New Or~ans Review Volume 31 Number 2 FRONTISPIECE: EDITOR Lonely Mary Christopher Chambers David Rae Morris FICTION EDITORS BOOK DESIGN: Robert Bell Christopher Chambers Jeffrey Chan POETRY EDITOR Katie Ford ASSOCIATE FICTION EDITOR Michael Lee ASSOCIATE POETRY EDITOR Mary Szybist New Orleans Review, founded in 1968, is published by Loyola Uni­ BUSINESS MANA<;jER versity New Orleans. Loyola University is a charter member of the Erin O'Donnell Association of Jesuit University Presses. New Orleans Review consid­ ers unsolicited submissions of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art, and BOOK REVIEW EDITOR Mary A. McCay translations year round. Subscriptions $!4 per year; $20 outside u.s. Send all correspondence to New Orleans Review, Box 195, Loyola ART EDITOR University, New Orleans, LA 70rr8. For more information, visit us Laura Camille Tuley at www.loyno.edu/ ~noreview. Contents listed in the PMLA Bibliog­ raphy, the Index of American Periodical Verse, and the American INTERNS Humanities Index. Printed in the United States on recycled paper. Katherine Boudreaux, Jonathan Frigo, Melanie Glotfelty, Copyright 2006 by Loyola University New Orleans. All rights re­ Kaitlin Ketchum, Joanna Krawczyk, Mark Lamb, served. Distributed by Ingram Periodicals. rssN: 0028-6400. Emily McWilliams, Blake Robinson, Carly St. Romain, Elizabeth Tyrie, Hannah Webster, Corin Zaragoza WEB MASTER Nicholas Denney CONTRIBUTIN<;j EDITORS John Biguenet, Henry Folse, Peggy McCormack, Ashley Schaffer, Marcus Smith, Sophia Stone LOYOLA UNIVERSITY FOUNDIN<;j EDITOR NEW ORLEANS Miller Williams Michael Tod Edgerton Julia Sorrentino from Wake 133 Skeleton 186 James Nolan David Tolar Our Hell in High Water 144 Pry It Loose 188 Patty Friedmann Glenn Mott All for the Radio 149 Evening of the First Morning 192 Ed Skoog Rodger Kamenetz Season Finale 194 I Am a Homeless Man 154 Joshua Clark Katherine Soniat American 159 Basso Continuo 196 Kenneth Cooper Peter Cooley Gentilly Home 168 Noah and the After-Flood 202 Michael Patrick Welch John Gery Between Is and Was 172 Seepage 204 Brad Benischek Bill Lavender from Revacuation 175 There are no accidents 206 Robin Kemp Moira Crone Body 180 The Great Sunken Quarter 207 Elizabeth Gross Helen Scully Delta 181 In the Wake 211 Andy Young W Lewis Garvin Zoya 182 Dark Crescent 216 Utahna Faith Reviews 220 Sabadi 184 Contributors 228 Marie Slaight Acknowledgements 240 Through the Green Water 185 JOHN WILLIAM CORRINGTON They Call This Quarter French and Jesus choked always within a single lost blind testament, They call this quarter French, stitched into the homespun of our souls. though blessings here are colder than their beer who loot the runeless But I have seen bodies fused by and convert the commerce of my closet fire in a motel, the black bed blazed ' hour to base sandwiched coin. they guessed, by some great spark without a certain cause. There They call this quarter French, should be monuments to the stark brew where currency is fenced from black we drank and, one drained day bleeding a iron hearts and every gate gapes wide pinestenched rain, I yet may find on neon ghosts, a bitter loaf carved the words to tell you why from time's long bones. Up there my father paid insurance They call this quarter French, claims on artful madmen's broken cars, where no one has died for love or art on whiplash lies, on or made a masterpiece of either those whose word was better than their bond ' since both became the meat of Fortune's and roughnecks who swore chunks grope. of crumbling derrick in their eyes. I am alien, from a corner of this state None of my old neighbors would grasp where they would say, without a parson this place or do well in its midst. love is the soul's death by misadventure, For them sin is the undertow of whiskey for wounds of one kind our blood's goal: those who drown or another, and nothing is sold in painting or in gin or voyagers except what can be bought. past Hercules, lost on the way to Nineveh, gone down in the sea's sharp groin. Art there is rare as the Roc's prodigious turd, and pain and sun For them, sin and its capaciousness, grand as the fiend's wide cloak, 18 New Orleans Review John William Corrington 19 JAMES NOLAN is a form of art, a mean demanding love, Acts of God a long dive beyond fearing. Outside, rowboats paddled up Canal Street To find a place where it is counterfeit, while I was delivered howling by lantern offered in a stall, would make them in a hospital called Hotel Dieu during question grace and doom and fists and sanity. a hurricane that knocked out New Orleans. Which is most likely why they write to me I have a feel for rattling windowpanes, and ask about The Quarter, is it French? for rivers racing through sky, for heaven I write back and say, come see, not surprised to see they never come. flung endlessly down. This year August ends with God banging on the door like the police. Venetian blinds clatter against glass, gusts ripple through calendar pages back to the day of my birth, the steel wok hung by a hook from the rafter chimes an Angelus against the skillet, curtains billow as I follow from bed to bed, room to room, city to city, continent to continent, capturing the wind like a spinnaker, covering weather maps with cyclonic swirls and arrows, over­ flowing boundaries, sexes and time zones. My kitchen globe brightens as the sky blackens and rising with the steam of a boiling kettle I approach my glory, the air finally matching my emergency, reaching for the same velocity, announcing ourselves with a loosened shutter back and forth against the side of the house. New Orleans Review 21 20 New Orleans Review KATHLEEN BURK Adieu to New Orleans Only the silent expanse of exorbitant power paced her deliberate advance. Perhaps a mile downriver from the Moon Walk, But in the quiet sunlight she eventually rounded the point Louisa Street, maybe, and was almost up to speed, excusing herself she was just getting under way. as she plodded across the dance floor The casual tourists did not notice at the foot of Canal Street, a faded freighter, her wake just brushing the hems of the decked-out long in the water, Queen, the white Princess, this and that Belle, loaded to the Plimsoll, partnered with the polished Admiral, inching away from the wharf and the dutiful shuttling ferries, the petty officers into the invisible currents off Algiers Point, that sashayed and reeled between the point and the twin bridges. heading upriver to a destination no more exciting Her departure went unmarked. than Burnside or LaPlace or Baton Rouge; didn't notice because from the sun deck of the Brewery they saw her abeam. Eyes peeled for hyperbole in the Quarter would miss the subtle separation, cables cast, booms retracted, bulkheads sealed, because her full hull was moving closer, not her bow. Poised, motionless, over the burnished surface, an hour passed at least before she began making headway upriver. For the longest time she seemed suspended, as if still at anchor in the grey water. Kathleen Burk 23 22 New Orleans Review BRAD RICHARD St. Roch Campo Santo, New Orleans I would kiss his dark sore if it would give either of us solace, if it would bring back whole The iron-grating gates stand ajar. It is St. Roch's Cemetery, known of old as the Campo Santo ... [A ]fter the awesome yellow fever epidemic of 1878, people began to companions who died from the wrong touch, flock to the shrine of the saint who was especially invoked in cases of affiiction, whatever killer stole their love. He watches disease and deformities. -from the guidebook to the St. Roch Chapel and Campo Santo as I walk to the locked grate of the alcove where the sick have left their offerings: The saint lifts the hem of his robe to show me the wound on his right leg. a baby's shoes, a baby's back brace, a corset with stained laces and rusted stays, In the festering light of five or six candles and the steady hiss of rain eroding the day, plaster casts of organs-heart, lung, liver­ dentures, a plaster hand hung upside down I've come back alone as if for comfort to this cemetery's half-forgotten shrine. from a hook in the wall; scattered on the floor, age-bleached polaroids of smiling loved ones, I touch the wound, where robbers stabbed him, then the small dog at his feet, his earthly companion grimy stuffed animals, prayers scrawled on business cards, post-its, scraps- as he wandered, destitute, healing plague until he found his way home; his townsmen suffer us, who are nothing, and live knowing you cannot help but see took him for a spy, jailed him and let him die. Patron of this yellow fever parish, he intercedes yourself in our broken image, a body imprisoned in terminal hope, like God. for the terminal and invalid; even filmed with dust, his skin looks youthful, alive: 24 New Orleans Review Brad Richard 25 S R D JAN S M AJ I C Memento N. 0. beaming down on us blessing my bleeding wound what I have kept is we were praying so hard this scar on my left knee back there in the dark & the shard of green glass you teased from my flesh me kneeling & you kneeling me pressing into you in the alley behind the bar our beers lukewarming upstairs we return repentant two prodigals all apologies & our friends plug us back into the same conversation same song on the jukebox still the same please let me introduce myself or pleading again & again you seek out my knee under the table squeeze gently smile & squeeze harder & I swear right then I could feel god himself Srdjan Smajic 27 26 New Orleans Review KENNETH H.