Callaloo最新文献

{"title":"The Coven After Katrina, and: Aubade Ending in a Lucid Dream of a Backyard, and: 235 Plum St. Haibun, and: James Hemings Prepares for Paris, the Culinary Capital of the World, and: James Hemings Arrives in Paris for the First Time","authors":"Rodrick Minor","doi":"10.1353/cal.2024.a935731","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cal.2024.a935731","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 Coven After Katrina, and: Aubade Ending in a Lucid Dream of a Backyard, and: 235 Plum St. Haibun, and: James Hemings Prepares for Paris, the Culinary Capital of the World, and: James Hemings Arrives in Paris for the First Time <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Rodrick Minor (bio) </li> </ul> <h2>THE COVEN AFTER KATRINA</h2> <p><span>&</span><span>elsewhere, I séance at sea</span><span>watch the saltwater hymn the blood</span><span>-less names from my tongue one by one</span><span>my kinfolks rise from the ocean-bed</span></p> <p><span>&</span><span>elsewhere, I sage a plantation house</span><span>boil the blood of the slavemaster</span><span>crimson the walls a requiem</span><span>my kinfolks chant homecoming</span></p> <p><span>&</span><span>elsewhere, I conjure a bonfire</span><span>birthmark the land. the river. the air.</span><span>pentagram the bloodline</span><span>my kinfolks arrive the cookout</span></p> <p><span>&</span><span>elsewhere, I summon a bloodmoon</span><span>cotton a field of malice and gore</span><span>bullwhip a sweet thunder of salt and skin</span><span>my kinfolks eyeteeth the meat</span></p> <p><span>&</span><span>elsewhere, I grandmother a gumbo</span><span>pot a limb. a skull. an eye. his tongue.</span><span>slow cooked until the flesh falls off bone</span><span>my kinfolks say grace <strong>[End Page 95]</strong></span></p> <p><span>&</span><span>elsewhere, I set a sacrifice for dinner</span><span>gnaw the fat with no remorse</span><span>suck dry the gristle</span><span>my kinfolks the potlikkers</span><span>Asé</span><span> Asé</span><span> Asé <strong>[End Page 96]</strong></span></p> <h2>AUBADE ENDING IN A LUCID DREAM OF A BACKYARD</h2> <p><span>And the wet morning dew dillydally</span><span>against the blades</span><span>as the coffee kettle</span><span> whistles a new blue browning</span></p> <p><span>the <em>Manda</em>'s smoked sausage</span><span>redding the oak table</span><span> an ensemble of bodies</span><span>composed & cathartic by their aura i watch</span><span>Uncle Maine croon a duet at the window</span><span>sill with a titmouse tickle by his voice</span></p> <p><span>i hum in unison a trio</span><span>we serenade the slumber of sunrise</span><span> subscribe to what silence</span><span>is left before the sweat slithers</span><span>our temples before the motor oil</span><span>snakes our cuticles in a junkyard</span><span> of sparked plugs and carburetors</span></p> <p><span>like conductors reviving the soul</span><span>funk of an '86 Oldsmobile</span><span>we rummage ahead the symphony</span><span> of dragon</span><span> flies and cicadas</span><span>prudent to the thirsty days</span><span>rushing into the wonder</span><span>years where we disband</span><span>beneath a maroon sky parting</span><span>over the whiff of angel biscuits</span><span>as eye op","PeriodicalId":501435,"journal":{"name":"Callaloo","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142227520","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Berryblack Blues, and: Loving the Dark, and: Generational Curses, and: The Uprooting, and: Re-membering Kin","authors":"Shanna L. Smith","doi":"10.1353/cal.2024.a935746","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cal.2024.a935746","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 --> Berryblack Blues, and: Loving the Dark, and: Generational Curses, and: The Uprooting, and: Re-membering Kin <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Shanna L. Smith (bio) </li> </ul> <h2>BERRYBLACK BLUES</h2> <p><em>For Crystal</em></p> <p><span>I'm in love with old-people words,</span><span>their memories blowing out at me in riffs</span><span>like slow drags to</span><span>live in-person, up-close kind of blues</span><span>where their faces sweat</span><span>tilted up like remembering God.</span></p> <p><span>I squeeze into spaces</span><span>too long</span><span>to listen,</span><span>catch a word</span><span>of rememory</span><span>from them—</span><span>a recipe for hard-won living.</span></p> <p><span>That slow drag of a cigarette</span><span>and diphthong vowel</span><span>rounding their lips</span><span>anticipates my hearing</span><span>as they improvise memory</span><span>while patiently stroking</span><span>squat green glasses of whiskey.</span></p> <p><span>I've learned to wait</span><span>for muttered-beneath-the-breath tales</span><span>of Black boyhoods loaded into pickup trucks</span><span>to strip tobacco;</span><span>or only-once-told rumors of</span><span>Black girls bartered away for a pint of liquor;</span><span>about Big Mama wringing chicken heads</span><span>to feed her berryblack, amber, and butterscotch children.</span><span>I listen to visualize the Affrilachian hills, knobs, and junkets</span><span>peopled with brown skin, poor folk <strong>[End Page 152]</strong></span> <span>rich with hands that strung cane-back chairs,</span><span>carved wooden vanity tables, pressed</span><span>biscuit dough between fingers,</span><span>threaded needles through brocade,</span><span>upholstered couch covers,</span><span>and laid brick for homes that none of us now own.</span></p> <p><span>The stories fill my mouth sourly</span><span>and becomes my mourning blues,</span><span>then a healing balm refrain</span><span>as I slap hard the table</span><span>where I sit among the cloud of witnesses</span><span>that crowd my memory—</span><span>as they knew it would—</span><span>and we laugh together, overtaken,</span><span>improvising light into life's shadows. <strong>[End Page 153]</strong></span></p> <h2>LOVING THE DARK</h2> <p><em>For bell</em></p> <p><span>I am loving darkness,</span><span>risk my life</span><span>and dare</span><span>dance dusky hips</span><span>in the blueblack</span><span>darkness of us.</span></p> <p><span>Blackfolk emboldened</span><span>by deep burgundy bruises</span><span>in our DNA that,</span><span>when pressed down, explode</span><span>a shout of joy</span><span>a keening wail</span><span>a roar buckled</span><span>from the mournful, searing ache</span><span>of holding up the whole world</span><span>in the spine of our work-worn backs.</span></p> <p><span>I hurt for us,</span><span>travailing in in","PeriodicalId":501435,"journal":{"name":"Callaloo","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142182639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Black, Radical, Rural","authors":"Eisa Nefertari Ulen","doi":"10.1353/cal.2024.a935734","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cal.2024.a935734","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 --> Black, Radical, Rural <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Eisa Nefertari Ulen (bio) </li> </ul> <h2>Black</h2> <p>Most of the time, my mother had no idea where I was. If you had asked me to tell, back then, when I was five, seven, ten years old, I would have told you: I was in a deep wood. I was ankle-deep in a clear-flowing creek. I was perched, face open to sun slanting into my smiling mouth. I was breathing in pine. I was flying from rock to stone across a muddy bed. I was silent, still, so a butterfly landed in the palm of my hand. I was screaming, racing, so a hive of bees wouldn't reach my shrieking friends and me, so their stingers wouldn't pierce the soil covering our legs, then puncture our skin to give up their lives for the queen, to punish us for poking their buzzing, humming home. I was singing, standing on a shaded lane, waiting for the school bus and looking where the big kids pointed as a flying squirrel soared above our heads.</p> <p>I was out there.</p> <p>I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, out in Dauphin County, not far from the dairy farms and the Amish and the Appalachian hills. I was a wild child.</p> <p>We all were. It was the 70s, and we were free to be, you and me. Mostly.</p> <p>Meaning, the earth and the farming culture that raised me encouraged me to ascend. I mounted piles of snow plowed by trucks each winter. I clamored atop bales of hay that smelled musty, like the beating earth itself in summer heat. I was a strong Black girl. My own body powered me up, up, and my very spirit soared even higher, like the migrating birds that filled indigo sky each spring and fall above Harrisburg.</p> <p>But there was so much, out there, ready to tear me down.</p> <p>My mother loved the country. Born in the Bronx, she lived in New York City until she was around six years old, and my grandmother moved to Philadelphia, the metropolis that powers Pennsylvania. Harrisburg was just a town. There are more strip malls now, but back in the 70s, open fields stretched to the horizon. \"God's Country,\" my mother called it. My father was raised in \"The 'Burg,\" as he called his hometown, and he, ironically, preferred life in the rowhouses that sort of leaned into one another not far from the capitol dome. We lived near Reservoir Park when my parents were still married, and my mother hated the closeness. She had been raised in a stone Georgian off Lincoln Drive, in the tony section of Germantown, Philadelphia, so for her city life was leafy, with mature trees shading single family homes as stately as hers, where Black lawyers, Black doctors, <strong>[End Page 108]</strong> and their beautiful Black wives lived, nestled in community. Her inclination to country mouse living is just one of the reasons they divorced, and she packed our things to raise me outside the city lines.</p> <p>Daddy claimed the city as a kind of birthright. On","PeriodicalId":501435,"journal":{"name":"Callaloo","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142182622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Home / Road, and: Poem for the End of the World (Bees & Things & Flowers), and: Arroz Con Dulce, and: Augur","authors":"Amy M. Alvarez","doi":"10.1353/cal.2024.a935713","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cal.2024.a935713","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 --> Home / Road, and: Poem for the End of the World (Bees & Things & Flowers), and: Arroz Con Dulce, and: Augur <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Amy M. Alvarez (bio) </li> </ul> <h2>HOME / ROAD</h2> <p><span>I find myself saying <em>I want</em></span><span><em>to go home</em> aloud sometimes,</span><span>as I drive my aging silver</span><span>Soul after work, deciding</span><span>whether to stop for some</span><span>university event or press</span><span>toward home. <em>Home</em> sometimes</span><span>meaning Queens or Harlem—</span><span>old haunts where I am not</span><span>the object of attention; sometimes,</span><span>I mean Tampa with a rainbow</span><span>of cousins playing dominoes like</span><span>our abuelo taught us; or <em>home</em> as</span><span>in a table of Black people in my</span><span>current state—</span></p> <p><span>West Virginia—sometimes you</span><span>are home—your hills green like</span><span>the hills of my mother & father's</span><span>island homelands, rainwater</span><span>pouring through sandstone chasms.</span><span>When I say <em>home</em>,</span></p> <p><span>I mean fungi, ash, or ether, or</span><span>maybe the hollow of my lover's</span><span>neck, the tender center of his chest,</span><span>& maybe by his chest I mean heaven</span><span>as I imagine it: spring rain flooding</span><span>the roads, wind telling us <em>arrival</em></span><span><em>& departure</em>, sheets tangled, warm,</span><span>succulent bud of joy at the center</span><span>of my self. <strong>[End Page 20]</strong></span></p> <h2>POEM FOR THE END OF THE WORLD (BEES & THINGS & FLOWERS)</h2> <p><span>You asked what I'd write if the world</span><span>were ending. I don't know that I could</span></p> <p><span>find words at that moment, but since</span><span>we're nearing the end anyhow, all I</span></p> <p><span>can think to say is this: there were purple</span><span>and yellow flowers, a season called spring.</span></p> <p><span>There were small fuzzy, flying things—</span><span>bees—who came to beds of these flowers</span></p> <p><span>to feast on their nectar because they could</span><span>see better when shades of gold and violet</span></p> <p><span>wove together. <em>Can you imagine</em>, I would</span><span>write, words already smoldering on the page,</span></p> <p><span>we had all that—flowers and bees and spring—</span><span><em>can you imagine?</em> <strong>[End Page 21]</strong></span></p> <h2>ARROZ CON DULCE</h2> <h3>1</h3> <p><span>A month and a day after</span><span>my abuelita left us to clean</span><span>up old squabbles, I found</span><span>scrawled notes from our last</span><span>time together in her pink house</span><span>on Bougainvillea Ave.</span></p> <p><span>When I asked her favorite</span><span>recipes that day, she told me</span><span>about the pasteles she made</span><span>for","PeriodicalId":501435,"journal":{"name":"Callaloo","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142182560","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Blessed, and: From a Wrinkle","authors":"E.J. Wade","doi":"10.1353/cal.2024.a935738","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cal.2024.a935738","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 --> Blessed, and: From a Wrinkle <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> E.J. Wade (bio) </li> </ul> <h2>BLESSED</h2> <p><span>She considers herself blessed</span><span>that she still has a job when</span><span>so many people in our neighborhood</span><span>have none.</span></p> <p><span>Rising in the morning before we wake,</span><span>she bakes biscuits, fries salt pork,</span><span>and sits out butter and canned preserves</span><span>atop the oil-clothed tabletop her daddy made,</span><span>her soul sorrowful at the thought of not sharing</span><span>the breakfast she has made for us, with us.</span></p> <p><span>Placing a kiss on each of our heads before closing</span><span>the door behind her, she hums a mournful hymn</span><span>from someplace deep in her belly.</span></p> <p><span>She considers herself blessed</span><span>that she is able to walk to work</span><span>using her own two feet, saving the $2.00 bus fare</span><span>she tucks away in the rusted Maxwell House coffee can</span><span>concealed beneath the gingham headscarf</span><span>at the bottom of the midnight-blue overnight case</span><span>buried in the back of the closet.</span></p> <p><span>It is the nest egg, our emergency money,</span><span>payment to the Insurance Man</span><span>who visits every third Saturday of the month</span><span>like clockwork to collect payment</span><span>for the Life Insurance Policy.</span><span>She hopes she will be blessed,</span><span>never to have to use it. <strong>[End Page 123]</strong></span></p> <p><span>She considers herself blessed that she has inherited</span><span>the constitution of her mother and the fearlessness</span><span>of her mother before her but smart enough</span><span>to know her place, and wise enough</span><span>to not get above her raisin.</span></p> <p><span>Her head lowered; she places her pride</span><span>in the pocket of her apron for safe keeping,</span><span>her eyes focused on the peripheral.</span><span>She waits for permission to breathe,</span><span>think,</span><span>speak.</span></p> <p><span>She considers herself blessed</span><span>that she still has a job when</span><span>so many people in our neighborhood</span><span>have none. <strong>[End Page 124]</strong></span></p> <h2>FROM A WRINKLE</h2> <p><span>from a wrinkle a profound</span><span>historical memory</span><span>rises high above the mountains of blue ridge</span></p> <p><span> a cobalt triumph sky</span><span> counteracts the sun laced in saffron</span><span> threads and cumulus clouds</span></p> <p><span>the smell of Appalachian pine and oak trees</span><span> metaphorically rich</span><span> benevolent and timeless</span><span>record a sacred narrative</span><span>tattooed on bark, branch, and ancient trunk</span></p> <p><span>the earth copper warm</span><span>lush and green</span><span>swaddled in gossamer mist</span><span>lies sti","PeriodicalId":501435,"journal":{"name":"Callaloo","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142182635","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Lake Effect","authors":"William Henry Lewis","doi":"10.1353/cal.2024.a935745","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cal.2024.a935745","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 --> Lake Effect <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> William Henry Lewis (bio) </li> </ul> <p>The evening Edward Stokes was sure his wife had left him, he took a longer walk than was customary into the winter woods. Just recently, without ever following such a ritual, he had begun walking stretches of his acreage at least once a day. He had been out of work since late spring and had too much time on his hands. After three years teaching at a boarding school, he found a way to get himself fired when he had had enough of that and walked away from Belle Isle Academy and teaching history. He was sure he would not return to either, and did not much want to return to any work at all. He could take shorthand dictation, offer butler-style service for a twelve-guest table, and was as fluid digging footers with a backhoe as he was negotiating the more esoteric realms of Micro-soft Office Suite. Ten years back, he had been a night-shift janitor, cleaning the seminar rooms he sat in by day as a graduate student. He and Janeece had moved north for him to teach in Upstate New York, but now that he had left that job, and Janeece had left him, he wanted to do little more than drink rum and walk his property. He would cross the near pasture, ranging off-trail, into the spruce-covered hills that cupped the back acres, crest the ridge until he could see the house, and then return. He would find his way back to the road and pass through the barn, taking stock of the cherry logs that needed splitting. The uncut cherry had been delivered that day to the barn entrance, the road-side of the pile dusted with snow, and only a half-face cord left in the mudroom. He would survey from barn to house, checking powerlines for downed branches and the insurgence of ice along the gutters. Sometimes he would inspect nothing at all, but pause on the deck, not yet ready to sit down for supper with Janeece. He would stand in the new dark of evening, holding himself as still as he could for long stretches, certain he could hear the trickle of the backyard spring in the field, even in winter.</p> <p>Edward first walked just the berm of the road, where more people would see him. Janeece was sure he would be shot by locals who might run into him on his own land. He had bought it, it was his—<em>it's my got-damn land</em>, he would say—but locals walked it like it was theirs. They still trapped and hunted it, the same trails, the same blinds, just as their great-grandfathers, regardless of whose name was on a deed in the county office. <em>Nobody, out here, expects to see folks like us, out here</em>, Janeece would say, worried he might walk up and surprise some hick, drunk on schnapps and poaching deer, and <em>then you wake up dead on your own 'got-damn land</em>.' So, for a time, he walked the extent of his acreage that fronted the byway, shouting high-pitched <em>hellos!</em","PeriodicalId":501435,"journal":{"name":"Callaloo","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142182638","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Kissing Dixie Goodbye","authors":"Artress Bethany White","doi":"10.1353/cal.2024.a935715","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cal.2024.a935715","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 --> Kissing Dixie Goodbye <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Artress Bethany White (bio) </li> </ul> (Reprinted from <em>Survivor's Guilt: Essays on Race and American Identity</em>, New Rivers Press, 2020, 2022) <p>I fell in love with the Shenandoah Valley the first time I saw it. The sun shone brightly through intermittent clouds floating overhead and created the illusion of folds along the verdant green mountain range. As a kid traveling south with my family, I promised myself I would live there one day. Though the valley below was only dotted with farms and fields of cattle, and I had no aspirations to own either a farm or livestock, the mountain range won my heart. Years later, I recalled those thoughts while traveling up through the Shenandoah Valley with two of my stepchildren in tow. Every now and then I would yell toward the back seat, \"Kids, come on, look at that majestic view.\" They in turn sighed heavily, ungluing their faces from their respective iPads with a dismissive, \"Yeah, nice,\" before diving right back into cyber world. The beauty was lost on them, but it didn't stop me from interrupting a few more times just so I wouldn't feel guilty for not trying. In the summer of 2017, driving through the Shenandoah Valley represented something else for me: this was my proof that I was finally returning to the North after too many years away. What I didn't know when I was a child was that geography, as beautiful as it is, often harbors politics that are not culturally inclusive and are too often blatantly dangerous.</p> <p>I remind myself regularly that I should not idealize my return to the North, because to do so would be a setup for disappointment. After all, I was returning to live in Pennsylvania, the very state that had gone from blue to red in the 2016 presidential election. Add to that the realities of racism I have faced in the North and the South, and the truth is evident that racism is a pandemic knowing no regional borders. Still, it was reassuring this past winter to see one of those post-election signs planted in a snowy yard while house hunting with my husband before our move to Philadelphia. You know, the signs that state: \"In Our Community, Black Lives Matter, We Fear No Faith, Women's Rights are Human Rights, No Human is Illegal, Science is Real, Love is Love.\" As I read this one I thought, <em>I am surely in the right place</em>. Here was a self-identified human being claiming a sanctuary for all of us who desired to live in a compassionate world. <em>Hugs and kisses to you, too, my new Philadelphia neighbor</em>, I thought.</p> <p>Imagine my delight when, a scant few months later, our eight-year-old brought home her three new girlfriends during the first week in our Pennsylvania neighborhood: a Haitian American, an English-Chilean American, and an Asian American. The great melting pot of America I had previo","PeriodicalId":501435,"journal":{"name":"Callaloo","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142182563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Confluence","authors":"Joy KMT","doi":"10.1353/cal.2024.a935717","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cal.2024.a935717","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 --> Confluence <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Joy KMT (bio) </li> </ul> <p>When I travel to the memories of my childhood, I can greet most of my plant friends by name. Crown vetch planted, no doubt, to stop the hillside erosion that might one day bring one house, built into a mountain, crashing down into the next. Hawthorn, whose branches made amazing weapons and wands. Dandelion, Plantain. White Clover, Red Clover, Queen Anne's Lace, Wild Oats. Rose and a smattering of Chicory. Maple and Burdock. Oak, mighty mighty Oak. Buttercup. Mulberry, Rose of Sharon with its little black bugs nesting in the bottom. Morning Glory snaking daintily around trellises and fences.</p> <p>I can recall the friends and enemies I made with insects. Friends: Wooly caterpillar, sugar ants (sometimes, until there were too many of them) butterflies, lightnin bugs, potato bugs, katydids, praying mantises, grasshoppers, crickets, ladybugs. Enemies: anything stinging—sweat bees, honeybees, bumble bees, yellow jackets, wasps. Bee stings leave beauty marks on me; I have one above my lip, one on my index finger. Me and bees have come to a truce since my childhood. It was me who made them enemies, and me who mended the relationship. I cannot say the same about wasps.</p> <p>I recall plump tomatoes from my nana's garden, sliced fresh and seasoned only with a bit of salt, tasting like new summer. My mother's violet, crimson, and fuchsia pansies planted in the thin strip of earth she was allotted in front of our townhouse in the projects. The watermelon man from down south with his trunk full of juicy watermelon posted down by the coliseum aided us in the wilting, non-air-conditioned July heat. Picking the low-hanging cherries with my brother in my nana's backyard and savoring each one on the back porch before seeing how far each tiny, hard pit could be spit with a satisfying crack on the concrete walkway. How we raced down hills, trusting the earth and our feet, our arms outstretched like wings, bidding the wind to carry us like Nike. Of course, the quintessential opening of the fire hydrants and the gush of coolness that followed. The rhythm of snapping string beans reminds me of my nana's hands. In the fall, we dodged and pelted one another with crab apples, traveled through foot paths carved into dense foresty patches, playing in the ravines and creeks until the streetlights came on, earlier and earlier.</p> <p>A body can know a place, and a place can know a body. I don't just remember the wilds. I remember the salt box that sat outside our house for the neighborhood in the winter, right by the streetlight outside of my window that glowed like the moon in the fall when I went to bed. The Kaufmann's wooden escalator and fancy gilded bathrooms, especially near Christmastime. I remember tire screeches and gunshots, counting my distance from the gunshots like one ","PeriodicalId":501435,"journal":{"name":"Callaloo","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142182585","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Still Life with Birch and Creek, and: Bloomhead, and: Instances of Unremarkable Countryside Innocence","authors":"Ariana Benson","doi":"10.1353/cal.2024.a935711","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cal.2024.a935711","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 --> Still Life with Birch and Creek, and: Bloomhead, and: Instances of Unremarkable Countryside Innocence <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Ariana Benson (bio) </li> </ul> <h2>STILL LIFE WITH BIRCH AND CREEK</h2> <p><span>Walking through the swamp, bowing</span><span>under matted locks of birch, I long to be known</span></p> <p><span>as the damp cardinal longs to know</span><span>his brown counterpart</span></p> <p><span>has heard his wailing.</span><span>Though, since a trilled echo</span></p> <p><span>is the only confirmation of this</span><span>listening, it's impossible</span></p> <p><span>for all to know such reprieve, such desire</span><span>doused, at once. The shock</span></p> <p><span>—red bird, the dozing rodents, all waiting</span><span>to know they are wanted, which is to know</span></p> <p><span>they exist. But everyone can't know this</span><span>at the same time. Where one</span></p> <p><span>is touched, another must make do</span><span>with only their own soft</span></p> <p><span>hand. Like the patient evening</span><span>bats, I believe I am owed</span></p> <p><span>a gentleness, the kind that leaves</span><span>trails in the night sky, like those</span></p> <p><span>made by fingers run down the velour</span><span>of fur—no material change, but skin</span></p> <p><span>left darker, as if wet by touch. My darkness</span><span>demands to be held on the tongue, <strong>[End Page 5]</strong></span></p> <p><span>and so heard. The minnows,</span><span>hearing algae foaming in their creek,</span></p> <p><span>let their lips skim the drifting green</span><span>until it hisses relieved undoing. <strong>[End Page 6]</strong></span></p> <h2>BLOOMHEAD</h2> <p><span>This year, there was no keeping</span><span>the aphids away. A shame, though</span><span>I've long grown used to being</span></p> <p><span>gnawed at—latticed—by even the sparest</span><span>of jaws. The horizon, for her part,</span><span>each day sooner and sooner, spits</span></p> <p><span>up the sun. Call it yellow if you must—</span><span>I've done my best to spring</span><span>what parts of me most need caress,</span></p> <p><span>need touching. <em>What wilts</em></span><span><em>is what needed to fall away</em>,</span><span>I tell myself, yawning, begging</span></p> <p><span>the sky, against my best interest,</span><span>for more sleep. I am only human,</span><span>after all. I bow at the feet of light</span><span>as do all the living. All my weary kin. <strong>[End Page 7]</strong></span></p> <h2>INSTANCES OF UNREMARKABLE COUNTRYSIDE INNOCENCE</h2> <p><span>Take, for example, the horse. Not the stallion, the satin</span><span>-sheened result of a perfect recipe. Nor the wild mare,</span></p> <p><span>romping in pampas grass, yellow yarrow underhoof. Just</span><span>a stablehorse: plain, trusting anyone holding out a sweet palm. <strong>[End Page 8]</strong></","PeriodicalId":501435,"journal":{"name":"Callaloo","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142182624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Crossfade, and: my eyes phosphene bodies beneath my hips, and: the devil's wives","authors":"Nitajade","doi":"10.1353/cal.2024.a935718","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/cal.2024.a935718","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 --> <em>Crossfade</em>, and: my eyes phosphene bodies beneath my hips, and: the devil's wives <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Nitajade (bio) </li> </ul> <h2><em>CROSSFADE</em></h2> <p>Ancestor visits your sleep asks if you have something to say pauses long enough to hear your answer makes space for you to sit Ancestor challenges your tongue to split in testimony in waking life when you voice your visitor all your mama hears is <em>thisisit!</em> her tone insists <em>tellmewhohurtyou!</em> <em>tellme!tellme!tellme!say!</em> <em>call them out and</em> <em>i'll call away they breath</em> you can't remember vividly enough to gamble lives on yet, you know your molestation(s) the same way you know your names: one day out the blue they were called on you syllables swallowed so often you can't recall the first time you spoke them (<em>your names</em> not theirs) your mama needs rescinded-stamped confession your mama needs un-gulped wine she needs un-inhaled blunt she needs unmarred midnight moon a trick of the light illusions of successful safety smoke in mirrors your mama needs erasure until your tongue reverses or (un)splits she will never stop reaching for their names. <strong>[End Page 43]</strong></p> <p>Ancestor visits your sleep asks if you have something to say pauses long enough to hear your answer makes space for you to sit <strong>Ancestor</strong> challenges your tongue to split in testimony in waking life when you voice your visitor all your mama hears is <em>thisisit!</em> her tone insists <em>tellmewhohurtyou!</em> <em>tellme!tellme!tellme!say!</em> <em>call them out and</em> <em>i'll <strong>call away they breath</strong></em> you can't remember vividly enough to gamble lives on yet, you know your mo<strong>lest</strong>ation(s) the same way you know your names: one day out the blue they were called on you syllables swallowed so often you can't recall the first time you spoke them (<em>your names</em> not theirs) your mama needs a <em>rescinded</em>-stamped confession your mama needs <strong>un-gulped</strong> wine she needs un-inhaled blunt she needs unmarred midnight moon a trick of the light illusions of successful safety <strong></strong> smoke in mirrors <strong></strong> your mama needs erasure <strong></strong> until your <strong>tongue</strong> reverses <strong></strong> or (un)splits <strong></strong> she will never stop <strong> reach</strong>ing <strong></strong> for <strong>their names</strong>. <strong>[End Page 44]</strong></p> <p><strong>Ancestor</strong> visits your sleep asks if you have something to say pauses long enough to hear your answer makes space for you to sit Ancestor <strong>challenges you</strong>r tongue <strong>to</strong> split in testimony in waking life when you voice your visitor all your mama hears is ","PeriodicalId":501435,"journal":{"name":"Callaloo","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142182562","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}