Pub Date : 2024-02-08DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a919135
Sonia Feigelson
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Maroon <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Sonia Feigelson (bio) </li> </ul> <p><strong>M</strong>y father wants to buy me a bikini. “It’s not an option,” he says, “to wear some ratty old thing to the infinity pool.”</p> <p>I prefer to be ratty, which is our central problem. My father is devoted to proving that he knows the truth about me. To him, the world is not a matter of needing but of acquiring.</p> <p>Just kidding. Being ratty is not our central problem. It is a problem, but it is probably located slightly to the left.</p> <p>I lay my phone on the side of the bed where Kyle used to sleep, set it on speaker, turn my face to the wall, and close my eyes. “I have a bathing suit,” I say.</p> <p>His voice crackles like an elementary school principal over an intercom. Authority, intimacy. Some days I wish there were a way to email God directly: “There is no need to be so literal. We are on the same page.”</p> <p>My father David and I are going tropical. “Aquamarine dream.” That was the promise made by the homepage banner on the swim-wear website he sent me last night. <strong>[End Page 37]</strong></p> <p>“You mean,” I say, “is the suit <em>suit</em>able?”</p> <p>On the line, the sound of his scratchy breathing. I don’t know if I can blame my father for not thinking I’m funny, but I’d like to.</p> <p>“How do you know what’s appropriate?” I ask.</p> <p>He says he can guess. He says he knows me. “I’m your father,” my father tells me.</p> <p>That my father knows me, is a contested view.</p> <p>He doesn’t know I’ve never gone tropical. I’ve been to Florida, but Florida doesn’t count. “For anything, in any comparison,” I might once have joked to Kyle, and she would have said, “You’re exasperating,” and she would have been right.</p> <p>Among the many issues I don’t push is this issue—the not knowing—an issue which, if I pushed, is why David would say that we’ve got to go on vacation together. So he can hear about me, not here.</p> <p>I am not like God, a good storyteller. If I were, I would’ve said that this is a story about going somewhere and coming back changed. It is like <em>Star Wars</em>.</p> <p>In honor of thirty years alive, I am going in the water with my father. He wants to buy what I’ll wear to the water, in the water, soaked by water, evaporating up. He wants to take me to the same beach he wanted to take me when I was not thirty and we were not talking. My father and I are <em>greeting the sun</em>, say swimwear websites, we are <em>breezebound</em>. According to our therapist, Carolyn, we are letting the light turn us over a new leaf, though we are each, in our own way, mid-wither.</p> <p>My father, at sixty, is divorcing for the third time. I am not.</p> <p>He wants me to be less rude to him. I want him to stop doing things that make me want to be rude to him.</p> <p>What was wrong with the years before I turned thirty?
{"title":"Maroon","authors":"Sonia Feigelson","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a919135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a919135","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 --> Maroon <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Sonia Feigelson (bio) </li> </ul> <p><strong>M</strong>y father wants to buy me a bikini. “It’s not an option,” he says, “to wear some ratty old thing to the infinity pool.”</p> <p>I prefer to be ratty, which is our central problem. My father is devoted to proving that he knows the truth about me. To him, the world is not a matter of needing but of acquiring.</p> <p>Just kidding. Being ratty is not our central problem. It is a problem, but it is probably located slightly to the left.</p> <p>I lay my phone on the side of the bed where Kyle used to sleep, set it on speaker, turn my face to the wall, and close my eyes. “I have a bathing suit,” I say.</p> <p>His voice crackles like an elementary school principal over an intercom. Authority, intimacy. Some days I wish there were a way to email God directly: “There is no need to be so literal. We are on the same page.”</p> <p>My father David and I are going tropical. “Aquamarine dream.” That was the promise made by the homepage banner on the swim-wear website he sent me last night. <strong>[End Page 37]</strong></p> <p>“You mean,” I say, “is the suit <em>suit</em>able?”</p> <p>On the line, the sound of his scratchy breathing. I don’t know if I can blame my father for not thinking I’m funny, but I’d like to.</p> <p>“How do you know what’s appropriate?” I ask.</p> <p>He says he can guess. He says he knows me. “I’m your father,” my father tells me.</p> <p>That my father knows me, is a contested view.</p> <p>He doesn’t know I’ve never gone tropical. I’ve been to Florida, but Florida doesn’t count. “For anything, in any comparison,” I might once have joked to Kyle, and she would have said, “You’re exasperating,” and she would have been right.</p> <p>Among the many issues I don’t push is this issue—the not knowing—an issue which, if I pushed, is why David would say that we’ve got to go on vacation together. So he can hear about me, not here.</p> <p>I am not like God, a good storyteller. If I were, I would’ve said that this is a story about going somewhere and coming back changed. It is like <em>Star Wars</em>.</p> <p>In honor of thirty years alive, I am going in the water with my father. He wants to buy what I’ll wear to the water, in the water, soaked by water, evaporating up. He wants to take me to the same beach he wanted to take me when I was not thirty and we were not talking. My father and I are <em>greeting the sun</em>, say swimwear websites, we are <em>breezebound</em>. According to our therapist, Carolyn, we are letting the light turn us over a new leaf, though we are each, in our own way, mid-wither.</p> <p>My father, at sixty, is divorcing for the third time. I am not.</p> <p>He wants me to be less rude to him. I want him to stop doing things that make me want to be rude to him.</p> <p>What was wrong with the years before I turned thirty?","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"313 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139767405","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 : 2024-02-08DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a919133
Garth Greenwell
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> The Barest Horizon: <span>Jamel Brinkley’s “Bartow Station”</span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Garth Greenwell (bio) </li> </ul> <p><strong>O</strong>ne of my questions about “Bartow Station,” from Jamel Brinkley’s second collection, <em>Witness</em>, is what makes the story seem so bottomlessly deep, since really it’s quite simple, quite contained in its materials. Narrated by an unnamed, youngish man, it takes place over a few months, a single summer, with a couple of important excursions into the past. It’s comprised of three interwoven strands: the narrator’s new job as a delivery man for UPS; his strained, would-be relationship with a youngish woman, Zoelle; and the defining relationship of his life, his bond with his cousin, Troy, who died some years before the summer the story recounts. One of Brinkley’s great subjects, in both of his books, is the way men—brothers, friends, fathers, and sons—relate to one another, the way certain models of masculinity give form to and so, maybe necessarily, <em>de</em>form expressions of love, both love between men, and love between men and women. One <strong>[End Page 18]</strong> way of thinking about “Bartow Station”—and this is true of other of Brinkley’s stories, like “A Family” and “Clifton’s Place” from <em>A Lucky Man</em>, “The Let-Out” and “Comfort” in <em>Witness</em>—is as a narrative of a present relationship cut across, impeded, in “Bartow Station” finally made impossible, by a relationship from the past.</p> <p>We don’t learn all that much about the story’s unnamed narrator, though after twenty pages we’ll feel we know him deeply; one of the marvels of Brinkley’s work is how economical he can be with backstory, how our knowledge of his characters—who are often folded in on themselves, curled around some hidden grief—comes from inhabiting the experience of their lives, not from the delivery of facts. The story opens on the narrator’s first day as a delivery man for UPS; he’s sitting on a bench in the locker room getting razzed by Jimmy, a more experienced driver who will train him. The narrator’s shoes are all wrong—Oxfords that will destroy his feet—and so are his socks (white, not regulation black or brown); he’s sure to get reamed out by the bosses. More important, his attitude is all wrong; a “unicorn,” Jimmy says, “hired off the street,” he takes for granted a job that others covet. “This is just a gig, man,” the narrator says. “I’m not here to collect a pension.” We’ll learn that he has dropped out of college, twice; there’s the slightest hint, late in the story, that maybe he thinks of himself as an artist, or would like to. (“I had no ambitions then of being an artist,” he will say of his younger self; my sense of his current ambitions hangs on that <em>then</em>.) In any event, something has knocked him off course, into a job he feels is beneath him.</p> <p>I
{"title":"The Barest Horizon: Jamel Brinkley's \"Bartow Station\"","authors":"Garth Greenwell","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a919133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a919133","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 --> The Barest Horizon: <span>Jamel Brinkley’s “Bartow Station”</span> <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Garth Greenwell (bio) </li> </ul> <p><strong>O</strong>ne of my questions about “Bartow Station,” from Jamel Brinkley’s second collection, <em>Witness</em>, is what makes the story seem so bottomlessly deep, since really it’s quite simple, quite contained in its materials. Narrated by an unnamed, youngish man, it takes place over a few months, a single summer, with a couple of important excursions into the past. It’s comprised of three interwoven strands: the narrator’s new job as a delivery man for UPS; his strained, would-be relationship with a youngish woman, Zoelle; and the defining relationship of his life, his bond with his cousin, Troy, who died some years before the summer the story recounts. One of Brinkley’s great subjects, in both of his books, is the way men—brothers, friends, fathers, and sons—relate to one another, the way certain models of masculinity give form to and so, maybe necessarily, <em>de</em>form expressions of love, both love between men, and love between men and women. One <strong>[End Page 18]</strong> way of thinking about “Bartow Station”—and this is true of other of Brinkley’s stories, like “A Family” and “Clifton’s Place” from <em>A Lucky Man</em>, “The Let-Out” and “Comfort” in <em>Witness</em>—is as a narrative of a present relationship cut across, impeded, in “Bartow Station” finally made impossible, by a relationship from the past.</p> <p>We don’t learn all that much about the story’s unnamed narrator, though after twenty pages we’ll feel we know him deeply; one of the marvels of Brinkley’s work is how economical he can be with backstory, how our knowledge of his characters—who are often folded in on themselves, curled around some hidden grief—comes from inhabiting the experience of their lives, not from the delivery of facts. The story opens on the narrator’s first day as a delivery man for UPS; he’s sitting on a bench in the locker room getting razzed by Jimmy, a more experienced driver who will train him. The narrator’s shoes are all wrong—Oxfords that will destroy his feet—and so are his socks (white, not regulation black or brown); he’s sure to get reamed out by the bosses. More important, his attitude is all wrong; a “unicorn,” Jimmy says, “hired off the street,” he takes for granted a job that others covet. “This is just a gig, man,” the narrator says. “I’m not here to collect a pension.” We’ll learn that he has dropped out of college, twice; there’s the slightest hint, late in the story, that maybe he thinks of himself as an artist, or would like to. (“I had no ambitions then of being an artist,” he will say of his younger self; my sense of his current ambitions hangs on that <em>then</em>.) In any event, something has knocked him off course, into a job he feels is beneath him.</p> <p>I","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"98 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139767476","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 : 2024-02-08DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a919144
Rob Colgate
<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span> <p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> At Tangled <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Rob Colgate (bio) </li> </ul> <p><span>We are about to host our first in-person event at the gallery</span><span>in three years. Sam, Sachin, and I spend two hours trying</span><span>the owl-shaped camera that will track whoever is the speaker</span><span>and spotlight them on the synchronous livestream event.</span><span>Rumi and Jessie are over in the corner of the office figuring out</span><span>what food to order. After a bit, they settle on sushi.</span></p> <p><span>But I’m vegan, Alice has a feeding tube, Kevin can’t lift sushi,</span><span>Alex is severely allergic to soy (can’t even be in the gallery),</span><span>and then we need a side of fries just in case Leah comes out</span><span>since she has ARFID—it’s all possible, just takes a bit of trying.</span><span>Then, when we are prescreening the films before the event,</span><span>we realize we need content warnings. I lean against the big speaker</span></p> <p><span>noting the time stamps of the triggers, the moments when the speaker</span><span>in the film swears loudly, and I imagine I am blissfully eating sushi</span><span>so I don’t get triggered myself. Soon people arrive, the event</span><span>talk begins, everyone in chairs or flopped on cushions on the gallery</span><span>floor. Elaine shows up and says everybody who wants can try on</span><span>the leopard-print masks that she keeps in a bag that hangs out</span></p> <p><span>on the back of her power chair. Then the films start and right out</span><span>of the gate it’s naked bodies and hospital echoes, the ASL speakers <strong>[End Page 128]</strong></span> <span>and low-vision folks alike gaping at the images and audio, trying</span><span>to follow the intricate plot, and then the food arrives late, the sushi</span><span>on crip time, and Rumi and Jessie set it up in the back of the gallery.</span><span>I’m playing access doula, monitoring the chat on the Zoom event</span></p> <p><span>that blows up when the doctor transplants the organ. Eventually</span><span>the film ends. Everybody applauds in ASL so the sensory out-</span><span>put isn’t overwhelming, then shuffles to the back of the gallery</span><span>for food. <em>You know if the transplanted organ fails—</em>Helen speaks</span><span>to me earnestly, wonder in her voice—<em>the patient can sue</em>. She</span><span>widens her eyes. <em>Sue who? The dead donor? Go try it!</em></span></p> <p><span>We go on, discuss transplantation’s disability implications, trying</span><span>out theories until the guests and interpreters have left the event.</span><span>We ordered too much, so I claim an untouched tray of sushi</span><span>as I say bye. Dan and I walk towards home together, hashing out</span><span>the new moon’s astrological impact. We never really speak</span><span>much at work, but now we’re laughing, ev
{"title":"At Tangled","authors":"Rob Colgate","doi":"10.1353/sew.2024.a919144","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/sew.2024.a919144","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 --> At Tangled <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Rob Colgate (bio) </li> </ul> <p><span>We are about to host our first in-person event at the gallery</span><span>in three years. Sam, Sachin, and I spend two hours trying</span><span>the owl-shaped camera that will track whoever is the speaker</span><span>and spotlight them on the synchronous livestream event.</span><span>Rumi and Jessie are over in the corner of the office figuring out</span><span>what food to order. After a bit, they settle on sushi.</span></p> <p><span>But I’m vegan, Alice has a feeding tube, Kevin can’t lift sushi,</span><span>Alex is severely allergic to soy (can’t even be in the gallery),</span><span>and then we need a side of fries just in case Leah comes out</span><span>since she has ARFID—it’s all possible, just takes a bit of trying.</span><span>Then, when we are prescreening the films before the event,</span><span>we realize we need content warnings. I lean against the big speaker</span></p> <p><span>noting the time stamps of the triggers, the moments when the speaker</span><span>in the film swears loudly, and I imagine I am blissfully eating sushi</span><span>so I don’t get triggered myself. Soon people arrive, the event</span><span>talk begins, everyone in chairs or flopped on cushions on the gallery</span><span>floor. Elaine shows up and says everybody who wants can try on</span><span>the leopard-print masks that she keeps in a bag that hangs out</span></p> <p><span>on the back of her power chair. Then the films start and right out</span><span>of the gate it’s naked bodies and hospital echoes, the ASL speakers <strong>[End Page 128]</strong></span> <span>and low-vision folks alike gaping at the images and audio, trying</span><span>to follow the intricate plot, and then the food arrives late, the sushi</span><span>on crip time, and Rumi and Jessie set it up in the back of the gallery.</span><span>I’m playing access doula, monitoring the chat on the Zoom event</span></p> <p><span>that blows up when the doctor transplants the organ. Eventually</span><span>the film ends. Everybody applauds in ASL so the sensory out-</span><span>put isn’t overwhelming, then shuffles to the back of the gallery</span><span>for food. <em>You know if the transplanted organ fails—</em>Helen speaks</span><span>to me earnestly, wonder in her voice—<em>the patient can sue</em>. She</span><span>widens her eyes. <em>Sue who? The dead donor? Go try it!</em></span></p> <p><span>We go on, discuss transplantation’s disability implications, trying</span><span>out theories until the guests and interpreters have left the event.</span><span>We ordered too much, so I claim an untouched tray of sushi</span><span>as I say bye. Dan and I walk towards home together, hashing out</span><span>the new moon’s astrological impact. We never really speak</span><span>much at work, but now we’re laughing, ev","PeriodicalId":43824,"journal":{"name":"SEWANEE REVIEW","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139767472","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 : 2024-02-08DOI: 10.1353/sew.2024.a919140
Michael McGriff
In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
Gray Morning, and: Wind, and: Against
Michael McGriff (bio)
Gray Morning
We’ve come to think of life hereas one elongating seasonmarked with a tap-and-die sky,a fistful of birds tossedagainst the rag light.My son asks the unanswerablequestions. Each query linksto the next, coal cars pulledtoward the lung-dark trellishis pain builds into the world. [End Page 92]
Wind
When the dead unbury themselves,will they finally throw awayall the chipped saucersand scrape the contact paperfrom the cupboards,will they awakeninto the ceremoniestheir bad knees and small regretshave become? Like me,will their final acts of sincerityinclude keeping their heads downat the grocery store, avoidingconversations with others?
I remember, now,when rat piss, hay, and starsall smelled the same
and how the barn sangin the wind,and how no one caredif I slept there all nightwithout naming any of itor wanting it namedor wanting anything at all. [End Page 93]
Against
As soon as I turnmy back the waveswill undressmy memoriesof the waveswill breaktoward someone elsemaybe youwill hold theminto this lighteverything turnsthe same coloragainst. [End Page 94]
Michael McGriff
Michael McGriff is the author of four books of poetry, Eternal Sentences, Early Hour, Home Burial, and Dismantling the Hills. His other books include a translation of Tomas Tranströmer’s The Sorrow Gondola, an edition of David Wevill’s essential writing, To Build My Shadow a Fire, and the story collection Our Secret Life in the Movies. He codirects the MFA program at the University of Idaho.
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