The Southern Review articles from June 2006

The Southern Review archives from June 2006

Shadow of turning.(Short story)
June 22, 2006... THE NEW NEIGHBORS across the street were a grave disappointment to my parents. Paint continued to peel from the clapboard, and the weeds that had conquered the yard during the long vacancy stood as bold as ever. What was one to think of such...

Reading Comprehension.(Brief article)
June 22, 2006... Which answer best describes the text below? In twilight sleep the patient does not move. The courtly morphine wakes her to bestow an IV bruise her hand wears like a glove. Now comes a loss, its own blank terminus, as absolute as letters fed...

The Passage.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... The Passage At night the house is like an immense ship, a colossus that cleaves the dark into which the driveway disappears like a silver wake. On sleepless nights one peers over one's shoulder into...

Aubade.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Aubade The sky for once turns pink instead of gray, softening the plastic-draped stacks of crap on sagging porches. Ahead a drunk tries and fails to thread the intersections needle with unsteady legs. ...

Downright French Revolution of the Senses.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Downright French Revolution of the Senses To stagger, to arrive all of a sudden and completely without warning at the wisdom of the body-- the kind of thing you usually have to be in the mood for but this...

A Box of Clothes.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... A Box of Clothes He couldn't tell why he bothered to notice the smell of the cardboard box they were stored in; how it reminded him of the wooden deck dampened by sprinklers in the lawn where he...

Weather of Days.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Weather of Days And especially afternoons certain vanishing, its immunity to human departures, noon no more mindless than usual today-- a whiff of pulled weeds, a kitchen...

Hard to believe.(Short story)
June 22, 2006... FIFTEEN YEARS LATER and the smell of diesel still lands me in the show's backyard. I only worked three months, Florida to Pennsylvania. I can't call myself a roustabout, and if I showed up on the lot today I'd be as green as any FNG day-hire....

These Accidents.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... These Accidents We've taken a wrong turn somewhere and now we are two couples in one car, late to a Christmas party, navigating a neighborhood where lane blends into lane, where houses pose on well-scaped yards,...

Sense of Direction.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Sense of Direction on my sixty-second birthday Whole counties of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont: I know them so well I leave my compass home. I got born, I grew, and now (how can it be?) have passed a handful of...

Of Postmodernism.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Of Postmodernism All the abstractions are bullshit--that's what the new thinkers tell us. All but race and gender and class. What, however, of horror? I hear from a friend that a friend got up to pee in the night, ...

The Spider in Brewer's Dictionary.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... The Spider in Brewer's Dictionary Opened, the book released a small spider: pale, nearsighted, anonymous. No doubt a scholar of phrase and fable who preferred investigating the shadows. Under the kitchen's public...

The Poetry of Swans.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... The Poetry of Swans October twilight water under the wild swans at Coole Mirrors a still sky. Against all evidence a former world believed swans sing their sweetest when about to die and on that premise called its...

Glasses.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Glasses Just like razor blades every now and then one comes along so close to perfect you want to weep when it's gone. The old, thick-skinned shrimp cocktail jar that holds just the right...

Thinking.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Thinking for Cris In early winter I always think of the dead as if they had just been absent from the wind for months and then all of a sudden blew back in, their hands full of withered rose...

Assumption.(Short story)
June 22, 2006... MARY HAD HAD IT. The kids--kids?! Seth was forty and Stefani was forty-one--had been fighting since San Cristobol. "You are." "I am not." "Yes you are." Sitting in the back seat of the cramped rental car, Mary translated their back-and-forth...

Oranges in Tissue Paper.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Oranges in Tissue Paper after the painting of the same title by William J. McCloskey Early morning, top one clothed in thin, wrinkled white, lifted up and left for now as others sit heavy as women, skirt slits...

Epigram for the Boston Accent.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Epigram for the Boston Accent after Martial My voice will carry you to a paradise of prigs where men don't leave and women say A cracked dish never breaks. You'll hear the roughest edge of a nation and the palsied...

On My Father's Loss of Hearing.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... On My Father's Loss of Hearing This morning, on a ListServ for the deaf, I read the comments of a reader who responded to a poem that describes deafness as unknowing, thickness, clay. I'd like to see more poems treat...

And Puffy Little White Clouds Everywhere.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... And Puffy Little White Clouds Everywhere Kovac is always standing by a road looking into a field at cattle looking at him fondling the beard he made up his mind to grow as soon as he got off the plane. Kovac is dead, ...

Lovestruck.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Lovestruck I wanted to doff my off-white velour slouch hat and sweep it slowly in a luxuriant arc while standing serviceably soldierlike under a cobalt canopy that shook its sparkles from the festive welkin, merry as...

1899, from Ain't We Got Fun.(Short story)
June 22, 2006... I WAS FIFTEEN, BUT I WASN'T FOOLISH. I knew that everyone makes mistakes. I just meant to sidestep the worst mistakes, the ones I had witnessed among family and neighbors. I would not double-mortgage any bad Kansas property only to buy more. I...

The Lesson of Samson.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... The Lesson of Samson What do you do when your shadow is more exact than your own self? When your own secrets sleep in your throat? Even the nightingale sings what it collects from the day's failures. There was a time when...

For Czeslaw Milosz.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... For Czeslaw Milosz I had a list of other virtues to propose Beside which old beliefs like yours seemed quaint-- Not wrong but frail, Not narrow, faint And fleeing with the red shift of the novas. And I wished...

Daedalus.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Daedalus Leave behind your second life Shore chairs, most books, one of two televisions, A clock your grandmother gave you back in college. Leave order, as psychologists say, for the children. Lamps low, vantage dim....

Icarus.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Icarus The dream of flight is alien, Son. Lowered shoulders, wing-cleaned tongue, Black smoke pulsing canyon-throated lungs: You are lofting, no doubt about it. The small world opens its canny cage And gathering...

Spring and fall.(Short story)
June 22, 2006... WHEN SAW HER THE FIRST TIME she stood in the hallway, her bookbag slung over her shoulder. She was talking to another girl, the one he would learn came from Chile, and the way she extracted her hair from the green strap it was snagged by caused...

De Beata Maria Virgine.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... De Beata Maria Virgine Quis est hic, Qui pulsat ad ostium, Noctis rumpens somnium Me vocat? o virginium pulcherrima, Soror, coniunx, gemma splendidissima, Cito surgens aperi, dulcissima.

Peter Damian 1.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Peter Damian 1 Whose footfalls are those slowing just as the balled fists thunder my door-- trumpet through the night's silence calling me? Oh you, only you, beautiful sister, hair...

De Gloria Paradisi.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... De Gloria Paradisi Ad perennis vitae fontem mens sitit nunc arida, Claustra carnis praesto frangi clausa quaerit anima, Gliscit, ambit, eluctatur exsul frui patria. Omni labe defaecati ...

Peter Damian 2.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Peter Damian 2 Although my mind thirsts for more years, lifetimes poured and repoured through my skin like a fountain, this skin is but the hard flesh my soul does what it can to tear...

fragment.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... [fragment] Tempora sunt nimium variis nunc plena periclis, Quae quondam sancti praececinere patres. Aetates hominum, mores mutantur et actus, Utque momenta quidem vita cito fugiet. Nec redit ipsa dies, mensis,...

Alcuin 1.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Alcuin 1 Look how our days grow bloated with plights, no shortage of what our forefathers prophesied-- the men themselves failing, webbed with cracks as if quarried from some weaker stone. Life passes in a moment's...

Untitled.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Untitled Huc te si reducem referat via, Quam nunc requiris immemor: 'Haec' dices, 'memini, patria est mihi, Hinc ortus, hic sistam gradum.' Quad si terrarum placeat tibi Noctem relictam visere, Quos miseri...

Boethius.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Boethius Here, yes here, where the road thins into soil and darkens, here, if you look back and forget the direction you've taken, speak once, say, "Yes, I remember, this is my homeland-- I've...

Carminis hic finem.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Carminis hic finem Carminis hic finem lacrimis faciemus obortis, Pectore sed numquam finem faciemus amoris. Flentibus hoc oculis carmen, karissime, scripsi, Flumina, credo, pius lacrimarum Christus ocellis Abstergat,...

Alcuin 2.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Alcuin 2 Come now, my Beloved, and leave these songs to their cradles be they of grief or salvation remembering that one hymn continues: our lovesong's a harpsichord left to the wind. ...

Dust Motes.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Dust Motes The light turned tawny then golden, from lion's mane to gold-letter illumination, as we passed our afternoon in bed. A flotilla of dust motes drifted unanchored on the tide of sunlight streaming through...

One Morning a Rose Blooms.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... One Morning a Rose Blooms and swallows glide atop heat swells. You gaze up at the black walnut tree over the deck as if it would never alter. But all at once the leaves have gone yellow. Then one morning the tree is...

Lost Girl Ballad.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Lost Girl Ballad In St. Paul, the beat heat of Manhattan, some sugar-cube Andalusian village, are you in crow-feathered Liverpool? Held in some other man's gaze? Your hand in his hand like melting snow, your...

White Slip on the Paris Metro.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... White Slip on the Paris Metro From the fouled nests of Villejuif to the street below, then the walk, the steps down to the catacomb metro-- I have waited with Moroccans squatting like tajines and Senegalese...

Hand figures and other sculpture.
June 22, 2006... The figure springs from the fault of being, born of the desire that makes meaning. BRAD MICHAEL BOURGOYNE winged figure F (spirit), 2005 bronze, 10 in. tall [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] BRAD MICHAEL BOURGOYNE hand figure (walking man),...

That's what we're doing here.(Short story)
June 22, 2006... Highway 16, May 2004 "You checked their mail?" Rosanne asks. Her face registers surprise, maybe disgust. She's driving south of Moorcroft, Wyoming, and I can only see her profile. We talk over the wind. The Subaru doesn't climb hills well...

Untitled.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Untitled Fast beginning, beautiful god, and our voice a way to catch up. The climate changes to be closer, the sun goes down and we ask for you. The stairs curve elsewhere, we follow. You give us a...

Reliver Notes.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Reliver Notes Slept fast enough for what wanted us up to take its place by the man on the porch-- someone ready to be waved at, above his fingertips stevedores lifting all along the hospital road, ...

God of The.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... God of The Shaker, aligner. Rumspringa and huanta. The. In heaven with postcards of the ocean, child at your side who watches flies make trails through flour. You remember nothing, then everything, then...

Religious Life.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Religious Life Was a church in Glory River-- nobody'd go except for those not thought to be of this place mostly because they went to this church-- chapel they called it, plain old building needed paint,...

The Mouth of Him.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... The Mouth of Him Rule of thumb: Whatever came out of that mouth was not what you wanted to hear--Underarm hair! Belly lint! Your mother's a giraffe, your daddy plays string mop in the swamps of Arkansas. More smarts ...

Pushers.(Short story)
June 22, 2006... THEY HAD AGNES THIS TIME. Catching sight of the familiar girl strolling along on her platform shoes, looking for customers, Harriet called out to her, elated, "Ag-nes, Ag-nes," and flapped her arms in the air, her spirits lifting. "You...

Lefsa.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Lefsa With big loopy cursive, any word looks beautiful, even lefsa; the Scandinavian potato tortilla-like blandness once choked down under threats of no Saturday morning cartoons. My weakness as apparent...

6 am Behind My Father's House.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... 6 am Behind My Father's House I don't remember ever crossing this yard as dawn bloomed behind my grandpa's home where my father lives alone now. Dew sponged by suede shoes and bottoms of jeans I've worn for...

Mother's Day.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Mother's Day I called her long distance and left a message before I went to wait tables. "Happy Mom's Day, Mom. Love you." She called back, but I was too busy at work to answer. That night, I sat up with a girl and a...

First Generation American, Now the News.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... First Generation American, Now the News That his father had had to leave Ukraine was the mystery that penetrated a world view before he had one. He could see in the pebbles, in the gravel sidewalk, the fragility of...

from: The Book of the Dead Man.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... from: The Book of the Dead Man Live as if you were already dead. --ZEN ADMONITION I About the Dead Man and Time When the dead man rises from bed, time smiles. Time itself snickers at the dead man rising from bed. ...

Ordinary.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Ordinary I come often, it seems, to this cafe. I don't have words to explain it, but again I'm here. There's the woman at the next table, the newspapers, the blue pen left behind, and her coffee is steaming the...

Man receives letter.(Short story)
June 22, 2006... I HAVE A THEORY: The world is made up of two kinds of people, those who know what's coming next and those who don't have a clue. My father knew what was coming next; he just couldn't bear to watch, or couldn't bear to watch in a normal...

Between the Lines.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Between the Lines The new hired hand drifted in with the harvest and stuck not too old or too young worked alongside the best of us didn't smoke near the barn had a wild lick of hair big mouthful of teeth but...

In the Way of Things.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... In the Way of Things Wind stirs what's left of the leaves in the poplar stubborn hangers-on some lift some twist and bow to what moves them not a one green shades of gold and brown they have already held...

Of Textual Editing.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Of Textual Editing for R. W. Crump text: from Latin textus, tissue; from texere, to weave I pass among the stacks in those cool rooms Where manuscripts stay dry in box and dark, Papers laid out on shelves like family...

Everybody knows freedom.(Short story)
June 22, 2006... THE WOMAN BEHIND THE DESK holds my checking account application in one hand, bending it in the middle so I cannot see my own writing. "You lived in California?" she says. Her tone does not strike me as someone confirming facts or about to...

Kiss.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Kiss A thin moon tips above the beach, and fishermen slump in sling-back chairs, waiting. Each fisherman keeps a lamp near his feet. The fishermen don't speak, though they are only a few yards from one another along the...

The Doors.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... The Doors Behind the door was another door and behind that was another. The first door was black, as befitted a four-story Georgian house on a street shaded by oaks. The second door was the gray of the...

The end of narrative (1-29; or 29-1).(Short story)
June 22, 2006... Unpicturable beings are realized, and realized with an intensity almost like that of hallucination. They determine our vital attitude as decisively as the vital attitude of lovers is determined by the habitual sense, by which each of us is...

The Gaze.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... The Gaze Why, in the middle of the night, in the sleepless interval it takes the horned moon to pass the peak of the south cedar, sliding west, do I remember, years ago, that young man who from his bike downhill reached...

Lilies of the Valley.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Lilies of the Valley Comes the nor'easter, with its churn of cold Atlantic air, the rough spit of it flung against clapboard and cedar shingles, a baffling whine at the windows, a buffeting in the maples that...

Iris.(Poem)
June 22, 2006... Iris On its tall stalk, petals deep amethyst with an under-light of verdigris that flared as the clouds passed and sun lit its silks, it was a stupa in a forest glade or the refuge of one who would chant the holy name...