Friends of Writers is happy to present, with the help of publisher Black Lawrence, an excerpt from Twister, the new new novel by alum Genanne Walsh (fiction, ’04):

Sweeping over the Arctic Archipelago, puckering nipples and chapping faces across Nunavut: in Grise Fiord, Resolute, Gjoa Haven; crossing into Manitoba, freezing the top layers of Island Lake, Gods Lake, nameless ponds, dew crunching underfoot. The front gathers, pushes over Winnipeg, Grand Forks, Fargo, Lincoln, on it comes, barreling through tornado alley to meet its match: spring! A current weaves a lothario path across the Gulf of Mexico, up through Anguilla, Santo Domingo, Port de Paix, Nassau, bringing the scent of cinnamon, slums, and rotting magnolia leaves, trailing across tobacco farms, mighty rivers, strip malls, state colleges, Army barracks, drained wetlands, golf courses. Pushing west into dry Pacific air. Blowing across the southwest, arid and punishing—imagine dustbowls, cow skulls, locusts, parched earth—rolling off the Rockies, faster as it flows east. Sisters clash and mingle in the wide open skies of the continent’s midpoint—dry meets damp, warmth amassed and shuddering into updrafts and squalls, rushed by the eager fingers of their cold northern lover. Thunderheads build, form, break apart, and build again, gathering strength unseen by those below. North, south, east, west, we’ll put these people to the test. Havoc’s in play, the winged creatures sense it, though even the crows don’t know the scope of what’s to come.

Hover at the midpoint. Turn the radio dial; hear snatches of the lives below. Listen.

Crows rustle on the wires over Main Street, over Mondragon’s Emporium and Dunleavy’s Fine Shoes (&Shoe Repair); over The Bluebird Café and the bank and the old town square. Black feathers lift and wheel past the liquor store and a shuttered B&B, past power lines, houses, cars and churches, over the cemetery, streets giving way to fields, farms laid out in a neat expanse: the vast acreage of agribusiness, a few sturdy family farmers holding on, green squares of corn and soy bringing order; and in the center, down the old county road, not far south of Johnson’s Creek and just past the Infamous Elm, Rose’s overgrown reluctant acres.

One small, tangly patch, that land of hers, the well pulsing like a heart. Listen.
Rose
Rose moved through the thickets with a sharp set of shears, pruning, smoking a cigar. Her dog, Fergus, dreamt and farted on the porch. All this growth and nothing to show for it. Lance would have been shocked. Her son was so good at making things grow—crops, blackberries, houseplants, hopes. There was nothing he couldn’t coax into life. A good kid, her soldier boy. Smart in every sense of the word. Fergus thumped his tail. He always knew when she was thinking of his number one love.

“That’s right,” she said to Fergus. “Him.” He scratched an ear in response. She had the sense of the sky pulling taut into a bow. No, she shook her head—a bowl. Overhead, a great bowl. Chipped at the edges but still functional.

Rose gave the stogie one final pull and coughed in a hard burst. Phlegm rose and Fergus lifted his head. She set her shears on the porch and peered into the well. Either the well was getting deeper or the sky darker; she couldn’t see her reflection. There must be a scientific reason: cloud patterns, air molecules. Or no reason at all.

“Onward, into the void,” she told Fergus. “Come on, let’s check the mail.” They walked down the long drive, gravel skittering, her anklebones clicking in protest.

“How did this happen to me?” she asked Fergus. There must be some mistake.

The well was getting deeper but the mailbox was smaller. Its little red flag was rusted upright, and faded letters spelled out her dead husband’s name. Theo. She reached in to pull at the contents and could barely wrench her hand free. Nothing but junk. Last week there had been another letter from her stepsister, on prissy peach-colored paper and smelling of lilacs, with the careful spidery lettering of a serial killer. Rose hadn’t read Stella’s letter yet—it waited on the mantel for her to build a fire, so she could throw it in and watch the flames.

The mailbox held a catalog full of crap she didn’t need. And more notices from the bank, the vultures. She tore the catalog and the bank’s window envelope into strips and threw the pieces into the air. Shiny paper caught in the branches. Then the metal box vibrated a little—something inside wanted her attention. Fergus looked up the drive and whimpered low in his throat.
She shoved her hand into the mailbox once more and pulled out a flimsy pale blue airmail envelope that had been caught in the back seam. Rose Red looped across the paper, in elegant script. Next to her name was a sketch of a long-stemmed rose with a single thorn.

You can read more about the book and Genanne at her website, genannewalsh.com

Two poems by alum Jennifer Givhan (poetry, ’15) appear at Pank Magazine:

Billiards

Say it’s Main Street
& I’m holding a black 8-ball
against the felt of my palm—

its heft could dent plaster.
Say I’ve shot tequila
off a baby changing table

Continue reading online…

Three poems by alum Michael Collins (poetry, ’03) appear at Modern Poetry Quarterly Review:

Pluviophilia
My corpse has awoken from its crusade
in the other world of myth and dream,
where I failed to subject gods and beings
to whatever tenuous totalidoxy

I thought I was seeking. To verify
You exist. I suppose this is all for the best.
Infallible ideas tend to lead to holy wars,
which would end poorly, me having no army.

Continue reading online…

Congratulations to Robert Thomas (poetry, ’02) on winning the 2015 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Fiction for his novel Bridge.

From the award ceremony program:

“In Bridge, Robert Thomas constructs, with urgency and crackling, unrelenting energy, a story told with the contradictory self-doubt and wild self-awareness of a bright, sardonic, and potentially self-destructive young woman. Even as we appreciate her tenuous existential dilemma, Alice’s vivid internal construction of an overwhelming worldview in short diaristic episodes seems, in its very creation, to keep her alive. Considering how easily readers might have felt claustrophobic within, or limited by Alice’s point of view—interior, unraveling—it is singularly impressive that Thomas manages—through the beauty of his prose, sophistication of his references, and propulsive energy of Alice’s mind—to connect the reader, and the narrator’s struggle, with the outside world. Although Alice’s beautiful and dangerous estrangement is entirely and selfishly her own, it becomes ours, and teaches us something larger and universal. This novel is an experiential wonder, giddy and joyful reading via the desperate empathy it both demands and models. The digressive, perfectly choreographed role of docent to everyday madness, as played by our heroine, is a brave pleasure in word and sentence, a totally pleasing combination of narrator and authorial, artistic self-control, and vividly evocative self-consciousness.”

Judges’ Statement of Cynthia Sweeney, Melanie Thorne, and Andrew Tonkovich, 2015 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Fiction