The Southern Review articles from September 2003

The Southern Review archives from September 2003

Cottonwood.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Cottonwood August. A gnawed green leaf on the young cottonwood tree I planted, the leaf as serrated as if stamped with cookie cutter. Caterpillar chewings, laying in fuel for the cocoon of overwinter. Next...

The Yellow Day.(Poem)
September 22, 2003... The Yellow Day It was the day I saw more yellow than I'd ever seen: little wild yellow violets, the year's first, tucked amidst the leaf litter of the previous year, nosing their way up through the duff. ...

Pictures from the Last Hanging in Wisconsin.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Pictures from the Last Hanging in Wisconsin Most have come with picnic lunches, Ham sandwiches and beer; They savor the atmosphere, The break in the monotony Of their lives, the drudgery Of seed and mule and...

The Office Crows.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... The Office Crows Outside my third-floor office window half a dozen crows--sleek black creatures-- are peeling back the bark of the winter-struck birch, probing for who knows what, but something to sustain on this cold...

Small Signs.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Small Signs It was only a small gravestone of unbeveled Amberg granite, but it caught the noon sun, flashing from beneath the creeping sawgrass, sedge, and nutgrass encroaching, covering the little marker that has...

Don't.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Don't Along the furry case, the seams ease open and the bud drops out. Waxy petals uncurl in the moist night air. The fresh face turns to the banged-up moon climbing again in its wreath of ancient silence....

Tariff.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Tariff It takes time to appreciate how I once made a friend so unhappy the next night on the road from Chauncey to Amesville, Ohio, she steered her Fiat Spider head on into an oncoming truck. Her boyfriend ...

Blue Instrument.(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Blue Instrument I. It's come, the trembling time, that tireless white noise moving through her body, my mother's hands so fitful in their quiet room, no music, no books, no natural light, nothing to graze...

String Theory.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... String Theory My father played the violin and taught Music theory--a theory of the string, If not string theory, that equation sought By those who crave a Theory of Everything. He read the new quartets--Diamond,...

Graves.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Graves No one would choose this earth for his home--the black dirt tempered by drought, mesquites rooted as teeth from unremitting wind. The headstones here lie flush to the ground, all vases inverted and...

Thanksgiving.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Thanksgiving Our mother has given away our meal to an elderly woman three houses down, her husband passing some time in the night. With the woman's children already en route, my mother swaddled our turkey in...

Paradise.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Paradise And though our classic view of it is wrong, with heavy boughs extending full to ground, the throttled golden birds in golden trees, the lie is still enough to grant return. As hope, at heart, is sorrow...

My Mother Always Slept like an Angel.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... My Mother Always Slept like an Angel My mother's mother taught her how to sleep, her palms pressed together and clasped under her ear, her lullaby head on the satin pillow, her chiffon gown tied at the nape ...

We May Be Remembered by What We Did When We Sat Down.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... We May Be Remembered by What We Did When We Sat Down i. The Renderer of Bach The old wife's preludes hang like the trapped light in honey. I dreamed of a woman who'd play for me, her husband says, and shuts...

And two deer.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... And two deer Where there is nothing, Where the ground under Cold grass has forgotten What grew there, if anything grew there-- They stand In their entourage of stillness, The rich, swift silence of poised...

A Rube Goldberg machine.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... A Rube Goldberg machine My dog chased a chipmunk up a tree. The chipmunk fell and ran into the road. A crow scythed down and nabbed the chipmunk. Sparrows twittered and dive-bombed the crow, instinct...

Perspective Unrecovered.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Perspective Unrecovered I lost the poem that got right that thing that happens when, walking or driving by, you look in the front window of a house and see through to and out a window in back. It had things like...

I Due Sogni Ad Occhi Aperti: Two Dreams with Eyes Wide Open.(Poem)
September 22, 2003... I Due Sogni Ad Occhi Aperti: Two Dreams with Eyes Wide Open I. The First Dream with Open Eyes Reginetta, poor girl, has lost everything in the Messina earthquake except her caged canary. She staggers off a train...

The Acting Career of Charles H. West Considered as Bad Karma.(Poem)
September 22, 2003... 1. where is it where is it where is it written that reincarnation is a good thing? what if what if what q reincarnation is like the film career of the actor Charlie West? the failure or the weakling in nearly two dozen Griffith films /...

Wonder: Red Beans and Ricely.(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Wonder: Red Beans and Ricely He blew the famous opening figure of "West End Blues" and then--a long pause. A long long pin-drop pause. This sounded like nothing the four of us had been hearing out here at the Famous...

St Mary's Abbey, York.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... St Mary's Abbey, York I wish you could see the grass here, bright summer green with that odd cast clouds sometimes lay like a gauze over the fields. The rain holds off. Birds preen and call, cross the space between what...

In Arnold Schwend's Saloon.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... In Arnold Schwend's Saloon Plant me down by long-armed soda taps that don't foam anymore. Arnold Schwend's Drugstore and Saloon's a gold-bust ghost town all its own. Four hundred depend on Schwend's year round for...

A Player That Struts and Frets Onstage.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... A Player That Struts and Frets Onstage The skin remembers its shape for twenty years and then forgets, needs to be prompted, rehearsing the same proud lines. At first, a blemish, a wrinkle above the brow. We say,...

Thaw.(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Thaw 1 Worrying the snow that goes sunstruck from magnolia, bright while squirrel claws oak's gray edge, I scratch my carrot nose, cinch my coat against the warmth. What I need is what I fear: to learn ...

Revival.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Revival If fear of death is doubt of heaven, Then we're all infidels, atheists deep down. It's devotion to others, however flawed And mortal, which leads us to confront The mystery, jump in the river after them ...

After Eden.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... After Eden Don't think that garden was all you've heard. Nothing ever is. Is it? Take Adam. You think if I'd had a choice, he would have been the one. Look, his education was limited, his future more...

Cheating at Bingo.(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Cheating at Bingo The man on my right drove racing cars in Watkins Glen. The other (the one my mother likes) made airplanes on the Island for fifty years. The woman across the table is too engrossed in a novel to care about...

Menless Women, Adjusting to Grief.(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Menless Women, Adjusting to Grief First it was the snake, coiled like a pecan twist on the braided rug the morning after Mama wrestled one more log on the fire before going to bed. No thicker than a finger, half dead...

What Sounds Language Could Make.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... What Sounds Language Could Make Breakfast was long: the heater under the table, the big-paned window where light bounced in, hot, off snow in the side garden, and the chickadees, palm sized, coming to the feeder one by one,...

The Stigmata of Accident.(Poem)
September 22, 2003... The Stigmata of Accident At first, there is the wonder of island air whipping past the face and the release of a body through wind. Stream of motion. The moped builds the momentum of freedom and he rides...

Finitude.(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Finitude What is less graspable than breath or water? What is as finite as a bricked-in hospital garden where healthy trees are stared at? It is the deepest end of March-- and somewhere, I know spring is happening...

The Mummy's Curse.(Poem)
September 22, 2003... The Mummy's Curse "We'd settled in to watch The Mummy's Curse," the pastor at my father's funeral informed us, speaking of his Dublin youth and to our fear of everlasting life. A silent-film projector that his uncle ...

Eye Center.(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Eye Center Among the nearsighted, the farsighted, the afraid of going blind, and those who like myself with perfect vision are surely losing it as they grow old--Milton and his daughters, my dear sweet Ruth Stone--I am...

Why I Am Glad That You Call Me Wicked.(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Why I Am Glad That You Call Me Wicked When Simone Weil said it would be wrong to think the mystics borrow the language of love for it is theirs by right, though she didn't call it the heavenly song of cock and cunt,...

Tornado.(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Tornado It had been a day when the geese came up from the river and circled like cows and wouldn't be chased to flight even by a child, when heat hung heavy over the zoo--the cats stayed in their cages, the...

Letting Go.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Letting Go I walk through abandoned fields of our house, the chairs shrinking from me like wounded horses. The rug crying out under my feet. From cupboards comes the sound of cracking dishes, accusing: I was wrong to...

Melting Pot.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Melting Pot As the alarm shrilled through the twelve-seater, as the pilot scrambled for his manual, I wanted someone to stand up and lead us in song, or possibly prayer, but we sat beneath our personal air...

&.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... & Do I have to spell it out? And is a grand- Parent or sacred text, respect on demand Certainly, a star on every language's Hollywood Boulevard, but no teenager's First choice when heady impatience Walks into the...

Painting Madame Gautreau.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Painting Madame Gautreau Madame X John Singer Sargent, 1884 She could hardly hold a pose, destabilizing hours in which his charcoals offered dim peignoirs that queried rather than followed flesh already so...

Venus With.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Venus With paintings by Titian How many times did he paint this recumbent nude before a half-hitched-back drape and a landscape swept along blue horizontals or a promenade, two rows of poplars and lovers...

Two poems.(Brief Article)(Poem)
September 22, 2003... Two Poems Canta, rana, my elemented nature, speak to me of home, that traveler's entreaty etched on the bones, or of the compassionate coursing of near desert streams, or of the October air that...

Greece.(Short Story)
September 22, 2003... IT WAS MY WIFE'S IDEA. Perhaps that's worth emphasizing. She was the one who suggested the baby. I just complied. Voila: blue line, pink line, success. I brought home champagne and oysters to celebrate. But the pregnancy seemed hard on her, a...

Reunion.(Short Story)
September 22, 2003... HER VOICE--COULD IT BE? He swiveled away from the computer screen and hunched over the telephone. Yes, it was Nissa, and she was calling from Minneapolis. "It was your father's obituary--sent of course by Aunt Kit. I had no idea you were...

The mistress of the horse god.(Short Story)
September 22, 2003... IN THE BRIGHT OCTOBER SUN, Ferrell and his ex hike the rocky hills behind the cabin, up along the ridge where the world falls away. To each compass point the land stretches without end, enough to dwarf his skinny frame beneath the huge scary...

Saturday afternoon in the Holocaust Museum.(Short Story)
September 22, 2003... I GUESS WE'RE NOT GOING TO TALK ABOUT ITS?" He poked his fried egg with his fork. "Tonight?" She looked at her own plate. Almost empty. A scrap of sausage, a piece of biscuit. She wondered how she could have eaten at all--much less...

The repose of souls.
September 22, 2003... AFTER ROSARIES ON FRIDAYS when I was a child my parents always said a prayer "for the repose of the souls of Clemens and Anna Meyers, and Clyde Crain." I've always loved the sound of those words, though for a long time I didn't know what they...

The true and sad history of my automobiles.
September 22, 2003... Dreams of Spanking-New Volkswagens NOT LONG AGO, I MADE THE MISTAKE Of going to the Volkswagen website and clicking on the "Build Your Own VW" link. There I was able to create an imaginary car, which took shape on the screen as I selected...

Broken ornaments.
September 22, 2003... OF ALL THE THINGS IN THE WORLD I WANT and do not have, I most wish I had children. When I met Alex, the man who has become my partner, and discovered he had three daughters, I wanted more than anything to invite them over for Christmas. I...

Unruly ghost: Erskine Caldwell at 100.
September 22, 2003... THE YEAR 2003 MARKS THE CENTENNIAL Of Erskine Caldwell's birth, but it's unlikely that there will be much celebration. Although Caldwell lived to be eighty-three and was publishing until the very end, many critics considered him to be a relic...

Formal gardens with real poets in them.
September 22, 2003... ONE HUMAN RESPONSE TO DESTRUCTION is to muster our creative power in art. Creating symbolic forms does not sweep away disaster; rather, art hopes to transform disaster and deepen its significance by formalizing our grief and anger towards new...