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NOTRE DAME REVIEW NOTRE DAME REVIEW NUMBER 8 Editors John Matthias William O'Rourke Senior Editor Steve Tomasula Founding Editor Valerie Sayers Managing Editor Editorial Assistants Kathleen J. Canavan Kelley Beeson Stacy Cartledge R. Thomas Coyne Contributing Editors Douglas Curran Matthew Benedict Jeanne DeVita Gerald Bruns Shannon Doyne Seamus Deane Anthony D'Souza Stephen Fredman Katie Lehman Sonia Gernes Marinella Macree Jere Odell Tom O'Connor Kymberly Taylor Haywood Rod Phasouk James Walton Ginger Piotter Henry Weinfield Laura Schafer Donald Schindler Elizabeth Smith-Meyer Charles Walton The Notre Dame Review is published semi-annually. Subscriptions: $15(individuals) or $20 (institu- tions) per year. Single Copy price: $8. Distributed by Media Solutions, Huntsville, Alabama and International Periodical Distributors, Solana Beach, California. We welcome manuscripts, which are read from September through April. Please include a SASE for return. Please send all subscription and editorial correspondence to: Notre Dame Review, The Creative Writing Program, Department of English, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556. Notre Dame Review copyright 1999 by the University of Notre Dame ISSN: 1082-1864 Place/Displacement ISBN 1-892492-07-5 Cover Art: "Diagram for the Apprehension of Simple Forces," cibiachrome, 1997, 12 x 15 inches, by Jason Salavon. Courtesy of Peter Miller Gallery, Chicago. CONTENTS Genghis Khan story ..................................................................... 1 Yanbing Chen Anstruther; Knowledge; Alford poetry.............................. 26 Robert Crawford Exposure poetry .......................................................................... 30 Corrinne Clegg Hales The Same Hour Has Come inside My Body poetry ......... 32 Alison Jarvis Herson; The Orders poetry ...................................................... 34 John Engels Ghosts story ................................................................................. 38 Ed Falco Annointing the Unprepared poetry .................................... 46 G.E. Murray Trompe L'Oeil poetry ................................................................. 47 Kevin Prufer The Bench at Fontainebleau poetry .................................... 49 John Peck Grandmother Crow poetry ..................................................... 51 Teresa Iverson Trapped in the Catskills poetry............................................. 53 David M. Katz Getting Language poetry ........................................................ 55 Linda Kinnahan Raised Arms story ...................................................................... 57 Christie Hodgen Love Penned Red poetry .......................................................... 67 Sean Brendan-Brown Walking poetry (excerpts) ............................................................. 68 Rob Faivre Westward the Course of Empire art................................. 71 Don Pollack Heartland art ............................................................................. 72 Don Pollack Bitter Algae poetry .................................................................... 73 Orlando Ricardo Menes The Butterfly Project poetry .................................................. 76 Tom Smith Marriage of Convenience story ............................................ 79 Harriet McBryde Johnson History; Michael Furey poetry................................................ 88 Kelly Ritter Lament poetry ............................................................................. 90 Kelly Le Fave Look; At Nags Head; A Jack Spicer Notebook poetry ............................................................................................... 91 John Latta Fishing the Plains; Hahasatigii story.................................. 98 Melita Schaum Ice Floes poetry ......................................................................... 106 David Sanders The Bearded Seal; Ophelia at Midnight poetry ........... 107 Neil Azevedo The Poet as Oracle poetry .................................................... 109 Jan Lee Ande Barophobia poetry .................................................................. 110 David Starkey Joseph; The Ugly Duckling poetry ..................................... 111 Lee Upton Ritardando: That Lack; Two Homings poetry .............. 113 Sharon Cournoyer The Last Days of Atlantis story ......................................... 118 Eugene Wildman Escape From the Orkneys; Just One Look poetry ........ 128 Robert Hahn Cezanne's Atelier Near Aix poetry .................................... 133 Samuel Hazo Bernard Baruch poetry .......................................................... 135 Baron Wormser The Beautiful Monk poetry.................................................. 137 Kevin Di Camillo The Triumph of Love review ............................................... 138 Peter Robinson Collected Poems of Eugenio Montale review............... 143 John Peck The Poet's Companion review ............................................ 147 George Held Hotel Malabar review ............................................................ 151 Diane Mehta Most Way Home short review ................................................ 154 Kevin Di Camillo Identity short review ................................................................. 155 Stacy Cartledge Editors Select.......................................................................... 156 Contributors’ Notes ............................................................. 158 PLACE/DISPLACEMENT Jason Salavon, Diagram for the Apprehension of Simple Forces, 1997, cibiachrome, 12 x 15 inches. Courtesy of Peter Miller Gallery, Chicago. YANBING CHEN GENGHIS KHAN Yanbing Chen I “What’s up?” Lee sounded as upbeat as ever at the other end of the line. “Everything,” I said. “Rent, tuition, phone bill, insurance, everything except my god-damned wage, still four twenty-five an hour.” “You still washing dishes at the school?” “What else can I do?” “Too bad,” he said. There was a short silence, as if he were trying to think of a way to get me out of my lousy situation. “Do you have to work tonight?” he said after a while. “No,” I said. Tuesday was my only night off. “Good. There’s a new casino open in Joliet. You wan’ go?” “I don’t have any money,” I said. “Fifty bucks’s all you need. We don’t play no big. You lose, you leave. But who knows, maybe we’ll hit a jackpot and never have to work again.” “If you wanna go, go yourself.” “I can’t. That piece’v junk of mine broke down last week. Think it as you do me a favor, OK?” By the time we pulled into the huge parking lot outside The Empress Casino, it was already packed with Mercedes, BMWs, and Lincolns. But there were the other types as well: a rusty ’78 Oldsmobile with its passenger’s side window missing, an ancient beat-up Mustang, a shiny little Yugo. My car, of course, fitted more comfortably in their company. Lee made his usual car talk as we cut through the parking lot. “That’s a good one.” Lee patted the hood of a Continental convertible with the top down. “V-8 engine, turbo-charged, 120 miles an hour no problem.” “How about this?” I pointed at a red Renault parked next to it. “Junk.” He kicked its tire. “Don’t ever buy a Renault in this country. They’re all junks.” With all his knowledge, it was funny though, that Lee had bought one bad car after another. The problem, he explained, was not the lack of expertise, but that of money. “You can’t buy a Rolls Royce for five hundred bucks.” The admission turned out to be fifteen dollars, something Lee claimed to be unheard of. 1 NOTRE DAME REVIEW “Fifteen bucks just to get in?” Lee challenged the girl in the black and white uniform behind the counter, “In Las Vegas, they even gave me money to spend!” “This ain’t no Vegas, sir,” the girl said, hands perched on the computer keyboard, eyes glued to the screen. “You decide if you want to go in or not. Next!” That reduced my fortune-making fund by almost a third. With the quarter tokens barely filling the smallest cup, I headed straight to the slot machines. Lee said he was going to look around for a while, checking out the dealers at the Black Jack tables. I wandered along the aisles, dropping a token here, a token there. Finally I settled down at a machine that spewed out twenty on my second try. All around, the only thing you hear was the sound of tokens spat out of the machines, clink, clank, clink, clank.... For a moment you would think everybody was winning. I read the instructions: 1 for blank, 2 for cherries, 5 for any 2 fruits, ... 80 for 3 bars... and three cherries, the Jackpot— $5623.75....$5624.50....$5625.25.... The figure in the electronic display kept increasing. “Put in three at a time, then you can get it to pay at all three lines,” a middle-aged man in overalls at the next machine said, a tip. But having only thirty-five dollars in the cup, I alternated—three times single, one double, three times single, one triple—hoping that would last me a little longer. Lee and I met working at a restaurant in Chinatown two years ago. I was a busboy, and he a waiter. I had just come from China, and was enrolled at East-West as a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy. Though my tuition was prepaid with my application—a policy which I found out only later was rare in this country—the monthly rent of $250 for my sleeping room in a rundown apartment house on Sam Davis Avenue was making my money run out like rice in a leaking sack. I was, therefore, very grateful to the Cantonese owner of the restaurant when he