cq 62.3 winter 2012

P O E T R Y | F I C T I O N | E S S A Y S | R E V I E W S

CAROLINA QUARTERLYTHE

W I N T E R 2 0 1 2 I S S U E | V O L . 6 2 , N O . 3

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His face haunts me at night, this terrifying calm. I don’t know who he is, why he sits so high above us, why he watches us. Mom and Dad never explained. He is just an ornament, but when everything else becomes dark geometry against the walls, only he is illuminated. Just his face in the darkness, golden like a tiny sun. AN TRAN

Emily Blake Alverson

Craig Beaven

Judith Ernst

Scott Gould

Jim Haberman

Lois Marie Harrod

Lola Haskins

Victoria Kelly

Sara E. Lamer

Johannes Lichtman

Suzanne Matson

Marty McConnell

Constance Pappalardo

Dana Roeser

Harold Whit Williams

and more

F E A T U R I N G A D D I T I O N A L W O R K B Y

cq_coverfileFINAL11.indd 1 12/16/12 2:34 PM



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Bibliography of English Language and Literature. Member Coordinating

Library of Congress catalogue card number 52019435.

ABOVE | Jim Haberman

COVER | Centrifugal/Centripedal: “Dark Night of the Soul” Judith Ernst

AUTHOR NAME 3

ASSISTANT EDITORS

Bhumi Dalia

Heather Van Wallendael

COVER DESIGN

F O U N D E D I N 1 9 4 8AT T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N O RT H CA RO L I N A – C H A P E L H I L L

ABOVE | Jim Haberman

COVER | Centrifugal/Centripedal: “Dark Night of the Soul” Judith Ernst

Matthew Hotham | EDITOR- IN-CHIEF

O N L I N E AT www.thecarol inaquarterly.com

F O U N D E D I N 1 9 4 8AT T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N O RT H CA RO L I N A – C H A P E L H I L L

FICTION EDITORS

Lindsay Starck

NON-FICTION EDITOR

POETRY EDITOR

Lee Norton

WEB EDITOR

INTERNSRiley, and Nathan Vail

FICTION READERS:

POETRY READERS:

NON-FICTION READERS:

C O N T E N T S

W I N T E R 2 0 1 2 | V O L . 6 2 , N O . 3

P O E T R Y

12 EMILY BLAKE ALVERSON | Diving Wake

13 MARTY MCCONNELL | not mentioning tulips vivisection (you’re going to break my heart)

32 LOLA HASKINS | Bravery Toasts

41 SARA E. LAMERS | White Lesions

42 DANA ROESER | sub-cute

66 LOIS MARIE HARROD | The Former Undertake on His Way to the Morgue

91 HAROLD WHIT WILLIAMS | What My Brother Says What My Brother Prays

108 CRAIG BEAVEN | Stargazer’s Field

F I C T I O N

7 JOHANNES LICHTMAN | Mira

19 VICTORIA KELLY | Finding the Good Light

60 SUZANNE MATSON | Boys’ Choir

78 SCOTT GOULD | Orbit

N O N - F I C T I O N

94 AN TRAN | Redshift

12 THE CAROLINA QUARTERLY

EMILY BLAKE ALVERSON

Diving Wake

we were left smoking in the morning

heron overhead, he’d started something

that was to be lifted above the land, our

name, and the house, troubled like the

surface of a pond. Morning, my father

up from a very young age to remember,

before we were lost like dogs. Before

there were stories of an ancestor

digging this body of water for the

ripples to spread out around him like the

face of a drum.

MARTY MCCONNELL 13

MARTY MCCONNELL

not mentioning tulips

the sky is full of rock salt. my shoes,

can fuck off like her cousins the wind

not all this business of polyps, massive

cardiac infarctions, anemones threaded

through the old quarry, all the stones

here at the visitation, asking the same mayonnaise

and white-bread questions as if the graveyard

to leap on, just some gutted neighborhood

passed on the way to somewhere good.


CONSTANCE PAPPALARDO | Missing Alice #2

VICTORIA KELLY 19

VICTORIA KELLY

Finding the Good Light

that she had already lived a whole life, as had her castmates, most of

they sat around in one of the tiny trailers, drinking from plastic cups of

beer and wondering how it was they’d all ended up in the backwaters of

made It Happened One Night with Clark Gable, and Diane was cast as

minutes outside of Hollywood, and there was an ease and lighthearted-

ness among the cast, a sense that they were never going to be able to pull

off such a show believably, so why even worry about it—they were, after

all, unknown actors playing famous actors playing characters from one

of the most famous movies of the pre-war years. Bill, who played Clark

-

never having been on screen before would help people “suspend their

-

bama over the course of one hot, dusty summer, so by the time the movie

premiered in nine theaters, and then nine hundred, and then—to every-

one’s amazement—nine thousand, Diane had only been to California one

time, to sign her contract before the whole thing began.

She didn’t have an agent or a headshot or a resume, and she hadn’t

movie came out and people learned her name. But then suddenly, they

York, journalists and clothing designers and theater directors who had

turned her down for half a dozen roles in the weeks before. She was


offered ten jobs in the period of two days, and she didn’t know who to

say yes to, so she jotted down the directors’ names on a yellow legal pad

by the phone and said she would call them back.

The Girl from Saint-Mandé

was living in a tiny apartment across from a church in Morristown, New

Jersey, where she’d grown up. Her parents were long dead by then, and

felt a strange attachment to the little New Jersey town—its parks and

panederías and even the luxury condominium building that had replaced

the gray stone church across the street, which always had a light in one

of its windows.

on her way from buying a dress for a friend’s party. She thought she

heard something behind her in the stairwell, and it was late, and she

had emerged alone into the dark garage, after the store had closed and

it was starting to be the time of night when people didn’t go out in cer-

tain neighborhoods in Morristown. When the man appeared behind her,

and she saw that he was tall and dressed entirely in black, she thought

face as if to protect herself. But then, instead of attacking her, he pulled

out a camera and took her picture—and the shot—her stricken, doe-

eyed expression of terror—appeared the following week in Life & Style.

She took the magazine into the supermarket bathroom and studied the

But it was strange, and almost worrisome; she did not look afraid—only

stunningly, trustingly child-like—and she realized that this was what

people saw when they looked at her—someone who hadn’t been tainted

yet by the drama of drugs or money or sex; someone whose best years

that she was a divorcee; that she’d already been in the thick of war, had

held the hands of women whose husbands had fallen in pieces on the side

VICTORIA KELLY 21

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size of her apartment.

She had met Jack when she was nineteen, just out of high school

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len with life that she almost believed he could give her back all those sad

years she’d lost after her parents died.

school classmates. She settled easily into the wives’ groups and learned

had to ask for it, and how to budget on his ensign’s salary, and how to

lie about being military on her job applications so they wouldn’t know

she’d probably be gone in another year. She liked the other wives; they

called each other a lot, mostly for no reason, and went to movies and

traded magazines and played tennis at the courts on base when they

weren’t working or watching each other’s kids.

over Baghdad and they were talking about children when he got back. But

almost as soon as he was home, he was gone again, to Key West for the

next round of workups, and then he went back over the ocean, this time

while he was gone, when she came home from her job selling accessories

at a bridal salon, she always expected to see the chaplain and the other

wives standing on her doorstep. Midway through, she got the call that it

had happened after all, but to someone else’s husband, and a few hours

later she found herself in the sad huddle on some other girl’s driveway.

One miscarriage and two deployments and seven years after their

the tarmac, full of remorse, that he’d met someone else on the aircraft

carrier, and he didn’t want to be married anymore, not to her at least.

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SARA E . LAMERS 41

SARA E . LAMERS

White Lesions

Whose sound tastes like legions, suggests

multitudes, masses, as if millions of pins

gleaming sharp, dream them clicking

on, little brilliances,

surges, not poison patches

the synapses, the neurons beat down.

White lesions—an orchard

full blown into blossom, colony of sheep

so thick the pasture is wild dots. Or else,

yes, snow. How it stuns the ground.

75J IM HABERMAN | Ancient Ruins, Petra, Jordan

77J IM HABERMAN | Timna Valley, Israel


SCOTT GOULD

Orbit

than grotesque, at least at that age—an ability that seemed a generous

reward for all the pain he’d had to endure because of the refrigerator.

aware of the appliances and rusted transmissions and angle iron there,

too high. So we always waited until after a good rain to jump. Lonnie’s

impatience overcame his good sense one afternoon that summer and he

took a Kenmore to the right side of his head.

to let me visit Lonnie. She said it would upset me, but my mother’s sub-

text was that Lonnie’s stupidity might be contagious. She was a nurse.

She knew better. But she also knew Lonnie did things that brought him

within a gnat’s hair of death. He was the boy who hung between the

trestle rails when the lumber train ran through town on its way to the

paper mill. He was the boy who snuck up on alligators sleeping across

the hot sand bars on Black River. Now he was the boy who had fake

bones in his face. He was a hero.

mother came back from her shift at the hospital with daily reports of his

progress. “Well, it’s too swollen to tell what it’s going to look like,” she

said one afternoon. “One half of his face looks, frankly, like a buttocks

parts at the hospital, she didn’t want to think about more of them at the

false eye today,” she told me in a voice that sounded too celebratory, the

SCOTT GOULD 79

regular basis. When you’re fourteen, tragedy is a passing annoyance.

-

could fish and blow smoke rings. On the eighth grade playground, she

wore t-shirts with nothing else on underneath and leather gloves she

stole from her mother. She’d cut the fingers out of the gloves and during

recess, she pretended to be riding a large motorcycle. On one thin fore-

arm was an ink tattoo, a design she freshened every day with an ancient-

that said, Take no crap from any man woman or child

she avoided the principal’s office with crap on her arm and no bra under

her shirt, but none of our teachers (women who could detect the rustle

father left money for cheeseburgers on the kitchen counter.

We never knew exactly where my father went the times he disap-

peared. He didn’t have a job because he couldn’t work. He said his

stomach wouldn’t allow it. His stomach was a daily source of drama and

conversation when he was around, because he’d lost a sizeable chunk of

-

was off searching for his missing stomach, and this gave Eli nightmares

spackle bucket full of redbreast and we’d say, Ah, fishing. He’d come

back with a black eye and a gash across the bridge of his nose and

we’d say, Ah, fighting. Sometimes he would come back after a week and

wouldn’t say a word, and we didn’t know what to ask. Neither did our


AN TRAN

Redshift

is tall, white, with military-cropped red-blond hair. When he knocks, the

booms rattle the entire house. He doesn’t look angry.

Terminator 2, like his

glare can shoot spikes of liquid metal into me. He has a clipboard that he

looks down at next, and then his face contorts as he tries to read. “Does

a Huu-ong Nah-goo-yen

“My grandma’s here. Dad’s at work.”

his clipboard. “Give this to your mom or dad when someone gets home.

My brother’s on the couch watching a cartoon. His name is Hieu,

but we call him Harry. He’s a small thing, two years younger, still at that

age where Barney is fun to watch. My sister Hang probably named him

AN TRAN 95

away why Heather gave us white-people names.

She’s been hanging with a bad crowd since she got into middle

school. Dresses in chains and bandanas and keeps a lot of knives in her

she didn’t like the noise of our feet, so she started screaming something

terrible and walked us into a corner. We were paralyzed. She had this fat

kitchen knife, a mirror for empty light that cut into our eyes. She pressed

stalked back to our room, locked the door shut, and sat together on the

take care of us, but she’s eighty-something and senile and we leave the

-

one ornament, a framed picture of Mom and Dad’s wedding day that

hangs on the wall. She wears a gold Chinese dress; Dad wears a gray suit.


kids to answer the door.”

cousin convinced us it was a good idea to try to light a dead squirrel on

He stares at Mom with disinterest, like he’s removed himself from the

situation. He’s never liked confrontation; if he disagrees, he’ll nod along

know they are wrong.

Mom says, “Oh, well, your teachers are wrong. You do not talk

don’t know where either of them are at any given

but family. Your family is the only thing that will always be there for

or canh sat.” She says “police” in Vietnamese as a way to emphasize that

point, as if to say, especially the police.

AN TRAN 97

When she is done with her lecture, we are allowed back to our room.

moon creeps into the sky. Eventually, all sound abandons the house.

sneak into the living room downstairs and sit on the couch alone in the

-

lights gleaming through the glass of our back door. He is enchantingly

know who he is, why he sits so high above us, why he watches us. Mom

and Dad never explained. He is just an ornament, but when everything

else becomes dark geometry against the walls, only he is illuminated. Just

his face in the darkness, golden like a tiny sun.

breathe, the swamp air of Northern Virginia thickens in your throat and

mottled with dark spots of moisture, beads of sweat collected on their

know why we suddenly can trust policemen again. Mom tells us later that

Heather is staying with a friend. We play along because we are used to her

lies. Our cousin, closer to Heather’s age, relays the truth to us: Heather

has run away with a gang. We’re told she had to give herself to each of

thirteen year old sister playing out the forbidden scenes in rated-R movies.

But it’s all too easy to imagine Heather stealing, snorting, killing.


Days before you were born

falling on them, white

seemed closer than the earth.

they raised sheep and rams, in separate pens,

a thin line of wire

if you were to touch it

it would warm your hands,

you would feel it in your bones, and although

the rams wanted to cross

they had learned not to.

dipping for a mouthful of grass.

for thousands of years, to look out

at the bowl of mountains. South

beyond the valley, as land slopes

to the sea, you were waiting across a continent just days

safe in your dark water, and thought of you

in ten years. We will walk up here together

to look at the rams, to look out

into the valley. We will see mountains,

CRAIG BEAVEN

Stargazer’s Field

CRAIG BEAVEN 109

and as clouds move, further mountains

like a curtain pulling back across a stage.

We will wear orange vests that say


JASMINE V. BAILEY

Voodoo Inverso

Voodoo Inverso by Mark Wagenaar

Mark Wagenaar’s Voodoo Inverso is

unconvincingly swept together, these poems are subtly bound by religious

recurs in the form of dramatic monologues and semi-confessional

that, despite formal gestures, resist easy categorization.

is in the first line, which sets up what becomes a sumptuous list poem:

shifts in which the viewer and the viewed switch positions: “birch leaves

floating on the river, / a constellation the drowned must look on...the

moon in the canal below. / Like seeing myself behind a glass door.”

more powerful insight into the desolation of the lost speaker than an

-

ing of another’s voice.

JASMINE V. BAILEY 111

Nothing But Bones” that struck me for its importance: “as if platelets

of many poems that plays with the Orpheus and Eurydice myth: “Some-

one who has only half-returned // from that world would recognize it,

always hopeful and longing, struck with joy and pain, is a straddler of

book is to make us marvel at the silliness of going through the world

unstunned—unawed.

-

quently in their original language), and the vast repertoire of images,

locales, and concerns, give some insight into the artistic influences that

other books, visit other places, know more things, to see if you can

discover for yourself some of what this poet renders so compellingly in

words.


C O N T R I B U T O R S

W I N T E R 2 0 1 2 | V O L . 6 2 , N O . 3

EMILY BLAKE ALVERSON’s work has appeared in Cargoes. Originally

University in New Orleans.

JASMINE V. BAILEY’s chapbook, Sleep and What Precedes It, is avail-

Alexandria, is

editor of 32 Poems.

CRAIG BEAVEN -

Rattle, Copper Nickel,

Third Coast, Southern Humanities Review, and others.

JUDITH ERNST

University. She has painted, published illuminated books, and lived and

Muslim Networks: From Hajj to Hip Hop and

-

-

versity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke, and the North Carolina

SCOTT GOULD

Kenyon Review, New Madrid Journal, Black Warrior Review, Yemassee,

New Stories from the South, and New Southern Harmonies, among others.

He has work forthcoming in Bull: Men’s Fiction. He is a past winner of

CONTRIBUTORS 113

teaches creative writing at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the

J IM HABERMAN is known for his bizarre and humorous photographs and

several documentary projects. He also created a series of 40 postcards

-

Massachusettes.

LOIS MARIE HARROD’s 12th collection, The Only Is, won the 2012

Brief Term, a collection of poems

about teachers and teaching, was published in 2011. Cosmongony won

LOLA HASKINS’ poems have appeared in The Atlantic, the London

Review of Books, The New York Quarterly, Georgia Review, and else-

where. Her most recent collection is The Grace to Leave

another about insects. Her prose includes Solutions Beginning with A

and Not Feathers Yet: A Beginner’s Guide to the Poetic Life

-

lowships, and several prizes for narrative poetry.

VICTORIA KELLY

States Mitchell Scholar. Her fiction has been published in Colorado

Review, Fiction, and The Idaho Review, among others. Her poetry

has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Southwest Review, Harpur

Palate, Nimrod, and others. She lives in Virginia Beach and teaches

Creative Writing at Old Dominion University.


SARA E . LAMERS is the author of the poetry collection A City Without

Trees and the chapbook Applause: The Patron Saint Poems. Other work

has appeared in journals such as

and Rattle -

JOHANNES LICHTMAN’s writing has been published by American Short

Fiction, Los Angeles Review of Books, Oxford American, and others.

He teaches graduate liberal studies at UNC Wilmington and runs the

Blingtheory blog. “Mira” is a part of his novel-in-progress.

SUZANNE MATSON

The Tree-Sitter -

MARTY MCCONNELL

Sarah Lawrence College, and her work has recently appeared in A Face

to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry, City

of the Big Shoulders: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry, Gulf Coast, Indi-

ana Review, Crab Orchard Review, Salt Hill, Beloit Poetry Journal, and

Drunken Boat.

CONSTANCE PAPPALARDO

Students League and continued her education at the School of Visual

Her contemporary abstract watercolors have been featured in numer-

ous galleries in Cary, Raleigh, Chapel Hill, and other cities in North

CONTRIBUTORS 115

corporate collections as well as private collections in the United States

DANA ROESER is the author of two books of poetry, Beautiful Motion

and In the Truth Room

in Prairie Schooner, New Ohio Review, Cimarron Review, Green Moun-

tains Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Southern Review, Blackbird, and

Notre Dame Review.

AN TRAN’s work has also appeared in The Kartika Review, Our Stories

Literary Journal, and Connotation Press

HAROLD WHIT WILLIAMS

chapbook, Waiting For The Fire To Go Out

Atlanta Review, Oxford American,

Oklahoma Review, Slipstream, Tulane Review, among others.


The Carolina Quarterly thrives thanks to the institutional support of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and our generous individual donors. Beyond the printing of each issue, monetary and in-kind donations help to fund opportunities for our undergraduate interns, university, and community outreach programs, as well as improvements

the Quarterly, please contact us at [email protected] or call

GUARANTORS

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Grady Ormsby

FRIENDS George Lensing

Department.

and dispersed by the Student Government at UNC-Chapel Hill.


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CAROLINA QUARTERLYTHE


TH

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$ 9 . 0 0 F R E E T O U N C S T U D E N T S

His face haunts me at night, this terrifying calm. I don’t know who he is, why he sits so high above us, why he watches us. Mom and Dad never explained. He is just an ornament, but when everything else becomes dark geometry against the walls, only he is illuminated. Just his face in the darkness, golden like a tiny sun. AN TRAN

Emily Blake Alverson

Craig Beaven

Judith Ernst

Scott Gould

Jim Haberman

Lois Marie Harrod

Lola Haskins

Victoria Kelly

Sara E. Lamer

Johannes Lichtman

Suzanne Matson

Marty McConnell

Constance Pappalardo

Dana Roeser

Harold Whit Williams

and more

F E A T U R I N G A D D I T I O N A L W O R K B Y


cq 62.3 winter 2012

Documents

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d d i t i o n

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bc o n t e n t sw

obbf o u n d e d i n

comf o u n d e d i n

t u r i n g

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