peripheriesno. 3 a journal of word and image peripheriesno. 3 a journal of word and image PUBLISHER Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University FACULTY ADVISOR Charles M. Stang EDITOR Sherah Bloor MANAGING EDITOR Harry Hall DESIGNER Jessica Yuan POETRY EDITORS Emma De Lisle, Sarah Ehrich, Josh Gregory, Amanda Gunn, Byron Russell, Walter Smelt III, Becca Voelcker FICTION EDITORS Mafaz al-Suwaidan, Edwin Alanis García, Harry Hall, Kim Mereine, Maria Pinto ARTS EDITORS Joey Hou (aka Delilah Lyses-sApo) , Emily Raubenheimer, Becca Voelcker, Jessica Yuan NONFICTION EDITORS Sherah Bloor, Haruka Umetsu Cho, Rebecca Doverspike, Sara Klingenstein Cover art: Border between Gevgeljia and Idomeini (North Macedonia and Greece), 2016, Albin Millot Online submissions should be sent to [email protected] editor’s foreward In this third issue of Peripheries (previously known as Periphery) we’ve gone plural, expanding both in bulk and in scope. Peripheries gathers together literary and artistic works that are, broadly construed, ‘peripheral’ in that they explore the interstices between discourses, traditions, languages, and genres; or take as their subject the marginal, the tangential, the liminal, the borderline, the aperture or cleft. Given this vision, Susan Howe is naturally the poet to showcase and you will find in our pages her collage-poems; at once both poetry and visual art, and so also exceeding these demarcations. We have included works peripheral to Susan’s as well: Amy Hollywood’s introduction, which commemorates the talk that Susan delivered at the Harvard Divinity School in Spring, 2019 and two Turkish translations by Efe Murad. You will see Susan’s collages reappear within Amy’s Don’t Touch Me, which itself speaks in the metaxical spaces between poetry, autobiography, and theology. Word and image meet in many other pieces, for example, we’ve juxtaposed Peter Sacks’s earlier poems alongside his more recent collages within which words still float, becoming visual elements. In one idiosyncratic piece, Sharon Olds’s notes to a craft talk, the form of a poem is diagrammed as a tree, its lines branching out, roots sinking down, and into the forest, just beyond the left margin, lies the spirit realm. There are many courses to chart through these pages. Ultimately, this will be the artwork composed by the reader who puts the pieces into dialogue with one another, exposes their tensions, and explores their peripheries. In charting their course, the reader will traverse narrative, lyric, creative non-fiction, photography, translations, dreams, pattern-poems, sculptures, spells, interviews, plays, instructions, and reviews; they will read new work from established writers, retrospectives of luminaries, and they will be introduced to upcoming artists and others fresh to their craft. On any reading, one section of this edition will most certainly stand out— the special folio guest-edited by Joan Naviyuk Kane on recent Native American poetry, which features seven poets. We want to thank Joan for introducing and compiling this important collection and for agreeing to publish her own poem as well. The editors also thank the center around whichPeripheries proliferates: The Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School for its ongoing support, and for housing the poetry editors’ workshop and hosting the Poetry, Religion, and Philosophy program, whose guests regularly contribute. Other contributions originate not so far afield in the Divinity School and, from there, the English department, but most especially, Jorie Graham’s poetry workshops, from where so many new poets emerge under her expert guidance and where they love to congregate. We are indebted to other centers on campus, most especially the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and the Woodberry Poetry Room. And our scope keeps expanding beyond this remit to include the West Coast and then, beyond this, to an international arena: Australia, China, Korea, Germany, the Netherlands, and South Africa. Sherah Bloor Editor table of contents Zhang Zao The Periphery 10 (transl. Eleanor Early Spring, February 11 Goodman & Ao Wang) The Sixth Method 12 Letters Received in Spring and Autumn 13 Amy Hollywood An Introduction to Susan Howe 15 Susan Howe Four Poems 18 (transl. Efe Murad) The Western Borders 22 The Plains of Abraham 24 Amy Hollywood Don’t Touch Me 26 Carl Phillips Night Comes and Passes Over Me 32 Anywhere Like Peace 34 Vera Iliatova Cruel Month 35 Excursions 36 Vijay Seshadri North American Sequence 37 David Ryan The Stag Beetles 39 Donald Revell Messengers 45 Sharon Olds Craft Talk Notes 46 CAConrad Only in Stacking Books Can The Tree 50 Feel Its Weight Again Evie Shockley you must walk this lonesome 52 improphised 53 fruitful 55 Peter Sacks Purgatorio 1-1 & 1-2 57 The Reins 59 Larkin 60 False Bay 2 & 3 61 Adrie Kusserow Lady’s-slipper, Red Eft 63 Night Poppies 66 Farah Kashem Reflections 68 Yi Sang Cliff 70 (transl. Jack Jung) Self Portrait 71 Yi Sang Beard 72 (transl. Sawako Nakayasu) Bin Ramke Danses Sacrée et Profane (Debussy 1904) 75 Secret Sins in the Light 76 They Are Like Grass 77 Brionne Janae Pigs at the Door and a Riot Beneath the 78 Skin Late Summer 79 Katherine Du five white boys in the Lehman Wing (family 81 portrait) the moral concept of the impossible 82 Jackie Wang Umbra 83 Efe Murad from Kaliteli Organ/An Organ of Quality 84 Ashley Mayne A Skull Dreams It Is a Horse 86 Lauren Winchester Of Deer 93 Carousel 94 Amanda Gunn Reflexology 96 ‘A Long Ways from Home’ 97 Monarch 98 Shannon VanGyzen Hang In There 99 Untitled 100 Kristin Prevallet Conjure, Purge, Release 101 Rita Powell Break fast 109 Joan Naviyuk Kane Cutting the River 110 Our Hypervigilance Lapses Back into 112 Pococurantism Laura Hennig Cabral Harvest 113 Verdant 114 - GUEST EDITED FOLIO Joan Naviyuk Kane Riiqtu a, susukpin? :: I’m reading, what 115 are you going to do? ŋ Abigail Chabitnoy In the Renderings of Which There Are Many 117 Holes in the Field 119 Six Lines for Christine, my Black-haired 121 Grandmother In the Field 122 Monique Sanchez Postcard 124 Per Annum 125 Pastoral, Muted 126 Michaelsun Knapp Ropes in the Pinkest Room 127 Being Coming, a Brutalist Recollection 128 of Six Burned Pieces Melanie Archuleta An Untitled Poem 131 Handiwork 132 Rob Arnold Chimera 133 Adrian T. Quintanar Madrecuixe 136 Meridian 137 Venduta II 138 - Laura Hennig Cabral Folio 140 Ariana Reines Participles of Deserere 142 Daniel Pilkington An Interview with Ariana Reines 147 Pattern Poem 158 Greta Byrum [Untitled 4] 164 Renee Schilling Bertin Killing Gregor 167 KT Tuesday’s Children 171 Randy Crandon meat grinder salon - the celebrity 173 lobotomy continued: easter munchies 174 C-3PO: sock salesman- the swindler 176 Tess Gunty Fourth of July 177 Leah Muddle excerpts from TALK 183 Becca Voelcker Pet Kingdom 186 Emily Franklin Grandfather Reappears 188 Isabel Duarte-Gray Father 190 To Field Dress a Doe 191 Amanda Auerbach Smuckers 192 Sing poor 194 Harry Hall A Memory 195 Joel Werring Elactopazmajay 197 Airport 198 Sylvia Beato-Davis Preservation 199 Shane McCrae The Lost Tribe of Eden 200 Eden Werring Namelings 201 The Luz Bone 202 Daniel Kraft Lot’s Wife 208 Sonnet as Deuteronomy 14:11-18 210 Byron Russell aubade no. 5 211 Ryan Mihaly 3 Clarinet Poems 212 Deborah J. Haynes Writing Becomes Drawing 218 Sarah Fleming Erasures from Cloud of Unknowing 220 George Kalogeris Plotinus in English 224 Laura Kolbe Thanks to Leibniz, putative father of 226 topology Garter, Copper, Water 228 Greg Allendorf Walking Autopsy 230 Outside the Mortuary 231 Isabella Morris The Karoo Blues 232 Edith Clare pantoum for two voices 238 Albin Millot Europe Utopia - Spain, Canary Island, El 239 Hierro Europe Utopia - Portugal, Azores 240 Archipelago, Flores Hilary Scheppers St. Kateri Tekakwitha 241 Gerardo Pacheco Desert Bones 242 The Carcass 243 Frannie Lindsay Falcon 244 Noor A. Asif The Crow 246 AM Ringwalt From What Floods 251 Matsuo Basho untitled 258 (transl. Patricia Hartland & Laurel Taylor) Shikun Zhu Tianjin, China 260 Angelo Mao Subject 263 Jessica Yuan Helpless 265 Maria Pinto To Reap Where She Did Not Sow 266 Christina Lucia Giuffrida The Escape 271 Emma De Lisle Poem Written Backwards 273 Joshua Gregory Extinction/Feast 274 Nick Maione Shadow Fruit 276 Franco Paz The rain brought a few questions 277 Joelle Jameson Feasting 278 New Direction 279 Nachoem M. Wijnberg The Last Thing Memory is Best For 280 (transl. David Colmer) Walter Smelt III South Florida Water Management 282 District Jessie LeBaron Lake 283 Winter River and Trees 284 Edwin Alanís-García A Conversation with Reza Aslan 285 Ariella Ruth A Quiet Wilderness Breaking into Bloom 290 Barbara Allen 293 Rebecca Doverspike Pieces Rescued and Strung Together 294 Amid the Sea Christopher Spaide Showcase Showdown 298 Adrienne Raphel Notes from Paradise 303 The Garden of Earthly Delights 305 Michael Jackson Dead Reckoning 309 The Periphery Zhang Zao translated by Eleanor Goodman and Ao Wang Like a tomato hiding at the edge of the steelyard, he was always lying down. Something flashes, a warning or a swallow, but he doesn’t move, keeping watch over little things. The second hand moves to ten o’clock, the alarm fades far away, a cigarette goes too, carrying along a few pairs of distorted blue handcuffs. His eyes, clouds, German locks. In short, what wasn’t there was gone. Empty, expanding. He was far removed, but always on some periphery: a gear’s edge, the water’s edge, his own edge. He looks time and again to the sky, his index finger pointing up, practicing sickly, wild calligraphy: “Come back!” As expected, all those deformed things returned to their original shape: the windows in the new development are full of evening wind, the moon brews a big barrel of golden beer The steelyard, tilting violently, there, infinite, like a calmed lion crouching beside a tomato.