARRIAGE .................................................................................................. 101 A LACK OF HUMIDITY .......................................................................................................... 111 WILD THINGS IN SAFE PLACES........................................................................................... 130 TIDAL BREAKING ................................................................................................................... 144 STRANGER SPECIES ............................................................................................................... 155 PINE DADDY ............................................................................................................................ 171 APPENDIX: READING LIST ................................................................................................... 174 vi LOBLOLLY LOVE Daddy cruised timber and managed wildlife for a living. He went to work in a thin brown t-shirt, tan Dickies, and knee-high lace-up boots that protected him against snakes and briars. He had a ponytail and a long brown beard. From working outside all day, his brown hair was streaked with blond and his skin was colored brass. Blue paint stained his nails and the lines of his calluses. When he came home, I put his boots on, and the leather came up my thighs. Inside the boots were still warm and moist. I clomped back and forth on the front porch, tracking dried mud on the wood while he scrubbed at the blue paint and checked himself for ticks. Most of Daddy’s clients owned land in west Alabama—land for hunting, fishing, and timber. On the weekends, he took me to work with him. We drove down Highway 11, turning on dirt roads that led to metal gates. He’d hand me the key, and I’d unlock the silver Master Lock. I’d stand on the bottom rail while he drove in, closing my eyes to the dust he kicked up. These lands were laid out in food plots, ponds, pine stands, hardwoods, and fields. “Can I drive now?” I asked, and he traded seats with me in his maroon 4x4 Chevy but only on the dirt roads. I passed the “D” with the automatic gearshift, going up and down through the green-lit letters and numbers searching. The steering wheel was smooth and worn from his hands. It smelled like the grease he used to slick back his ponytail. When I drove, I felt like I was going too fast, but he never told me to slow down. I sat with both feet ready to brake; just my heels touched the floor mat. “Turn by the corner of the pines,” he tapped the passenger window with his pointer knuckle. 1 We passed a fresh dug pond waiting for rain and blue-dotted pine trees marked to cut. He told me to stop by the food plot where a camouflaged ladder-stand was mounted on a thick pine branch and strapped to the trunk. I stood up on the break pedal pressing hard and pulled the gearshift up to “P.” He reached over and turned off the truck. We walked across the uneven dirt, rowed with green seedlings. We looked for heart- shaped deer tracks and black droppings. When he drove, I stood on the bumper holding the tailgate. I watched the pines pass in symmetrical rows, listening to the truck’s tires on the dirt, leaving dust trails behind us. Nature beats nurture. Evolutionary psychologists argue that nurture is mostly unimportant in affecting our development. Even though nurture does not affect our genetic composition, nurture—the wax and wane—means something, has to leave us with some mark, some effect. Nurture might fill holes like dry ponds up to the brim. But the lack of nurture or the presence of and then the taking away of nurture might open up gaps, like the clean burned rows separating pine lines. Lines that have been burned to the dirt, lines you need somebody to walk down and tend to. Daddy grew hay on his client’s vacant plots. Inside the cab of his John Deere tractor, Daddy planted, cut, and baled sorghum-sundangrass. Sorghum’s flat blades dry gold and crisp, smelling like clean syrup. Between the tractor’s driver’s seat and the metal cab wall, Daddy fixed me a seat: an upside-down five-gallon bucket padded with folded flannel shirts. I leaned my head against the vibrating metal and fell asleep to the tractor’s hum. 2 Baling was always hot because hay’s cut in late summer, and it was Alabama summer at that. The John Deere pulled a red baler—a squatty loud machine that raked up a row of cut dried grass, packed the hay tight together, and tied the bale up with two pieces of orange twine. It shot the bale out the back end. As a teenager, I started following the baler, picking up hot twined rectangles. I carried each bale two-handed and propped on my hip like a baby across the field to the wooden flatbed trailer. The twine hung heavy between where my calluses met the base of my fingers. I wore shorts instead of jeans because I didn’t like wearing long pants in the heat. When sorghum- sundangrass dries, the edges of the wide blades harden and thin. The dry leaves cut lines into my thighs, the sides of my calves, and the belly of my forearms. At night, the hundreds of tiny cuts burned under the showerhead. I liked the hay rashes and the soreness in my arms. Daddy was always proud of the way I worked, saying I could outwork two men. … It was the cold season in west Alabama, and logs burned in hearths, woodstoves, and camps. Heat blew on my feet while my driver’s side window was rolled down, so I could smell the woodsmoke. Smoke hung in the cold air, and the pines butted up to the road. I was almost there, having driven two hours from Birmingham where I went to college. I turned the radio off, and the chilled airstream whipped

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