The Southern Review articles from June 2005

The Southern Review archives from June 2005

Poem Choosing to Remain Unfinished.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Poem Choosing to Remain Unfinished Wilder, wilder, and wilder all my thoughts looking out to dawn, not risen yet! Possibility! Out of this darkness something will come in which I'll throw myself, mantle of new,...

First Light Meditation.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... First Light Meditation Beethoven in his deafness, the great sea awakening in him, high tides breaking up the shore, and then a new horizon standing there when he stares: sea and sky meet, seamless. Dickinson in her...

Release, Release.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Release, Release Gracelight is the achievement of trees at morning, first accepting dawn head on, then one by one slowly letting light go, never until tomorrow this moment of release. But for that instant they are...

The new father.(Short Story)
June 22, 2005... PARRISH PUSHED HIS BABY SON in his stroller, pushed him down the quiet neighborhood's sidewalks, pushed him every day that the weather allowed. Sometimes Daniel gurgled and cooed beneath the stroller's hood as Parrish pushed him north up...

Why Desire a Child.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Why Desire a Child because the woman behind the white-wheeled carriage hummed a lullaby that momentarily hushed the history voices; because I can no longer resist the kingdom of tiny, knitted shoes, pureed fruit in jars,...

Why Plant Bougainvillea.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Why Plant Bougainvillea because it flourishes given light and water this sensuous halo kin to Botticelli's ethereal embraces and Van Gogh's tempest landscapes it glorifies camouflaging crumbling walls ...

J'ai deux amours & one of them is Paris.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... j'ai deux amours & one of them is paris in the mother country of my mother where I happened to be born, illuminated city east of everywhere I am, berth of all embarking, port of all return, street of truffles, bed of...

Death: A Definition.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Death: A Definition To evaporate into rumor To be without fixed meaning December on the edge of sundown standing by the water elms toss their last thin leaves into the wind as if that would...

Devshirmeh.(Short Story)
June 22, 2005... AND SO THIS STORY, too, begins with blood. And with blood it ends. Blood binds those in it and blood divides them. Many have told it before and many have sung about it, but I didn't learn it from them. I was born and I knew it. It was in the...

Gold Star Mother at Sundown.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Gold Star Mother at Sundown Clouds are barges, heaped with asters, mums, marigolds--loose arrangements unlike those sent by friends. She watches surf comb strand, sieving shingle. She wears gauze. Around her, ...

Mayflies.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Mayflies for T. F., and A.A. of Echo Company They marry urgently, a shining swarm, kinetic cellophane above a pond, their life span closing with a single day's erotic flight. They've dreamt away a year underwater, ...

Mosaic: A Partial Etymology.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Mosaic: A Partial Etymology Greek mousaikos, belonging to the Muses 1. Photog. Terrain viewed through a series of aerial shots forming one composite On a white enamel tray, the turtle lies upside down, its breastplate...

Louisa Morgan's Inheritance, 1793.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Louisa Morgan's Inheritance, 1793 from entries in commonplace and recipe books, National Library of Wales The afternoon of her mother's funeral, the books appeared beside her bed. Weeks yet to pass before her birthday...

Farsighted.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Farsighted Aberystwyth, Wales So many girls look familiar--shorn hair, tattoos lettering their thin-skinned arms, chains on throats and on their ears the silver script of earrings. But up close, they blur, even ...

Making a Mask.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Making a Mask for Nathaniel I Fourteen years ago I held you as you bawled against the light of birth, first heave of lungs, but put myself into your hands, born into a wholly new life. Now on my back I lie...

Local time.(Short Story)
June 22, 2005... SHOOT ME IF I EVER GET OLD," E.K. told Stribley as they left the taxi and entered one of the clubs that lined both sides of the street. The place was called Dodge City. To Stribley, E.K. was already old, even grandfatherly in bearing, but he...

Calonyction: Nihil Obstat.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Calonyction: Nihil Obstat Again they have leapt from the fence to stun me, moonflowers as Superman, entering nature's booth as nondescript vines, leaving the neighbors' yard for mine and blowing up the dark with their...

Thoughts on Human Beauty in the Y Locker Room.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Thoughts on Human Beauty in the Y Locker Room You might ponder what the Maker had in mind once the shucked clothes collapse and shower heads hiss and billow out the balm of warm fog upon us all--our stomachs' harrowed...

Song for Mussels.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Song for Mussels Blue inside obsidian, blue of compression, blue of the fleck & of flash-cooled glass. We anchor volcanic, & fast. We embrace & make changeful our beach. We bury. ...

Song for the Houses I Grew Up In.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Song for the Houses I Grew Up In Since I woke, four places I've never been have emerged from the edges of morning. In the fireplace, on an ashen hill, a glowing Sarcomonte-- the view of the tombs from...

The Drive Home after the Hearing.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... The Drive Home after the Hearing Back when one road led to another, clover-leafed to this or that place matched on a map on our long road trips, however lost or turned around we got, each road had another road to end...

Ground Forces in the Academy.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Ground Forces in the Academy for Ward S. Allen Some of us--older, more benign-- Always thought there ought to be a sign For war: some demarcation where Battles have names, maps are marked with stars, Where officers...

A Tangle of Angels.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... A Tangle of Angels You can't grow up spending summers in your aunt's trailer across the river from lights of the country club without learning something-- good, bad, hard, easy, Mom, Dad, riverbed in time of...

Long Gone daddy.(Short Story)
June 22, 2005... HARRY LEE AND MARY ANN meet me at the door. "We loved your daddy," Mary Ann says. "We'll miss him." Harry Lee and my daddy grew up, played ball, hunted, scouted timber, got rich, and got drunk together until Daddy lost two decades of pine...

Listening to a Shell.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Listening to a Shell The tongue is tough. It doesn't want to let go. In the remnant light, my sandy-haired uncle grasps it with pliers. He is gilded bronze in his bathing suit. The tongue is pink as salmon, the color...

Billy Solitario.
June 22, 2005... Storm over the Mississippi oil on canvas, 60 in. x 48 in. Spiral Cloud over Levee oil on canvas, 48 in. x 48 in. Three Dune Crowns oil on canvas, 36 in. x 36 in. Cloud Study with Telephone Poles oil on canvas, 8 in. x 10 in. ...

What Else He Wants.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... What Else He Wants Also that crumb of a shard you keep hidden from everyone including yourself, because once discovered in all its complexity and/or simplicity; once you've held it in your hands like a bead of mercury ...

Death of a Theologian.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Death of a Theologian Nature in her highest non-human aspects is God.... --CHARLES HARTSHORNE Theology is a great courtesy and a profession which speculation grants itself. One theologian doubled...

Heron.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Heron When the fisherman on the pier at Venice Beach, casting for sheepshead and mullet, or maybe mackerel or sea bass or bream, catches a heron in the wing, and, heartsick, chagrined, has no choice but to play it...

In Van Diemen's Land.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... In Van Diemen's Land And when they hit the wallaby, the thud reverberated through his hands as if they'd blown a tire. But then he saw the blood splay out behind the car, and then the whiff of death leapt up on its...

Good girl.(Short Story)
June 22, 2005... A YEAR BEFORE JACOB'S SON, Tommy, was arrested for raping a fifteen-year-old girl, the sheriff came to his shop about the dog. Tommy's dog--a pit bull bitch. Tommy had brought her home the week he graduated from high school, a pup in an old...

In a Time of Fire.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... In a Time of Fire Gray ribbons of smoke rose from their place. Delicate smoke rose from its place, spiraling its resin. Pale gray wraps of woolen air, wraiths of the earth. Wraiths of the earth like history burgeoning....

An Old Man Goes to Solitude.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... An Old Man Goes to Solitude Finally a leaving in every night, in every opening and closing of electricity. A hearth of coal sift, the red-flecked ash, the shivery evening. Everything I warmed finally a dearth. What...

Contemplating the Nature of Hell.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Contemplating the Nature of Hell "Those in Hell are unable to remember God." How I froze at reading that thought, the page chill on my fingers, everything changed in the air around me, my body newly strange. How...

Benediction.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Benediction For what we are given. For being mindful of what we are given. For those who grieve and those who celebrate. For those who remain grateful in the face of everything. For the assembly of words that...

Odes: San Francisco Bay.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Odes: San Francisco Bay What vision gripped them?--architects all arrayed squint-eyed into the sunset, into the blare of barges sunk deck-deep with their trade surging diagonal wakes toward shore. Hand-sure they...

The Story of My Calamities.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... The Story of My Calamities God sends the whole of scripture as a love letter to us, by which he makes us love and desire him. --AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO O God my God, would you were an Abelard bowing each long midnight in your...

The Eureka Mines.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... The Eureka Mines Let pass the burnt-out smithy smocked with rust, let pass the pockmarked headframe canting at the ore dump, let pass the tramway, unmaintained and vacant long of ore cars--still this town would...

Uniforms.(Short Story)
June 22, 2005... I HAVE TWO UNIFORMS HERE on Virginia's Blue Ridge Parkway: the traditional dress suit for the days I work the Humpback Rocks Visitor Center, and a rag dress for the days my fellow ranger works the center and I interpret the reconstructed 1890s...

In the Little Book of Guesses.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... In the Little Book of Guesses I'll make you up from out of the living rooms we face, equal parts singing gate and people we knew once, in biographical order. Equal lengths investiture, and the sun came out...

Ghost Children.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Ghost Children The afternoon's heading for the silences with my dead dad. Which is an incidence of travel. Which is going the length of a short road. My live dad is beneath the car with his feet protruding....

Posthumous.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Posthumous Maggie Gibb, 1958-2002 I East End Eclogue 1 It was like uncovering the foundations of the world And digging them up, one stone at a time making way For the great stalks of summer: sunflowers and...

The Touchstone.(Symphony in C, George Balanchine)(Biography)
June 22, 2005... THE FIRST TIME YOU SEE George Balanchine's Symphony in C, with its flashy white tutus and gallant partnering, its elegant steps and its mastery of ballet vocabulary, you might take it for an imitation of, or homage to, nineteenth-century...

Miss Peach Imagines Herself an Aging British Rock Star and Explains What Honesty Is.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Miss Peach Imagines Herself an Aging British Rock Star and Explains What Honesty Is At the base of my wet brain--whatever, of all brains, all graceful and human brains-- a good smallness lies tangled in the roots of bad...

Miss Peach explains promiscuity to a toddler.(Short Story)
June 22, 2005... Say this yellow square block is bored. Say she's bored because she's always been a yellow square block and has always been stacked up and knocked down with other yellow square blocks, and it seems to her that "yellow," "square," and "block" are...

Miss Peach at the Twilight Sale.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Come buy, come buy. --CHRISTINA ROSSETTI, "Goblin Market" Miss Peach at the Twilight Sale After Miss Peach spends just longer than necessary in the spinning door, she doesn't quite crash into the other tilted...

Tribe.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Tribe The morning we buried his brother, my father sat beside the hole on a folding chair among his siblings, a scoop of Illinois dirt readied for the ritual fling. My mother and I and assorted others once or twice ...

Not James.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Not James The man who used to drive me to the train is dead. I did not know him well. Around the writers' table he kept a proper distance: collar pressed, manicured stories of gardens and dogs. "Your humble student,"...

Watching My Parents Sleeping Beside an Open Window Near the Sea.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Watching My Parents Sleeping Beside an Open Window Near the Sea Needing them still, I come when I can, this time to the sea, where we share a room: their double bed, my single. Morning fog paints the pale scene even...

This is why I'm thinking of you.(Short Story)
June 22, 2005... BEFORE AARON KING'S DEATH, my brother and I had never been to a funeral. It was a Tuesday or Wednesday morning in late March, a school day, and I felt lucky to be staying home when I wasn't sick. Aaron was my brother's best friend's brother; I...

Threshold.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Threshold Awake at dawn, I'm looking out at a perfect row of tiny handprints coming up the walk, pressed into the dusting of new snow. In the pale light I'm still shaking off last night's dream, and as I've...

Our Lady of the Briars.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Our Lady of the Briars At dusk a doe walks the broken-tiled hallway, skitters out across the kitchen garden's still-defined plot overrun with chicory and wild carrot. A shadow makes her flinch and bolt, while ...

At the Window.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... At the Window From here, the slender birch beside the pond looks like a young girl in white, contemplating the water. In morning sun, shadows and silver across the surface seem to be white swans, drifting. ...

Mrs. Cave's House.(Poem)
June 22, 2005... Mrs. Cave's House The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord,... --Proverbs 20:27 I The House Back, behind our shrieks, stood Mrs. Cave's house, her shutters frozen in the blue light. Huddled around sleds,...

Cleaning theory.(chore or practice)
June 22, 2005... Bits of planets, burst stars have sifted down, Dust from remote globes of the universe Drops in our closets, piles in corners softly --GIERTRUD SCHNACKENBERG, "Dusting" SOMETIMES I LIKE TO think about cleaning. Please...