carolina quarterly 62.1

$ 9 . 0 0 F R E E T O U N C S T U D E N T S

Lauri Anderson

Gaylord Brewer

Roger Camp

Bradley Cook

Hannah Gersen

Susan Goslee

Edward Mullany

Jean Nordhaus

Dan Piepenbring

Avery Slater

John Surowiecki

Ken Taylor

Paul Watsky

and more

P O E T R Y | F I C T I O N | E S S A Y S | R E V I E W S

CAROLINA QUARTERLYTHE

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I sneak a peek of the world’s greatest actor every minute or so on our drive to the restaurant. On his left hand he wears a gold band, his knuckles show through his skin. I turn off the air conditioner so I can listen to his breathing while I drive. I lean into him and take a deep breath. He smells like cotton candy. A A R O N S A N D E R S

F E A T U R I N G A D D I T I O N A L W O R K B Y

cq_coverfileFINAL9.indd 5 4/21/12 10:40 AM


S P R I N G / S U M M E R 2 0 1 2 I S S U E | V O L . 6 2 , N O . 1

B E L L E T R I S T I C A L L Y B A W D Y S I N C E 1 9 4 8

The Carolina Quarterly is published three times per year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Subscription rates are $24 per year to individuals and $30 to institutions. Current single issues, back issues, and sample copies are $9 each. Remittance must be made by money order or check payable in U.S. funds. Numbers issued before Volume 21 (1969) can be

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Bibliography of English Language and Literature. Member Coordinating

Library of Congress catalogue card number 52019435.

ABOVE | James Stewart

COVER | Untitled

Nishanth Jois

AUTHOR NAME 3

ASSISTANT EDITORS

Bhumi Dalia

Heather Van Wallendael

COVER DESIGN

F O U N D E D I N 1 9 4 8AT T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N O RT H CA RO L I N A – C H A P E L H I L L

ABOVE | James Stewart

COVER | Untitled

Nishanth Jois

Matthew Hotham | EDITOR- IN-CHIEF

O N L I N E AT www.thecarol inaquarterly.com

F O U N D E D I N 1 9 4 8AT T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N O RT H CA RO L I N A – C H A P E L H I L L

FICTION EDITORS

Lindsay Starck

NON-FICTION EDITOR

POETRY EDITOR

Lee Norton

WEB EDITOR

INTERNS

FICTION READERS:

POETRY READERS: Jasmine V. Bailey, Melissa Birkhofer, Katy Bowler, Taylor Burklew, Melissa Golding, and Rachel Kiel

NON-FICTION READERS:

C O N T E N T S

S P R I N G / S U M M E R 2 0 1 2 | V O L . 6 2 , N O . 1

P O E T R Y

14 DAN PIEPENBRING | Disruption And You Can Phone Up Your Mom, And She Is Also Powerless Custodial Custodian Blooper Reel, Purgatory

32 GAYLORD BREWER | The Natural World

33 BARBARA SIEGEL CARLSON | Without Touching

44 JEAN NORDHAUS | When She Saw an Angel Of Turnips

46 SUSAN MAURER | Martin Ramirez

61 KEN TAYLOR | have you ever extravagantly adored ash wednesday trading aces & eights close reading

89 AVERY SLATER | Anointed

90 JOHN SUROWIECKI | Mr. S. Is Driven Home

92 SUSAN GOSLEE | The Seagram Murals by Mark Rothko

104 PAUL WATSKY | Santoka Having Visited Mort de Seymour

108 EDWARD MULLANY | Parade of Rabbits The Apostle

6 THE CAROLINA QUARTERLY

JAMES STEWART | Dragon Viewer

AARON SANDERS 7

hands and sing my favorite Beatles song, “My Life,” over and over, tap-

ping our thighs to Ringo’s marvelous drum work. When the song ends

we act out scenes from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and Little Miss

Sunshine

actor, yes, but an even better friend.

shower, and go to work.

second-tier travel destinations like Cedar City, Utah; Hartford, Connect-

icut; and Valdosta, Georgia. My job is to convince folks from around

they can’t say they’ve lived until they’ve visited, say, Hartford. The only

problem is that if you’ve ever been to Hartford you know that there is no

make up a tourist brochure that feels real and authentic.

Oh Alan of the acting world

I sing to celebrate you

Your expressive hand gestures

Your foul mouth

Oh, Alan, I sing. Oh Arkin.

AARON SANDERS

I Dream of Alan Arkin


Singer, who is deaf, in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

in high school after reading the McCullers novel. My favorite scene is

when Mick Kelly and John Singer wave their arms in the air like orches-

tral conductors to the music Singer can’t hear. When the music ends Mick

stops moving her hands and watches in horror as Singer continues to

wave his hands because he doesn’t know that the music has stopped. The

can hear, really can’t hear in the scene.

way to create this opportunity for myself like a great artist might create

his or her masterwork.

such a gifted actor.

Oh, Alan, of the acting world,

How do you do it?

How do you encapsulate the human condition

In a single smirk?

You are a national treasure

A tribute to the humanity in all of us.

Your shiny bald spot

Is a symbol

Of everything good in the world

And I shall rub it to the ends of the earth!

-

bus airport he is hunched over like my grandfather was before he died.

acting

AARON SANDERS 9

He glances about, presumably looking for me. Behind him he drags

a petite carry-on, a Hollywood luxury item probably from the 2007

after-Oscar party.

-

er than me, that so many years of preparation simply cannot be distilled

is the most important day of my life, and yet how can anyone expect me

to act

and bow my head. “Good day to you, Sir! My name is Lewis Burbank,

but please call me Lou. Welcome to Columbus, Georgia!”

which gets great gas mileage. No, he leans his head against the window

and closes his eyes.

our drive to the restaurant. On his left hand he wears a gold band, his

-

He smells like cotton candy.

“You ordered for me?”

He shakes his head then checks his watch.

done when he returns to the table and sighs.


DUNCAN HILL | Boardwalk Cyclist, Carolina Beach, NC

27DUNCAN HILL | Ice Cream Pier, Kure Beach, NC


an agitation, a violence. Screeching brought me

to the window. When the just-hatched chick

Unbolted dead lock, leapt yelling-clapping

into shaggy clover. By then, three others curled

by the pole, bald heads limp on distended necks,

The chickadee parents frantic in the trees,

darting and calling, sparrow marauders silent,

no larger than thumbnail, unlatched the door

pointlessly gentle, and carried it to the woods.

GAYLORD BREWER

The Natural World

BARBARA SIEGEL CARLSON 33

Sunlight warms my knees. We used to play statue

“Money is everything,” Uncle Ben once said.

a chandelier of human bones. You tap

the glass. Do you remember the gypsy girl

selling binoculars? “Money is everything,” preached

Uncle Ben. Sunlight taps the glass. We played

we were statues on the lawn after supper. The earth’s a blue

to see each other without touching. Do you remember

the gypsy girl’s cracked lip? We whirled and then fell

on the lawn after supper. Human rocks

under a waving branch. The swirling aches.

Sunlight a knife through the open door.

BARBARA SIEGEL CARLSON

Without Touching

65ROGER CAMP | Blue Hats


ROGER CAMP | Crashing the Surf

67ROGER CAMP | Floating Reds


ROGER CAMP | Orange Hats

69ROGER CAMP | Snorklers


ROGER CAMP | The Touch

71ROGER CAMP | Yellow Snorkler


ROGER CAMP | The Start

AVERY SLATER 89

Her hair: like rotting olive boughs. Her love is turning lung.

Sounds, across these centuries, were few. Grain gradually unlatched.

till bodice-fasteners plied back, hewn clavicle to robe-folds.

Her hands revealed keep wrists to prayer. Complete.

Beneath their sheathing lids, her eyes are still becoming

Sandalwood and hyssop drench her. Like an anchor striking sand,

the thud of axes haunts her, crosses through her constant dream

where journeys break, branch off. Her carving frays, displays, from skin to pith,

its core, like heart itself might surface suddenly, returning from

the tree she was. Her most unhurried emptying of that jar.

AVERY SLATER

Anointedfor a wooden statue of Mary Magdalene in the , Paris


SUSAN GOSLEE

The Seagram Murals by Mark Rothko

They make up a volcano’s smallest room.

The pyre’s libretto (marked Dulcissimo)

Piano)

Brown’s picked berries. (Lentissimo) Black’s marooned.”

Despair has design and, thus, a deity

light kindled the stone church till it glowed rose. Snared

Capri cake, the tuba player, champagne,

my cousin’s vest golden as wheat, the neighbor’s

llama. Wakened. Cry out to dream again.

This room rests companion, sanctuary,

but the Thames, no friend, slick, gray, waits for me.

93JAMES STEWART | View of Worthington Glacier


JASMINE V. BAILEY

Mother/landDhaka Dust by Dilruba Ahmed

Dhaka Dust, the 2010 winner of the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference

eye, even proximate locations, like Ohio, seem exotic.

This book is, gratefully, not a concept or project book, but a more

or source of insight to the persona, her culture and history, it is some-

what predictable. She delivers the expected heady sensory images and

inheritor, escapee. These poems are strongest when directly political.

a stranger’s weight. So when you / boycott a storefront / you’ll need a

louder roar to scare off / our global predator.” The speaker in this poem

we cannot approach this poem with an easy sympathy for the oppressed

and reproach for the greed of ambiguous, remote villains. We are made

to feel the weight of our hypocritical sympathy.

takes one of the epigraphs of the book, is titled unambiguously “The

title lets us know, without equivocation, who she is talking about with

the opening “They became extraneous,” even as it damns the British

JASMINE V. BAILEY 111

responsible for the barbaric event. Throughout these poems, the voice

-

umph of the collection.

Stove-Side,” it is with both surprise and a forced casualness. The poem re-

hearses the feelings one might have if a dead loved one were to show up in

a dream: “What a thing! She arrives just in time / to slice onions for me.”

bit as deep as it ought and resolves, or at least accounts for, much of the

mother is a presence in most of the last poems of the book.

Only the book’s end seems capable of staunching the grief unleashed

-

Dhaka Dust ends in a place of

safe conceits and low personal stakes of its initial poems, prepares us for

such a moving conclusion.


ZACKARY VERNON

The Poet’s Native TongueWaking by Ron Rash

has returned to the medium with his latest collection, Waking (2011).

One Foot in Eden

(2002), Serena Burning Bright

and foremost as a poet, garnering high praise for the three collections of

Waking, Rash has not

only returned to his native medium; he has also attained a well-honed

style and mature poetics that enable him to capture the life and land-

scape of his native region.

Waking, “Dylan Thomas,” Rash

berates the Welsh poet for abandoning his native language and writing

solely in English: “a small people lose their tongue / one poet at a time.”

eulogize their present and past cultures. Regardless of whether Rash is

or the ecosystems of the North Carolina mountains, we can say with con-

Waking,

Rash proves that their native tongues are not only alive but thriving.

-

tion and poetry that mark it as being distinctly southern or southern

-

ZACKARY VERNON 113

writes function as sub-sub-regions, and these ecosystems shape his oeu-

-

chian,” which often fail to depict the nuances of a particular life lived in

a particular place.

consider him an important bioregional writer. Contemporary environ-

not more, important than socio-historical factors in determining identity

formation and community organization.

Rash’s poems are obsessed with the desire to know the natural

-

acters often come to know themselves and understand both their human

-

graph for the collection, the speaker directly addresses the reader and

asks us to look at the world with fresh eyes. The poem functions both as

an invocation and evocation, calling for participation and summoning a

sensuousness that seems almost mystical.

The title of the collection refers to the poem “Sleepwalking,” in

which a young boy says that whenever he wakes from sleepwalking he

is “always outside.” The outdoors “summon” the boy as if by magic,

and he then reckons not only with a human “world to be in” but also,

and perhaps more importantly, a natural “world to be in.” This desire

to know and become part of the world is also present in “The Trout in

the Springhouse,” which depicts with striking detail how Rash’s uncle

placed a live trout in their springhouse pool “because some believed / its

he feels the wimple of the trout swimming by, and he ultimately merges

palm cup / tasted its quickness / swimming inside me.”

-

another, Rash’s characters sometimes fail to experience the natural world


reach though it appears / as near and known as your outstretched hand.”

-

Memory,” Rash describes the awe of looking into a pond and witnessing

the teeming life below the surface. Yet, even in this tranquil idyll, “Some-

thing unseen stirs the reeds.”

Despite these fears and barriers, we need not be discouraged by the

state of human and nonhuman interactions. Rash seems to relish the very

it all the more intriguing, the desire to know all the more poignant and

worth the effort that it takes to shed ourselves of the somnolence induced

by the sanitized, domesticated spaces we inhabit and, once awake, worth

the effort that it takes to seek out a more elemental experience.

-

late the “land [that] / unscrolls like a palimpsest.” Rash’s speakers use

language to characterize and categorize the world, and they also utilize

linguistic metaphors to bridge the chasm between humans and nature.

book “as the wind reading the trees”; and, in “Waterdogs,” Rash writes,

“You can live a life without / knowing they exist if sky / is something

glanced out windows, / clouds are spread out scrolls written / in a lost

matter…” This life of lost tongues and missed encounters is precisely the

life from which Rash has awoken, and his entreaty in this collection is

that we awake as well.

Rash’s poetry succeeds most often when it is personal, describing

his and his family’s formative experiences with the landscapes of south-

-

ems such as “Rebecca Boone,” “The Code,” “Cold Harbor,” and “The

Crossing” are rarely compelling, simply because their characters and

ZACKARY VERNON 115

-

folding that was not afforded the time and material needed to create

a certain ephemeral appeal in their uses of gothic tone or plot, in the

end they are unsatisfying because they fail to do what Rash often does

unexpected and enchanting.

moves beyond mere literary ecotourism. Waking not only re-enchants us

with nature through poetry but also should inspire us to re-experience

nature ourselves.


C O N T R I B U T O R S

S P R I N G / S U M M E R 2 0 1 2 | V O L . 6 2 , N O . 1

LAURI ANDERSON Willow Springs,

Meridian, The Greensboro Review, Bellingham Review, Passages North,

student at Texas Tech University.

JASMINE V. BAILEY

Sleep and What Precedes It

book-length manuscript, Alexandria, is forthcoming from Carnegie Mel-

lon. She is the web editor for 32 Poems.

GAYLORD BREWER is a professor at Middle Tennessee State Universi-

ty, where he founded and for 19 years has edited the journal Poems &

Plays. His eighth and most recent book of poems is Give Over, Graymal

kin

ROGER CAMP is a professor of photography and literature. His photo-

graphs have been published in over 100 magazines including American

Photo, Popular Photography, Harvard Advocate, and The New York

Quarterly. His work has been exhibited in over 150 exhibitions world-

-

etown and the Leica Medal of Excellence in documentary photography.

BARBARA SIEGEL CARLSON’s poetry and translations have appeared

in New Ohio Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review,

CONTRIBUTORS 117

and others. She was the Cutthroat -

son is the author of a chapbook, Between this Quivering (Coreopsis

Back, Look Ahead, Selected Poems of Srecko

Kosovel from Slovene

Massachusetts.

BRADLEY COOK

The Iowa Review, and his story,

“The Gift,” is forthcoming in Cimarron Review.

HANNAH GERSEN The Chattahoochee Re

view, Crab Orchard Review, North American Review, and The Normal

School, among others. She recently completed a series of linked short

stories and is now at work on a novel. You can learn more about her on

her website: www.hannahgersen.com.

SUSAN GOSLEE’s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in

West Branch, The Cimarron Review, and Salamander. She is an assis-

DUNCAN HILL is a documentary photographer living in Washington,

DC. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Wilming-

life in the Nation’s Capital. His work has been published in Redivider,

Superstition Review, Thin Air Magazine, and Photography Monthly.

More of his work can be seen at www.duncanhillphoto.com.

DANIEL LONG is an Oklahoman living in New York.

SUSAN MAURER PERFECT DARK

nominations and been published in 15 countries.


EDWARD MULLANY

He is the author of If I Falter at the Gallows

JEAN NORDHAUS’ fourth volume of poetry, Innocence, won the Charles

November, 2006. Her earlier books include The Porcelain Apes of Mo

ses Mendelssohn and My Life in Hiding. She has published work in

American Poetry Review, the New Republic, Poetry, and Best American

Poetry 2000 and 2007 In

nocence appears in 2007 Pushcart Prize.

DAN PIEPENBRING lives in Brooklyn. He is an assistant editor at Farrar,

Straus and Giroux.

AARON SANDERS’s recent stories have appeared in Gulf Coast, Quar

terly West, and Beloit Fiction Journal -

lumbus State University, and he is currently working on The Good, Good

Darkness, a novel about a terminally-ill academic who drags his daugh-

AVERY SLATER -

versity. Her work has recently appeared in or is forthcoming from Slate

Magazine, Poetry London, Raritan, Missouri Review, Literary Imagi

nation, and Meridian. She co-curates the SOON experimental poetry

JAMES STEWART is a self-taught amateur photographer most recently

-

fore that. He has been married for 25 years to his lovely wife whom

gentlemen sons who continually make him proud. His latest project is

to see the world and document his travels in a truly meaningful way. He

com/photos/alphageek

CONTRIBUTORS 119

JOHN SUROWIECKI is the author of three books of poetry, Barney and

Gienka (CW Books, 2010), The Hat City After Men Stopped Wearing

Hats Watching Cartoons

Before Attending a Funeral

Flies, is scheduled for publica-

-

Alaska Quarterly Review, Mississippi

Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Redivider, The Southern Review,

West Branch, Wisconsin Review, and Yemassee.

KEN TAYLOR’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Volt, Eoagh, The

Chattahoochee Review, elimae, MiPOesias, OCHO, Southword, Poet

sArtists, Clade Song -

Dog with Elizabethan Collar was a

PRIMO VENTELLO

“Das Schweinehund” is a companion piece to his essay “The Commut-

er,” which appeared in New Letters

ZACKARY VERNON

Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he

also teaches various literature and composition courses. Vernon studies

on a dissertation that explores issues of ecocriticism and ecoterrorism

PAUL WATSKY is the author of Telling the Difference

2010) and co-translator with Emiko Miyashita of Santoka

2006). His work has appeared in such journals as Alabama Literary

Review, Asheville Literary Review, Cave Wall, and Natural Bridge.


The Carolina Quarterly thrives thanks to the institutional support of the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and our generous individual donors.

Beyond the printing of each issue, monetary and in-kind donations help to fund

opportunities for our undergraduate interns, university, and community outreach

would like more information about donating to the Quarterly, please contact us

GUARANTORS

Grady Ormsby Tessa Joseph-Nicholas

FRIENDS

George Lensing

Department.

This publication is funded in part by student fees, which were appropriated

and dispersed by the Student Government at UNC-Chapel Hill.


ANNOUNCING

SALT HILL’S 1ST

PHILIP BOOTH

POETRY PRIZE

“The world’s not apt to be resolved by a poem, but a poemcan make the world’s landscape more humanly bearable...”

Final Judge:National Book Award Finalist Bruce Smith

winning poem receives$500 & publication in Salt Hill

contest opens May 15th

& closes August 1st

more details to come at:salthilljournal.com/booth

$15,000 in Awards

$5,000 Fiction $5,000 Poetry $5,000 Essay!e Missouri Review is now accepting submissions for the 22nd Annual Je!rey E. Smith Editors’ Prize competition.

In addition to the $15,000 awarded to the first place winners, three finalists in each category receive cash awards and are considered for publication. Past winners have been reprinted in the Best American series.

Page Restrictions

Fiction and nonfiction entries should not exceed 25 typed, double-spaced pages. Poetry entries can include any number of poems up to 10 pages in total. Each story, essay, or group of poems constitutes one entry.

Entry Fee

$20 for each entry (checks made payable to !e Missouri Review). Each fee includes a one-year subscription (digital or print!) to !e Missouri Review. Please enclose a complete e-mail and mailing address.

Entry Instructions

Include the printable contest entry form (available online). On the first page of each submission, include

author’s name, address, e-mail and telephone number. Entries must be previously unpublished and will not be returned. Mark the outside of the envelope “Fiction,”

“Essay,” or “Poetry.” Each entry in a separate category must be mailed in a separate envelope. Enclose a #10 SASE or e-mail address for an announcement of winners.

Go Green: Enter Online!

We are also accepting electronic submissions. For details, go to www. missourireview.com/contest

Mailing Address

Missouri Review Editors’ Prize 357 McReynolds Hall University of Missouri Columbia, MO 65211

Postmark Deadline October 1, 2012

BIGGER THAN EVER!!!"#$%""&'($)*++,*-$./$01234

Available from University of Chicago Distribution CenterTo place an order: (800) 621-2736 / www.redhen.org

his palate to include ruminations on everything from the 1948 summer session at Black Mountain College to Jack Benny’s legendary corn-belt comedy routines.

“Sebastian Matthews’ poetry has an enviable and light-hearted spontane-ity. He has a voice and an eye that act like velcro, picking up all the sights and sounds around him. His way of looking at the world, of observing the world without withdrawing from it, acknowledges and allows itself to be haunted by memory but still expresses and articulates a true gratitude for the present. Taken as a whole, his poetry is a moving record of how music through time, words through time, and people through time con-nect and console us.”

—Jennifer Grotz “Sebastian Matthews has obviously listened with considerable care to great musicians, and he can reflect the rhythm of their art without aping it. He is able to float authoritatively like one of the accomplished soloists of jazz—Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, John Coltrane. He focuses well, and when he gets rolling, he knows how to turn and ‘do’ things.”

—Paul Zimmer, Georgia Review

Miracle Day: Mid-Life Songs, Sebastian Matthews’ second book of poems, explores the main themes of midlife—sex and death, marriage and parenthood, work and play, friends and foes, travel and staying put. Moving back and forth between couplets and the single-stanza poem, Matthews writes about the world he is immersed in, whether listening in on an impromptu barbershop quartet with his son or driving through urban Philadelphia on a misguided whim. Matthews continues his interest in jazz and musicians but has broadened

Miracle Day: Mid-Life SongsPoetry by Sebastian Matthews978-1-59709-173-2 / $17.95

$ 9 . 0 0 F R E E T O U N C S T U D E N T S

Lauri Anderson

Gaylord Brewer

Roger Camp

Bradley Cook

Hannah Gersen

Susan Goslee

Edward Mullany

Jean Nordhaus

Dan Piepenbring

Avery Slater

John Surowiecki

Ken Taylor

Paul Watsky

and more


CAROLINA QUARTERLYTHE

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I sneak a peek of the world’s greatest actor every minute or so on our drive to the restaurant. On his left hand he wears a gold band, his knuckles show through his skin. I turn off the air conditioner so I can listen to his breathing while I drive. I lean into him and take a deep breath. He smells like cotton candy. A A R O N S A N D E R S

F E A T U R I N G A D D I T I O N A L W O R K B Y


carolina quarterly 62.1

Documents

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t u r i n g