Pub Date : 2024-05-06DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a926958
Kanak Kapur
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Long Sleeves <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Kanak Kapur (bio) </li> </ul> <p><strong>O</strong>n New Year’s Eve, we left Sai’s house wearing jeans and something with long sleeves. Inside the cab, we took off our shirts and wrapped them around our waists. Underneath we had on our party clothes: skintight tops shoplifted the weekend prior from an overflowing sale bin. It was Sai’s job to confirm the night’s address with our driver. She placed her elbow on the center console and leaned toward the man before speaking to him. I was shy, unwelcoming to strangers, but she was boastful, a wild dancer, nuclear and winged. In loose, rapid Urdu, she asked: “Brother, you know where to go or no?”</p> <p>The sleeves were Sai’s idea. She thought them up the year before, when we got in trouble with her mother the last time we dressed like this. We had returned home too late from another party, where we’d been drenched in the rain. Afraid of the consequences, we stood on the porch, damp locks of hair pasted to our foreheads. From the window, we’d seen Sai’s mother in the living room with a stack of household bills, a highlighter in hand. Shamefaced, we entered and made our false apologies. I kept my arms folded high <strong>[End Page 201]</strong> across my chest, covering the white blouse I’d worn specifically for what it made of my boobs, which had recently and miraculously plumped to significance. Sai had on one of those bandage dresses that used to be popular, which, in her mother’s words, put her every organ on display. Sita Aunty was always afraid of men, and though we didn’t know it yet, she’d passed the fear down to us, where it would remain, distantly flickering and translucent, until every so often, in what would become our separate lives, we’d hear a story or encounter a man who matched the severity of these phantoms we knew Sita Aunty was afraid of. “What have I taught you?” she asked us that night, her voice slipping from its composure. “Do you want to get raped?” She threw the highlighter across the living room, the cap clattering away from the pen.</p> <p>In the taxi, I saw that Sai’s top showed off her new belly- button ring, a gift she’d given herself for her sixteenth birthday. Alone, she’d traveled to the one underground tattoo shop in the city. I was shocked when she told me. For years I’d remember how she called me to an empty corner of the hallway between classes, how she lifted the lip of her shirt, revealing a warm, reddened puncture of skin. The charm on the ring was a tiny, diamond-studded letter. <em>J</em>, for <em>Jiya</em>, my name.</p> <p>The piercing made her look older than she was. In the shadowy backseat, I watched her, wondering if she would kiss me that night. Kissing Sai was a thing of luck. It didn’t always happen in public unless people asked to see, unless there was a crowd of boyish voices to cheer. I
{"title":"Long Sleeves","authors":"Kanak Kapur","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a926958","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a926958","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Long Sleeves <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Kanak Kapur (bio) </li> </ul> <p><strong>O</strong>n New Year’s Eve, we left Sai’s house wearing jeans and something with long sleeves. Inside the cab, we took off our shirts and wrapped them around our waists. Underneath we had on our party clothes: skintight tops shoplifted the weekend prior from an overflowing sale bin. It was Sai’s job to confirm the night’s address with our driver. She placed her elbow on the center console and leaned toward the man before speaking to him. I was shy, unwelcoming to strangers, but she was boastful, a wild dancer, nuclear and winged. In loose, rapid Urdu, she asked: “Brother, you know where to go or no?”</p> <p>The sleeves were Sai’s idea. She thought them up the year before, when we got in trouble with her mother the last time we dressed like this. We had returned home too late from another party, where we’d been drenched in the rain. Afraid of the consequences, we stood on the porch, damp locks of hair pasted to our foreheads. From the window, we’d seen Sai’s mother in the living room with a stack of household bills, a highlighter in hand. Shamefaced, we entered and made our false apologies. I kept my arms folded high <strong>[End Page 201]</strong> across my chest, covering the white blouse I’d worn specifically for what it made of my boobs, which had recently and miraculously plumped to significance. Sai had on one of those bandage dresses that used to be popular, which, in her mother’s words, put her every organ on display. Sita Aunty was always afraid of men, and though we didn’t know it yet, she’d passed the fear down to us, where it would remain, distantly flickering and translucent, until every so often, in what would become our separate lives, we’d hear a story or encounter a man who matched the severity of these phantoms we knew Sita Aunty was afraid of. “What have I taught you?” she asked us that night, her voice slipping from its composure. “Do you want to get raped?” She threw the highlighter across the living room, the cap clattering away from the pen.</p> <p>In the taxi, I saw that Sai’s top showed off her new belly- button ring, a gift she’d given herself for her sixteenth birthday. Alone, she’d traveled to the one underground tattoo shop in the city. I was shocked when she told me. For years I’d remember how she called me to an empty corner of the hallway between classes, how she lifted the lip of her shirt, revealing a warm, reddened puncture of skin. The charm on the ring was a tiny, diamond-studded letter. <em>J</em>, for <em>Jiya</em>, my name.</p> <p>The piercing made her look older than she was. In the shadowy backseat, I watched her, wondering if she would kiss me that night. Kissing Sai was a thing of luck. It didn’t always happen in public unless people asked to see, unless there was a crowd of boyish voices to cheer. I","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140933980","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-06DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a926955
John Jeremiah Sullivan
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Corona <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> John Jeremiah Sullivan (bio) </li> </ul> <p><strong>T</strong>he fjords of Norway are one of the places I always hoped to see before I die. If you had told me thirty years ago that when I finally experienced them, I would find myself so racked with the fever and chills of coronavirus that my sweat soaked through to the mattress and my very eyeballs twitched, I would probably only have nodded—in sadness, maybe. Not in surprise. My life has been a succession of illnesses in interesting places. The first time I ever traveled abroad anywhere besides Canada—to Dakar, Senegal, in West Africa, as part of a foreign- exchange program in high school, a trip that changed my life in ways unrelated to health, as well—I caught a bug of some kind that played hell on my digestive system and caused me to miss a big part of my junior year. They never did figure out what it was. I learned the strange fact that some doctors get mad at you when they can’t determine what’s wrong with you. A specialist who had looked at my bowels thought it was “atypical Crohn’s.” Everyone else said no. My doctor at the time, Dr. Jeff, gave a paper on me at a conference. “My mystery patient,” he called me. They wound up megadosing me <strong>[End Page 157]</strong> with horse pills of antibiotics and apparently nuking the thing, without having successfully identified it. Before that ambiguous closure, I underwent a string of ghastly procedures: colonoscopies, sigmoidoscopies, and barium enemas, along with simpler, cruder forms of invasion. The doctor who gave me the sigmoidoscopies was wonderful. Older, Jewish, I don’t remember his name, but I remember that at the beginning of every visit, as he was sliding his lubed-up index finger into my rectum, he would cheerfully call out, “Here comes the arthritic knuckle!” That was an important year for me as a writer, because I spent so much time in bed. The attacks of pain were worst at night. My mother would sit there with me, feeding me ice chips, the only thing that gave relief. There were no cellphones, of course, and I have always hated video games, so I read books—classics and trash—and wrote unreadable prose poems in my notebook. My stomach has been more or less permanently fucked since then. It was never great. I was one of those kids who are always throwing up. Every year on my birthday. It became a tradition. Once I ate a can of pineapple and barfed it all over the side of our car. Kids in the neighborhood saw it and asked me about it afterward. I told some strange lie about what it had been. The next time I made it back to Africa, in my early twenties—Morocco this time, in a place called El Jadida, where Orson Welles shot his <em>Othello</em>—a spider bit me during the night, on my right side, just below my armpit. I saw the spider in the morning and made the connection to t
{"title":"Corona","authors":"John Jeremiah Sullivan","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a926955","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a926955","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Corona <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> John Jeremiah Sullivan (bio) </li> </ul> <p><strong>T</strong>he fjords of Norway are one of the places I always hoped to see before I die. If you had told me thirty years ago that when I finally experienced them, I would find myself so racked with the fever and chills of coronavirus that my sweat soaked through to the mattress and my very eyeballs twitched, I would probably only have nodded—in sadness, maybe. Not in surprise. My life has been a succession of illnesses in interesting places. The first time I ever traveled abroad anywhere besides Canada—to Dakar, Senegal, in West Africa, as part of a foreign- exchange program in high school, a trip that changed my life in ways unrelated to health, as well—I caught a bug of some kind that played hell on my digestive system and caused me to miss a big part of my junior year. They never did figure out what it was. I learned the strange fact that some doctors get mad at you when they can’t determine what’s wrong with you. A specialist who had looked at my bowels thought it was “atypical Crohn’s.” Everyone else said no. My doctor at the time, Dr. Jeff, gave a paper on me at a conference. “My mystery patient,” he called me. They wound up megadosing me <strong>[End Page 157]</strong> with horse pills of antibiotics and apparently nuking the thing, without having successfully identified it. Before that ambiguous closure, I underwent a string of ghastly procedures: colonoscopies, sigmoidoscopies, and barium enemas, along with simpler, cruder forms of invasion. The doctor who gave me the sigmoidoscopies was wonderful. Older, Jewish, I don’t remember his name, but I remember that at the beginning of every visit, as he was sliding his lubed-up index finger into my rectum, he would cheerfully call out, “Here comes the arthritic knuckle!” That was an important year for me as a writer, because I spent so much time in bed. The attacks of pain were worst at night. My mother would sit there with me, feeding me ice chips, the only thing that gave relief. There were no cellphones, of course, and I have always hated video games, so I read books—classics and trash—and wrote unreadable prose poems in my notebook. My stomach has been more or less permanently fucked since then. It was never great. I was one of those kids who are always throwing up. Every year on my birthday. It became a tradition. Once I ate a can of pineapple and barfed it all over the side of our car. Kids in the neighborhood saw it and asked me about it afterward. I told some strange lie about what it had been. The next time I made it back to Africa, in my early twenties—Morocco this time, in a place called El Jadida, where Orson Welles shot his <em>Othello</em>—a spider bit me during the night, on my right side, just below my armpit. I saw the spider in the morning and made the connection to t","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"304 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140933450","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-06DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a926957
Didi Jackson
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
The World As It Was
Didi Jackson (bio)
When the moon has gone I fly on alone
—W. S. Merwin
That wolf of a day, the woodlands of my new grief:you ate all the words, you fed me only worry.Now it is all I can eat for years and years to come.You wove a blanket of wool that covers me, the threadslike worms. My grief is an empty womb as pink as quartz.Everything is wrong. Even the whippoorwill callsin the afternoon rather than under the woeful moonthat now sits in a woodpile of stars. Useless.Oh how that day still howls. I hear it callfrom outside my windows so I am sure to shut them alleach and every night. It is a wonder I can still breathewith no air. Your wounds are all I think about,those cuts along your wrists, the ones even worse at your neck.I let my mind turn wooden, like a doll, imagine a woodcutterwho can remove such memories. I hope it is his axethat would do such clean work. He advises me to worshipthe blade the moon makes when it wobbles like a scythein the night sky. What if I just woke up and the worldwas as it was? What if you never turned into winter?What if the wreath was hung on the wrong door? [End Page 200]
Didi Jackson
Didi Jackson is the author of Moon Jar and the forthcoming collection My Infinity. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Vanderbilt University.
Pub Date : 2024-05-06DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a926954
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Contributors <!-- /html_title --></li> </ul> <p><strong>Maeve Barry</strong> is a writer in New York. You can find more of her stories at maeve-barry.com.</p> <p><strong>Hannah Bonner</strong>’s criticism has appeared in <em>Cleveland Review of Books</em>, <em>Literary Hub</em>, and the <em>Los Angeles Review of Books</em>, among others. Her first collection of poetry, <em>Another Woman</em>, is forthcoming in 2024. She lives in Iowa.</p> <p><strong>Jacky Grey</strong> is a writer and architect. Grey earned their MFA in creative nonfiction from Pacific University. They were a participant of the Anaphora Arts Emerging Critics Program in 2023. They live in Western Oregon with their partner, daughter, and dog.</p> <p><strong>Richie Hofmann</strong> is the author of two collections of poems, <em>Second Empire</em> and <em>A Hundred Lovers</em>.</p> <p><strong>Caitlin Horrocks</strong> is author of the story collections <em>Life Among the Terranauts</em> and <em>This Is Not Your City,</em> both <em>New York Times Book Review</em> Editor’s Choice selections, and the novel <em>The Vexations</em>, named one of the ten best books of the year by the <em>Wall Street Journal</em>. Her stories and essays appear in the <em>New Yorker</em>, <em>The Best American Short Stories, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories</em>, <em>The Pushcart Prize,</em> the <em>Paris Review</em>, and elsewhere<em>.</em> She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with her family.</p> <p><strong>Didi Jackson</strong> is the author of <em>Moon Jar</em> and the forthcoming collection <em>My Infinity</em>. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Vanderbilt University.</p> <p><strong>Kanak Kapur</strong>’s fiction has been published in <em>The Rumpus, CodeLit</em>, and <em>Black Warrior Review</em>. She is currently based in Nashville.</p> <p><strong>Carrie R. Moore</strong>’s fiction and essays have appeared in <em>One Story</em>, <em>Virginia Quarterly Review</em>, <em>For Harriet</em>, the <em>Southern Review,</em> and other publications. She has received scholarships and fellowships from the Community of Writers, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies.</p> <p><strong>Lorrie Moore</strong> is the author of the novel <em>I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home</em> as well as <em>See What Can Be Done,</em> a collection of thirty-five years of nonfiction. She teaches at Vanderbilt University.</p> <p><strong>Shannon Pratson</strong> is a writer and artist. She holds an MFA from Virginia Tech and lives in London.</p> <p><strong>Joy Priest</strong> is a poet and scholar from Louisville, Kentucky. She is the author of <em>HORSEPOWER</em> and the editor of <em>Once a City Said: A Louisville Poets Anthology</em>. She is currently an Assistant Professor of African American / African Diaspora Poetry at the University of Pittsbur
{"title":"Contributors","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a926954","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a926954","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Contributors <!-- /html_title --></li> </ul> <p><strong>Maeve Barry</strong> is a writer in New York. You can find more of her stories at maeve-barry.com.</p> <p><strong>Hannah Bonner</strong>’s criticism has appeared in <em>Cleveland Review of Books</em>, <em>Literary Hub</em>, and the <em>Los Angeles Review of Books</em>, among others. Her first collection of poetry, <em>Another Woman</em>, is forthcoming in 2024. She lives in Iowa.</p> <p><strong>Jacky Grey</strong> is a writer and architect. Grey earned their MFA in creative nonfiction from Pacific University. They were a participant of the Anaphora Arts Emerging Critics Program in 2023. They live in Western Oregon with their partner, daughter, and dog.</p> <p><strong>Richie Hofmann</strong> is the author of two collections of poems, <em>Second Empire</em> and <em>A Hundred Lovers</em>.</p> <p><strong>Caitlin Horrocks</strong> is author of the story collections <em>Life Among the Terranauts</em> and <em>This Is Not Your City,</em> both <em>New York Times Book Review</em> Editor’s Choice selections, and the novel <em>The Vexations</em>, named one of the ten best books of the year by the <em>Wall Street Journal</em>. Her stories and essays appear in the <em>New Yorker</em>, <em>The Best American Short Stories, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories</em>, <em>The Pushcart Prize,</em> the <em>Paris Review</em>, and elsewhere<em>.</em> She lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, with her family.</p> <p><strong>Didi Jackson</strong> is the author of <em>Moon Jar</em> and the forthcoming collection <em>My Infinity</em>. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Vanderbilt University.</p> <p><strong>Kanak Kapur</strong>’s fiction has been published in <em>The Rumpus, CodeLit</em>, and <em>Black Warrior Review</em>. She is currently based in Nashville.</p> <p><strong>Carrie R. Moore</strong>’s fiction and essays have appeared in <em>One Story</em>, <em>Virginia Quarterly Review</em>, <em>For Harriet</em>, the <em>Southern Review,</em> and other publications. She has received scholarships and fellowships from the Community of Writers, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies.</p> <p><strong>Lorrie Moore</strong> is the author of the novel <em>I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home</em> as well as <em>See What Can Be Done,</em> a collection of thirty-five years of nonfiction. She teaches at Vanderbilt University.</p> <p><strong>Shannon Pratson</strong> is a writer and artist. She holds an MFA from Virginia Tech and lives in London.</p> <p><strong>Joy Priest</strong> is a poet and scholar from Louisville, Kentucky. She is the author of <em>HORSEPOWER</em> and the editor of <em>Once a City Said: A Louisville Poets Anthology</em>. She is currently an Assistant Professor of African American / African Diaspora Poetry at the University of Pittsbur","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"66 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140933634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-06DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a926959
Joy Priest
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> From the Other Side of a Migratory Silence: <span>On the Work of Patricia Smith</span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Joy Priest (bio) </li> </ul> <p><strong>I</strong>n 2022, my grandmother went on to glory, as the old folks say. The last of her generation up from Alabama, she was ninety years old. Anna Priest’s life came to a close as she was sitting in her favorite chair in her living room on East 126th Street in Cleveland, Ohio, but her life began on Negro Church Road in a small sharecropping town called Moulton—a word that sounds off, in my ear, both “soul” and “hot, melting rock” at once. <em>Moulton</em>. Just south of the Tennessee state line, about thirty minutes down a red-dirt road from Muscle Shoals, where many soul artists and bluesy rock bands came to record in the twentieth century, where Aretha Franklin recorded her first hit, “I Never Loved a Man,” at age twenty-four. <em>Moulton</em>, which sounds a bit like <em>Motown</em>.</p> <p>In recent years, I’d begun to collect little stories from my grandmother. These stories were punctuated by little narrative chasms that required the listener to guess at the point of the story, which was <strong>[End Page 221]</strong> either too painful or too illicit to call into the aural field. There was the story about my great-grandmother Elsie’s mule, whose ribs, my grandmother said, you could see across the field. The one about her neighbor Charlie’s mule, which knew its way home, and while she and the other women were sewing on the porch in the evenings, would trot by, with Charlie thrown over its back, passed out drunk after 13 hours in the field. “He’d give that mule three ears of corn and tell him, ‘Eat all you want!’” my grandmother added on one rendition, laughing in pain at the memory of hunger. Or the story about how, when she first got to Cleveland, she stayed with her uncle, and his no-good girlfriend would steal her panties. That’s how she ended up working as a live-in domestic for Dr. White, who was a nice man, my grandmother said, staring off, eyes fixed on the past. There’s the story of how my grandparents met: she already knew my grandfather Dennis back in Moulton (“Met him on the playground at Moulton High School”) but they went to different churches (“Priests went to AME, we went to Freedman’s Tabernacle”). When they met back up later in life in Cleveland, Dennis didn’t like her staying at Dr. White’s house, so they got married and he moved her in with him and his father. These are the stories my grandmother would tell if I asked the right question, if the right song was on, the right word uttered, the right name mentioned to trigger her memory, stories that she offered up to me, freely, albeit abbreviated. These are the stories that poet Patricia Smith did not get. For her, Alabama—the world of my grandmother’s and her mother’s childhoods—was left silent
以下是内容的简要摘录，以代替摘要： 来自迁徙沉默的另一端：关于帕特里夏-史密斯-乔伊-普里斯特的作品（简历 2022 年，我的祖母走向辉煌，就像老人们说的那样。她是阿拉巴马州上一代人中的最后一位，享年九十岁。安娜-普里斯特的生命走到尽头时，她正坐在俄亥俄州克利夫兰市东 126 街的客厅里她最喜欢的椅子上，但她的生命却始于黑人教堂路一个叫穆尔顿的佃农小镇。穆尔顿穆尔顿位于田纳西州州界以南，沿着一条红土路前行约 30 分钟就能到达穆斯克尔-肖尔斯（Muscle Shoals），20 世纪许多灵魂乐艺术家和蓝调摇滚乐队都曾在这里录制唱片，艾瑞莎-富兰克林（Aretha Franklin）24 岁时在这里录制了她的第一首成名曲《我从未爱过一个男人》（"I Never Loved a Man"）。穆尔顿，听起来有点像摩城。近年来，我开始收集祖母的小故事。这些故事都有一些叙事上的小插曲，需要听众猜测故事的重点，这些故事 [尾页 221]要么太痛苦，要么太非法，无法传入听觉领域。有一个关于我曾祖母埃尔西的骡子的故事，我祖母说，你可以看到骡子的肋骨穿过田野。还有关于她邻居查理的骡子的故事，查理的骡子知道回家的路，当她和其他妇女晚上在门廊上缝补衣服时，查理就会小跑过来，把在田里劳作了 13 个小时的查理扔在骡子背上，醉醺醺地昏睡过去。"他给了那头骡子三穗玉米，告诉它'想吃什么就吃什么！'"我的祖母补充道，回忆起饥饿的情景，她痛苦地笑了。还有一个故事，说的是她刚到克利夫兰时，住在叔叔家，叔叔的坏女朋友偷了她的内裤。我祖母说，怀特医生是个好人，我祖母凝视着远方，眼睛盯着过去。还有我祖父母相识的故事：她在穆尔顿时就认识我祖父丹尼斯（"在穆尔顿高中的操场上认识的"），但他们去的是不同的教堂（"牧师去的是AME，我们去的是弗里德曼会堂"）。后来他们在克利夫兰再次相遇时，丹尼斯不喜欢她住在怀特博士家，于是他们结婚了，丹尼斯把她搬到了他和他父亲家。如果我问对了问题，如果唱对了歌，说对了词，提到对的名字，就能触发她的记忆，她就会告诉我这些故事。这些都是诗人帕特里夏-史密斯没有得到的故事。对她来说，阿拉巴马州--我祖母和她母亲童年的世界--就像一张白纸一样静默无声。"是什么伤害了你的诗歌创作？"我曾听南方诗人娜塔莎-特雷舍维这样问过。一定有什么东西。对有些人来说，是父母的虐待或酗酒，或是童年的创伤导致失声。对另一些人来说，则是父亲被杀、摩城男人的甜言蜜语、被割断的传统的沉默。[这种沉默促使史密斯开始了诗人的生活，追求一种真理，即我们是如何到达我们所到达的地方的，我们是如何成为我们自己的，不仅仅是作为个人，而且是作为一个民族的一部分。这种真相无法从事实或报刊文章中找到，只能通过诗人对周围人的警觉观察和虔诚关注来发现。面对拒绝回报她的爱的沉默，以及对个人和群体神话的渴望，帕特里夏-史密斯用人格、故事和歌声做出了回应。三十多年来，帕特里夏-史密斯凭借丰富的想象力和勇气，创作了八部诗集。
{"title":"From the Other Side of a Migratory Silence: On the Work of Patricia Smith","authors":"Joy Priest","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a926959","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a926959","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> From the Other Side of a Migratory Silence: <span>On the Work of Patricia Smith</span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Joy Priest (bio) </li> </ul> <p><strong>I</strong>n 2022, my grandmother went on to glory, as the old folks say. The last of her generation up from Alabama, she was ninety years old. Anna Priest’s life came to a close as she was sitting in her favorite chair in her living room on East 126th Street in Cleveland, Ohio, but her life began on Negro Church Road in a small sharecropping town called Moulton—a word that sounds off, in my ear, both “soul” and “hot, melting rock” at once. <em>Moulton</em>. Just south of the Tennessee state line, about thirty minutes down a red-dirt road from Muscle Shoals, where many soul artists and bluesy rock bands came to record in the twentieth century, where Aretha Franklin recorded her first hit, “I Never Loved a Man,” at age twenty-four. <em>Moulton</em>, which sounds a bit like <em>Motown</em>.</p> <p>In recent years, I’d begun to collect little stories from my grandmother. These stories were punctuated by little narrative chasms that required the listener to guess at the point of the story, which was <strong>[End Page 221]</strong> either too painful or too illicit to call into the aural field. There was the story about my great-grandmother Elsie’s mule, whose ribs, my grandmother said, you could see across the field. The one about her neighbor Charlie’s mule, which knew its way home, and while she and the other women were sewing on the porch in the evenings, would trot by, with Charlie thrown over its back, passed out drunk after 13 hours in the field. “He’d give that mule three ears of corn and tell him, ‘Eat all you want!’” my grandmother added on one rendition, laughing in pain at the memory of hunger. Or the story about how, when she first got to Cleveland, she stayed with her uncle, and his no-good girlfriend would steal her panties. That’s how she ended up working as a live-in domestic for Dr. White, who was a nice man, my grandmother said, staring off, eyes fixed on the past. There’s the story of how my grandparents met: she already knew my grandfather Dennis back in Moulton (“Met him on the playground at Moulton High School”) but they went to different churches (“Priests went to AME, we went to Freedman’s Tabernacle”). When they met back up later in life in Cleveland, Dennis didn’t like her staying at Dr. White’s house, so they got married and he moved her in with him and his father. These are the stories my grandmother would tell if I asked the right question, if the right song was on, the right word uttered, the right name mentioned to trigger her memory, stories that she offered up to me, freely, albeit abbreviated. These are the stories that poet Patricia Smith did not get. For her, Alabama—the world of my grandmother’s and her mother’s childhoods—was left silent ","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"157 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140933454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-06DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a926968
Buku Sarkar
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> From Ganges to Hudson <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Buku Sarkar (bio) </li> </ul> <p><strong>A</strong>t seven in the morning, like any other day, Mr. Munshi left his home and made his way three blocks down Lexington Avenue. He walked by the same trees and the same windows and the same corner deli at exactly the same hour, when everything was quiet. Rather than feeling fresh and rejuvenated from last night’s rest, he had, as usual, tossed and turned and finally, unable to remain in bed any longer, had risen at four-thirty—looking out of the window at an empty avenue, waiting for the sun to rise.</p> <p>He was a short man, a rather stout man, and an affable man who knew everyone in the neighborhood and even from a distance. All the other shopkeepers could spot his familiar khaki pants, his checkered hat, his thinning, silver hair, his characteristic slow and steady pace, as if he had nowhere to go.</p> <p>“Look, here comes Dada,” they would say as he ambled closer, from blocks away. They had seen him pass by for almost twenty years. So long that he had become a fixture on the avenue, like the ancient signboards and the rundown buildings that were condemned <strong>[End Page 320]</strong> by the city housing department. The very sight of him maintained, for them, a sense of order.</p> <p>On the pavement were pieces of broken glass and tossed-out food, remnants of the night before. Mr. Munshi shook his head in disgust. These few blocks, stretching from his studio on Thirty-Second Street, to the last of the Indian stores on Twenty-Fifth, had become the extended terrace he and Usha could no longer afford. Lately, hordes of young graduates looking for a bargain were moving into the vicinity, ruining its camaraderie and peace.</p> <p>Some days, he thought there should be a zoning law determined by age. Other days, he dreamt of a long moving sidewalk, divided in two. One for those with cell phones, one for those without.</p> <p>Trudging on.</p> <p>The cracked sidewalks that led to the shops. The shops that led to the avenue. The shops that led to home. The shops that were his world.</p> <h2>________</h2> <p>There was an uncharacteristic chill in the September air, and Mr. Munshi pulled his jacket closer. He feared that winter would come early.</p> <p>As he opened the door to his shop, he was greeted by its familiar musty smell, which clung to the dulled fabrics on the wall and the dusty books on the shelves. He lit an incense stick, placing it on top of the filing cabinet. He sat on the only chair, the one usually reserved for Usha, and stretched his short legs underneath the table. But the space was too narrow, and as the chair shifted backward, he hit the cabinet behind, making it rattle. Flecks of burnt incense fell in neat droppings on its surface, as if Usha’s invisible hands had quickly aligned them before they could scatter.
{"title":"From Ganges to Hudson","authors":"Buku Sarkar","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a926968","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a926968","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> From Ganges to Hudson <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Buku Sarkar (bio) </li> </ul> <p><strong>A</strong>t seven in the morning, like any other day, Mr. Munshi left his home and made his way three blocks down Lexington Avenue. He walked by the same trees and the same windows and the same corner deli at exactly the same hour, when everything was quiet. Rather than feeling fresh and rejuvenated from last night’s rest, he had, as usual, tossed and turned and finally, unable to remain in bed any longer, had risen at four-thirty—looking out of the window at an empty avenue, waiting for the sun to rise.</p> <p>He was a short man, a rather stout man, and an affable man who knew everyone in the neighborhood and even from a distance. All the other shopkeepers could spot his familiar khaki pants, his checkered hat, his thinning, silver hair, his characteristic slow and steady pace, as if he had nowhere to go.</p> <p>“Look, here comes Dada,” they would say as he ambled closer, from blocks away. They had seen him pass by for almost twenty years. So long that he had become a fixture on the avenue, like the ancient signboards and the rundown buildings that were condemned <strong>[End Page 320]</strong> by the city housing department. The very sight of him maintained, for them, a sense of order.</p> <p>On the pavement were pieces of broken glass and tossed-out food, remnants of the night before. Mr. Munshi shook his head in disgust. These few blocks, stretching from his studio on Thirty-Second Street, to the last of the Indian stores on Twenty-Fifth, had become the extended terrace he and Usha could no longer afford. Lately, hordes of young graduates looking for a bargain were moving into the vicinity, ruining its camaraderie and peace.</p> <p>Some days, he thought there should be a zoning law determined by age. Other days, he dreamt of a long moving sidewalk, divided in two. One for those with cell phones, one for those without.</p> <p>Trudging on.</p> <p>The cracked sidewalks that led to the shops. The shops that led to the avenue. The shops that led to home. The shops that were his world.</p> <h2>________</h2> <p>There was an uncharacteristic chill in the September air, and Mr. Munshi pulled his jacket closer. He feared that winter would come early.</p> <p>As he opened the door to his shop, he was greeted by its familiar musty smell, which clung to the dulled fabrics on the wall and the dusty books on the shelves. He lit an incense stick, placing it on top of the filing cabinet. He sat on the only chair, the one usually reserved for Usha, and stretched his short legs underneath the table. But the space was too narrow, and as the chair shifted backward, he hit the cabinet behind, making it rattle. Flecks of burnt incense fell in neat droppings on its surface, as if Usha’s invisible hands had quickly aligned them before they could scatter. ","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140933741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-06DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a926961
Jacky Grey
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Things of My Mother’s <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Jacky Grey (bio) </li> </ul> <p><strong>F</strong>or the few weeks leading up to my ninth birthday, I had scraped enough good behavior together to ask for an ice cream cake. The closest Dairy Queen was twenty miles away.</p> <p>Going to town just to get cake was a big deal. Birthday cakes were usually a box mix with a tub of frosting. Ice cream cakes were special. My brother got one on his last birthday and I had asked ten months ago, if I was good, could I have one on my birthday too? Good behavior was hard. First, it was important to have visibly good behavior. Second, it was important to not be too obvious or it would turn on you. In our house, vanity, a subvariant of pride, was a terrible sin. I spent the day trying to be a half-invisible, half-doting daughter. I dusted rooms that were not on my chore list and quietly refilled my stepmother’s water glass while she was reading on the couch. I didn’t want to mess up somehow and spend my birthday in my room again.</p> <p>The previous year the highlight of my birthday was apologizing to the Manager at Shop-N-Kart and returning a ChapStick. (I <strong>[End Page 253]</strong> swear on my mother’s life I found it on the aisle floor.) My stepmother, disbelieving me, considered it stealing. I spent the rest of the day in my room. My punishment for stealing was isolation and boredom. When Father got home, he creaked up the stairs and sagged on the edge of my bed. I hoped he wouldn’t notice the lump made from the book I had stashed between the bed slats and the mattress. I kept a copy of C.S. Lewis’s <em>The Horse and His Boy</em> in my room for just such occasions, and while this was an allowed book, I was not supposed to be daydreaming and enjoying myself during my bedroom banishment. I did not mind that I had read it many times through. After a short, halfhearted speech about stealing being a sin, Father said he couldn’t let me grow up to be sinful, even on my birthday, so he laid me over his knee.</p> <p>Before my double breathing subsided, Father said he had a present for me. The shock of this slowed my spasms. He stood and stuffed his hand into his pocket. Often after a punishment, Father was gentler, he would hold me in a hug and tell me he loved me. My stomach flipped in hope. Maybe it was a pocketknife like his I had not so secretly coveted. He pulled out a fist and uncurled to reveal a classic, cherry flavored ChapStick. Feigning gratitude at that gift hurt worse than the spanking. I hated pink then and now. I hate the flavor of artificial cherry and distrust those who don’t. He thought it was hilarious and spent the rest of the year telling any poor soul he held captive in an audience how clever he was.</p> <p>I sat as still as I could muster on the ride to Dairy Queen. It felt like anything could topple this dream. My
{"title":"Things of My Mother's","authors":"Jacky Grey","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a926961","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a926961","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Things of My Mother’s <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Jacky Grey (bio) </li> </ul> <p><strong>F</strong>or the few weeks leading up to my ninth birthday, I had scraped enough good behavior together to ask for an ice cream cake. The closest Dairy Queen was twenty miles away.</p> <p>Going to town just to get cake was a big deal. Birthday cakes were usually a box mix with a tub of frosting. Ice cream cakes were special. My brother got one on his last birthday and I had asked ten months ago, if I was good, could I have one on my birthday too? Good behavior was hard. First, it was important to have visibly good behavior. Second, it was important to not be too obvious or it would turn on you. In our house, vanity, a subvariant of pride, was a terrible sin. I spent the day trying to be a half-invisible, half-doting daughter. I dusted rooms that were not on my chore list and quietly refilled my stepmother’s water glass while she was reading on the couch. I didn’t want to mess up somehow and spend my birthday in my room again.</p> <p>The previous year the highlight of my birthday was apologizing to the Manager at Shop-N-Kart and returning a ChapStick. (I <strong>[End Page 253]</strong> swear on my mother’s life I found it on the aisle floor.) My stepmother, disbelieving me, considered it stealing. I spent the rest of the day in my room. My punishment for stealing was isolation and boredom. When Father got home, he creaked up the stairs and sagged on the edge of my bed. I hoped he wouldn’t notice the lump made from the book I had stashed between the bed slats and the mattress. I kept a copy of C.S. Lewis’s <em>The Horse and His Boy</em> in my room for just such occasions, and while this was an allowed book, I was not supposed to be daydreaming and enjoying myself during my bedroom banishment. I did not mind that I had read it many times through. After a short, halfhearted speech about stealing being a sin, Father said he couldn’t let me grow up to be sinful, even on my birthday, so he laid me over his knee.</p> <p>Before my double breathing subsided, Father said he had a present for me. The shock of this slowed my spasms. He stood and stuffed his hand into his pocket. Often after a punishment, Father was gentler, he would hold me in a hug and tell me he loved me. My stomach flipped in hope. Maybe it was a pocketknife like his I had not so secretly coveted. He pulled out a fist and uncurled to reveal a classic, cherry flavored ChapStick. Feigning gratitude at that gift hurt worse than the spanking. I hated pink then and now. I hate the flavor of artificial cherry and distrust those who don’t. He thought it was hilarious and spent the rest of the year telling any poor soul he held captive in an audience how clever he was.</p> <p>I sat as still as I could muster on the ride to Dairy Queen. It felt like anything could topple this dream. My ","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"157 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140933779","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-06DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a926956
Carrie R. Moore
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Till It and Keep It <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Carrie R. Moore (bio) </li> </ul> <p><strong>I</strong>n the beginning, there was her sister’s breathing. Which meant neither of them had died.</p> <p>It was faint, a slip of sound in the truck’s stillness. But it reached into the front seats and nudged Brie awake. She lay over the console, an ache in her ribs, sweat on her eyelids. Against her wrist, morning light fell in a thin orange beam. So she could see colors again, which meant the illness was fading. She’d been smart to pull off the road—sometimes, rest was all you needed.</p> <p>“Harper,” she said, “wake up. We’re still a long ways out.”</p> <p>Her sister’s breathing quieted. Brie felt behind her, arms weak, neck too stiff to turn. If she could just touch Harper, surely she’d wake, too?</p> <p>This was hardly the worst they’d been through—unlucky as they were, born into prolonged summers and floods rushing deep into the coast and dwindling federal relief. There was the land they’d worked in Low America for years, the trees more branch than fruit. The miles of brown fields after they’d fled Randall’s farm and the masses of white tents clustered outside silver cities and along <strong>[End Page 164]</strong> freeway exits. On more than one occasion, thin-hipped walking men eyed their truck as it sped past, but who knew if they carried viruses or meant them harm: any kindness had to be carefully doled out. When the sisters had long passed the health inspection at the Arkansas line, they’d stood in a shallow creek while Brie shaved Harper’s deep honey curls. The green city lights wavering in the distance made Harper’s hair shudder on the water’s surface. “I don’t care what it looks like,” Harper had said, gripping Brie’s elbow. “Just so I don’t feel his hands in it.”</p> <p>“I got you,” Brie murmured, tying a wrap, red as a caul, over her handiwork. “It’ll look good.” She finished just before the outage drowned them in darkness.</p> <p>In the truck, Brie finally twisted to glimpse Harper in the space between the passenger seat and door. The wrap fell over her sister’s cheek, flattened against the backseat. Who knew anymore, how a virus would go. Some filled your lungs with fluid and made your muscles go liquid for weeks; others made your skin ache even in moonlight. This one had made Harper break out in hives once they were well into Tennessee, then start asking why the sun looked brown as the trees. As she drove, Brie said, “Just hang on. We’ll stop soon,” and passed her sister a silver canister of tea leaves to chew. But whatever was ailing Harper hit Brie too. As the hot pressure spread through her skull, she eased off the road, into woods blurry as gray flames. She cussed. Then prayed: <em>Lord, cover us</em>. It was different from her usual prayer: <em>Lord, let us get the chance to taste something green</em>.</p> <
以下是内容的简要摘录，以代替摘要： Till It and Keep It Carrie R. Moore (bio) 一开始，她妹妹还有呼吸。这意味着她们都没有死。这声音很微弱，在寂静的卡车里只是一闪而过。但它传入前排座椅，让布丽清醒过来。她躺在控制台上，肋骨隐隐作痛，眼皮上满是汗水。晨光洒在她的手腕上，形成一束细细的橙色光束。于是她又能看到颜色了，这意味着病痛正在消退。她很明智地把车停在路边--有时候，休息就是你所需要的。"哈珀，"她说，"醒醒。我们还有很远的路要走。"妹妹的呼吸声渐渐平息。布莉摸了摸身后，双臂无力，脖子僵硬得无法转动。如果她能碰碰哈珀，她肯定也会醒过来的。这并不是他们经历过的最糟糕的情况--他们生来就不走运，经历了漫长的夏天、洪水冲进海岸深处以及联邦救济金的减少。他们在美国低地劳作多年，土地上的树木枝繁叶茂，果实累累。他们逃离兰德尔的农场后，看到的是绵延数英里的棕色田野，还有银色城市外和高速公路[第 164 页完]出口处聚集的白色帐篷。不只一次，当她们的卡车飞驰而过时，瘦削的步行者向她们投来目光，但谁知道他们是带着病毒还是有意伤害她们：任何善意都必须小心翼翼地施舍。姐妹俩早就通过了阿肯色州边界的卫生检查，她们站在一条浅溪里，布丽给哈珀剃了一头深蜂蜜色的卷发。远处摇曳的绿色城市灯光让哈珀的头发在水面上颤抖。"我不在乎它看起来像什么，"哈珀抓着布丽的手肘说。"只要不让我感觉到他的手在里面""我来帮你。"布里喃喃地说，在她的作品上系上了一条红得像花椰菜一样的围巾。"会很好看的"在停电将他们淹没在黑暗中之前，她完成了这一切。在卡车里，布丽终于扭过头来，瞥见哈珀坐在副驾驶座和车门之间的空隙里。她姐姐的脸颊上落了一层裹布，平贴在后座上。谁也不知道病毒会如何发展。有的病毒会让你的肺部充满液体，让你的肌肉连续数周呈液态；有的病毒会让你的皮肤在月光下也疼痛难忍。这一次，哈珀一进入田纳西州就起了荨麻疹，然后开始问为什么太阳看起来像树一样褐。布丽一边开车一边说："坚持住，我们很快就会停下来。我们很快就会停下来。"她递给妹妹一罐银茶叶，让她咀嚼。但是，哈珀的病也击中了布丽。当灼热的压力传遍她的头颅时，她缓缓驶离了公路，进入了一片如灰色火焰般模糊的树林。她破口大骂。然后祈祷主啊，保佑我们这与她平时的祈祷不同：主啊，让我们有机会尝尝绿色的东西吧布莉重复着姐姐的名字。她们经历了那么多，她现在还不能失去哈珀。然后，她看到了窗外橙色和绿色的形状。橙色的球体，凹陷的粉红色条纹。绿色的，尖尖的。她花了一分钟才认出它们，因为她已经很久没有见过这种水果了。[第 165 页末】"哈珀，"她说。"外面有桃子"好像听到了什么，一个男人出现在窗前，桃子消失在他棕色的脸庞后面。他打开门，凉爽的空气扑面而来。然后他把她抱起来，她全身疼痛难忍。她的脖子抱不住她的头，她的头从他的手臂上倾倒下来。"万能的主啊，"他说。"你们有两个人"她用牙齿咬住他的肩膀紧紧咬住，直到感觉到他的皮肤被咬破。他骂道她感觉到他抓着她的大腿 努力不让她掉下去然后他的钳制消失了，其他一切也都消失了。________ 她在一间散发着青草和汗水气味的木棚里醒来。在她旁边的床上，哈珀...
{"title":"Till It and Keep It","authors":"Carrie R. Moore","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a926956","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a926956","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Till It and Keep It <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Carrie R. Moore (bio) </li> </ul> <p><strong>I</strong>n the beginning, there was her sister’s breathing. Which meant neither of them had died.</p> <p>It was faint, a slip of sound in the truck’s stillness. But it reached into the front seats and nudged Brie awake. She lay over the console, an ache in her ribs, sweat on her eyelids. Against her wrist, morning light fell in a thin orange beam. So she could see colors again, which meant the illness was fading. She’d been smart to pull off the road—sometimes, rest was all you needed.</p> <p>“Harper,” she said, “wake up. We’re still a long ways out.”</p> <p>Her sister’s breathing quieted. Brie felt behind her, arms weak, neck too stiff to turn. If she could just touch Harper, surely she’d wake, too?</p> <p>This was hardly the worst they’d been through—unlucky as they were, born into prolonged summers and floods rushing deep into the coast and dwindling federal relief. There was the land they’d worked in Low America for years, the trees more branch than fruit. The miles of brown fields after they’d fled Randall’s farm and the masses of white tents clustered outside silver cities and along <strong>[End Page 164]</strong> freeway exits. On more than one occasion, thin-hipped walking men eyed their truck as it sped past, but who knew if they carried viruses or meant them harm: any kindness had to be carefully doled out. When the sisters had long passed the health inspection at the Arkansas line, they’d stood in a shallow creek while Brie shaved Harper’s deep honey curls. The green city lights wavering in the distance made Harper’s hair shudder on the water’s surface. “I don’t care what it looks like,” Harper had said, gripping Brie’s elbow. “Just so I don’t feel his hands in it.”</p> <p>“I got you,” Brie murmured, tying a wrap, red as a caul, over her handiwork. “It’ll look good.” She finished just before the outage drowned them in darkness.</p> <p>In the truck, Brie finally twisted to glimpse Harper in the space between the passenger seat and door. The wrap fell over her sister’s cheek, flattened against the backseat. Who knew anymore, how a virus would go. Some filled your lungs with fluid and made your muscles go liquid for weeks; others made your skin ache even in moonlight. This one had made Harper break out in hives once they were well into Tennessee, then start asking why the sun looked brown as the trees. As she drove, Brie said, “Just hang on. We’ll stop soon,” and passed her sister a silver canister of tea leaves to chew. But whatever was ailing Harper hit Brie too. As the hot pressure spread through her skull, she eased off the road, into woods blurry as gray flames. She cussed. Then prayed: <em>Lord, cover us</em>. It was different from her usual prayer: <em>Lord, let us get the chance to taste something green</em>.</p> <","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"27 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140933979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-06DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a926964
Richie Hofmann
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Maze, and: Maze, and: Maze <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Richie Hofmann (bio) </li> </ul> <h2><em>Maze</em></h2> <p><span> Room of flowers,</span><span> room of hunger: the hours</span><span>I could sleep inside.</span></p> <p><span> There was something I wanted</span><span> my life to be. Room</span><span>in which I possessed someone</span></p> <p><span> and was in turn possessed.</span><span>Rooms in which I reached for a man,</span><span> even when he</span></p> <p><span> was with someone else.</span><span> Once I was so scared,</span><span>I slept in my shoes.</span></p> <p><span> Another time, I stood knee-deep</span><span>in chlorinated water</span><span> and thought I’d be lost</span></p> <p><span> forever: the graffiti</span><span> unintelligible, the smell</span><span> of cigarettes, the foreign tongues. <strong>[End Page 289]</strong></span> <span>Still, the jets of the whirlpool pulsated.</span><span> I dried off; I made</span><span> the damp towel a pillow.</span></p> <p><span> The crowded rooms</span><span>of the bars made them cool.</span><span> Young people were shouting</span></p> <p><span> into my ears.</span><span> I was growing up,</span><span>like them and not</span></p> <p><span> like them.</span><span> In the tall mirror,</span><span>I could see my back.</span></p> <p><span> Was this</span><span>how I was going to live?</span><span> I took long baths</span></p> <p><span> in quiet rooms. Room of jealousy,</span><span>room of flowers—sometimes</span><span> I felt pulled forward</span></p> <p><span> as if a perfect leash</span><span>were guiding me. Other times</span><span> from behind, knuckles nudging</span></p> <p><span>the small of my back,</span><span> urging me deeper</span><span> in pajama bottoms</span></p> <p><span> toward other rooms. <strong>[End Page 290]</strong></span></p> <h2><em>Maze</em></h2> <p><span>Horny, half-mad,</span><span> the smell of old flowers</span><span> encases</span></p> <p><span> this man’s room</span><span>like an anonymous</span><span> tomb—miracle</span></p> <p><span> to be alive</span><span>and then to die. In the thick</span><span> of an island thick</span></p> <p><span>with a history</span><span> that belongs to</span><span>everyone and no one,</span></p> <p><span> feral goats shit and mate</span><span> and clamber in dust,</span><span> kicking it up.</span></p> <p><span>Don’t you hate animals?</span><span> Don’t you hate</span><span> being an animal?</span></p> <p><span> His animal?</span><span> Still it feels good</span><span> when the sun comes up <strong>[End Page 291]</strong></span> <span> and warms the bed</span><span>like the cold surface</span><span> of the ancient ocean.</span></p> <p><span>And by mid-day, no shade</span><span> anywhere.</span><span>When did the flowers first die?</span></p> <p><span> When did they stop drinking</span><span> water from the
{"title":"Maze, and: Maze, and: Maze","authors":"Richie Hofmann","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a926964","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a926964","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Maze, and: Maze, and: Maze <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Richie Hofmann (bio) </li> </ul> <h2><em>Maze</em></h2> <p><span> Room of flowers,</span><span> room of hunger: the hours</span><span>I could sleep inside.</span></p> <p><span> There was something I wanted</span><span> my life to be. Room</span><span>in which I possessed someone</span></p> <p><span> and was in turn possessed.</span><span>Rooms in which I reached for a man,</span><span> even when he</span></p> <p><span> was with someone else.</span><span> Once I was so scared,</span><span>I slept in my shoes.</span></p> <p><span> Another time, I stood knee-deep</span><span>in chlorinated water</span><span> and thought I’d be lost</span></p> <p><span> forever: the graffiti</span><span> unintelligible, the smell</span><span> of cigarettes, the foreign tongues. <strong>[End Page 289]</strong></span> <span>Still, the jets of the whirlpool pulsated.</span><span> I dried off; I made</span><span> the damp towel a pillow.</span></p> <p><span> The crowded rooms</span><span>of the bars made them cool.</span><span> Young people were shouting</span></p> <p><span> into my ears.</span><span> I was growing up,</span><span>like them and not</span></p> <p><span> like them.</span><span> In the tall mirror,</span><span>I could see my back.</span></p> <p><span> Was this</span><span>how I was going to live?</span><span> I took long baths</span></p> <p><span> in quiet rooms. Room of jealousy,</span><span>room of flowers—sometimes</span><span> I felt pulled forward</span></p> <p><span> as if a perfect leash</span><span>were guiding me. Other times</span><span> from behind, knuckles nudging</span></p> <p><span>the small of my back,</span><span> urging me deeper</span><span> in pajama bottoms</span></p> <p><span> toward other rooms. <strong>[End Page 290]</strong></span></p> <h2><em>Maze</em></h2> <p><span>Horny, half-mad,</span><span> the smell of old flowers</span><span> encases</span></p> <p><span> this man’s room</span><span>like an anonymous</span><span> tomb—miracle</span></p> <p><span> to be alive</span><span>and then to die. In the thick</span><span> of an island thick</span></p> <p><span>with a history</span><span> that belongs to</span><span>everyone and no one,</span></p> <p><span> feral goats shit and mate</span><span> and clamber in dust,</span><span> kicking it up.</span></p> <p><span>Don’t you hate animals?</span><span> Don’t you hate</span><span> being an animal?</span></p> <p><span> His animal?</span><span> Still it feels good</span><span> when the sun comes up <strong>[End Page 291]</strong></span> <span> and warms the bed</span><span>like the cold surface</span><span> of the ancient ocean.</span></p> <p><span>And by mid-day, no shade</span><span> anywhere.</span><span>When did the flowers first die?</span></p> <p><span> When did they stop drinking</span><span> water from the ","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140933453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-05-06DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a926960
Patricia Smith
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> We Just Waiting for J’s Liquor to Open on Up, and: It’s Pinned Above My Desk—That Picture, and: Just Another Day in Fourth Grade <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Patricia Smith (bio) </li> </ul> <h2><em>We Just Waiting for J’s Liquor to Open on Up</em></h2> <h2><em>1</em>.</h2> <p><span>I smell the cloying stink of a particular religion etching</span><span>its gospel on the scrubbed, unworried side of the rolling</span><span>shutters. It’s the funk of the preach that draws me here,</span><span>the side-eye that renders me bent double, twinging, my</span><span>thick mouth willing to swap language for flame. I admit</span><span>out loud to being Jesus’ damned near, the almost</span><span>of the Holy Ghost, the mistake that won’t quit even if</span><span>it could see how. I’m out here in the wind with the rest</span><span>of the no-shame-in-our-game disciples, heads bowed,</span><span>eyes leaking the last of last night. We are obedient</span><span>in the way the just-waking boulevard says we must be—</span><span>reverent, slow-stomping our dirt-tired hymns. Looks like</span><span>we’re waiting for another sloppy resurrection. But not</span><span>me, Lawd, not this fool. I’m next in line for the cross.</span></p> <h2><em>2</em>.</h2> <p><span>Checking my phone, and here come that text message over</span><span>and over: <em>Where you at?</em> Last time I looked, I’m still grown,</span><span>still walking any street that’ll hold on to me. I’m still grown,</span><span>rising from my own damned bed just in time, scrubbing</span><span>the sweat from my ass, getting to where I need to be, right <strong>[End Page 248]</strong></span> <span>on the clock. <em>I’m where I’m gon’ be at,</em> I say with my thumbs,</span><span>then I shut the damn thing off ’cause I can’t stand the way</span><span>those green numbers keep yelling <em>Not yet</em>. I need these folks</span><span>to roll that cranky old steel on up, let me run straight to my</span><span>sip of beautiful, my sip of slow drag, my sip of the way</span><span>I need my man to rock me. Until then, I’ll disappear inside</span><span>my own thirsty shadow, trying not to lock pinkish eye with</span><span>the only other sister here. Why they keep locking up our</span><span>beautiful, locking down the only way we know to sing?</span></p> <h2><em>3.</em></h2> <p><span>Nobody sings the blues anymore. Nobody’s got the gut,</span><span>walks the gravel, nobody takes the time to really know</span><span>what’s under the under that’s under us. I’ve been there.</span><span>What I saw peeled me bloodless, made me stumble, it</span><span>caused me to renounce my Christian name. I saw my</span><span>mama, her legs blown up near to bursting, the boom</span><span>in her veins bulging her eyes. Then I saw my daddy,</span><span>who said again that, for the life of him, he didn’t know</span><span>who the h
{"title":"We Just Waiting for J's Liquor to Open on Up, and: It's Pinned Above My Desk—That Picture, and: Just Another Day in Fourth Grade","authors":"Patricia Smith","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a926960","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a926960","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> We Just Waiting for J’s Liquor to Open on Up, and: It’s Pinned Above My Desk—That Picture, and: Just Another Day in Fourth Grade <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Patricia Smith (bio) </li> </ul> <h2><em>We Just Waiting for J’s Liquor to Open on Up</em></h2> <h2><em>1</em>.</h2> <p><span>I smell the cloying stink of a particular religion etching</span><span>its gospel on the scrubbed, unworried side of the rolling</span><span>shutters. It’s the funk of the preach that draws me here,</span><span>the side-eye that renders me bent double, twinging, my</span><span>thick mouth willing to swap language for flame. I admit</span><span>out loud to being Jesus’ damned near, the almost</span><span>of the Holy Ghost, the mistake that won’t quit even if</span><span>it could see how. I’m out here in the wind with the rest</span><span>of the no-shame-in-our-game disciples, heads bowed,</span><span>eyes leaking the last of last night. We are obedient</span><span>in the way the just-waking boulevard says we must be—</span><span>reverent, slow-stomping our dirt-tired hymns. Looks like</span><span>we’re waiting for another sloppy resurrection. But not</span><span>me, Lawd, not this fool. I’m next in line for the cross.</span></p> <h2><em>2</em>.</h2> <p><span>Checking my phone, and here come that text message over</span><span>and over: <em>Where you at?</em> Last time I looked, I’m still grown,</span><span>still walking any street that’ll hold on to me. I’m still grown,</span><span>rising from my own damned bed just in time, scrubbing</span><span>the sweat from my ass, getting to where I need to be, right <strong>[End Page 248]</strong></span> <span>on the clock. <em>I’m where I’m gon’ be at,</em> I say with my thumbs,</span><span>then I shut the damn thing off ’cause I can’t stand the way</span><span>those green numbers keep yelling <em>Not yet</em>. I need these folks</span><span>to roll that cranky old steel on up, let me run straight to my</span><span>sip of beautiful, my sip of slow drag, my sip of the way</span><span>I need my man to rock me. Until then, I’ll disappear inside</span><span>my own thirsty shadow, trying not to lock pinkish eye with</span><span>the only other sister here. Why they keep locking up our</span><span>beautiful, locking down the only way we know to sing?</span></p> <h2><em>3.</em></h2> <p><span>Nobody sings the blues anymore. Nobody’s got the gut,</span><span>walks the gravel, nobody takes the time to really know</span><span>what’s under the under that’s under us. I’ve been there.</span><span>What I saw peeled me bloodless, made me stumble, it</span><span>caused me to renounce my Christian name. I saw my</span><span>mama, her legs blown up near to bursting, the boom</span><span>in her veins bulging her eyes. Then I saw my daddy,</span><span>who said again that, for the life of him, he didn’t know</span><span>who the h","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"107 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140933532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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