Alumni Fiction in Frieght Stories

Alumnae Tatjana Soli (fiction, ’06) and Erin Stalcup (fiction, ’04) both have new stories appearing in the current issue of Freight Stories Magazine.

Love Monkey
Tatjana Soli

The traffic that morning had been nerve-wracking—a long, blue, exhaust-spewing snake winding its way east from Los Angeles into the dilapidated, scrub desert of Riverside County. Farid’s hand rested lightly on the steering wheel, the vents of the air-conditioner all aimed at him so that despite the ninety-degree heat outside, his face was cold and dry as stone. He had just bought the Lexus with a signing bonus from his new engineering job, and had spent the morning under the carport polishing it with a tenderness he had not shown to Caitlin since he returned from his trip. When she asked him to drive her to Scottsdale to visit her parents, he had been displeased, the only saving grace that he could open the car up on the freeway.

“Why don’t you just fly? I’ll take you to the airport,” he had said.

“Because they want to meet you.”  …[Keep Reading]…

Population 51, Elevation 15
Erin Stalcup

He steps off the dock as if he expects to set his foot on glass.

He sinks.

She doesn’t know this man she’s been watching but takes her hands out of her pockets and runs towards him, kicking up dust on the path, clattering across the dock, which is not wet, not slippery.

She gets on her belly and stretches down but her fingertips don’t touch the water. She reaches. She tries to get to him. She’s too small, too young, but she wants to be strong enough to find him and grab him and pull him out, yank him up, help him back to land.

There’s a roiled place in the water but no thrashing man, no one swimming, no one trying to save himself. She stands and throws her jacket to the dock. She pulls her sweater over her head. She readies herself to dive, but the water is smooth.

No one reaches up. …[Keep Reading]…

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What Hangs on Trees

Alumna Glenis Redmond (poetry, ’11) discusses poetry and the southern landscape in Orion Magazine.

I AM SIMULTANEOUSLY enchanted and haunted by trees.

As a child, I was a tomboyish tree-climbing tree lover—a daydreamer held in mahogany arms. If I went missing, my family knew where to find me: perched on a branch, peering up into the sky or speculating about the world below. Then, I did not know the word sacred, but I sensed the meaning, especially sheltered from the world by a dome of emerald leaves. It was the one place where I felt the most whole. I experienced an inexplicable kinship with trees, which is probably why I developed an insatiable curiosity to learn their names: maple, pine, birch, willow . . . Live oaks were my trees of choice.

At that time, there was no way for me to grasp the shadow side, to investigate the tangled depths of my psyche in regard to trees, especially those gnarled live oaks. My dual consciousness was related to the land, especially land below the Mason-Dixon line. But I didn’t realize just how severe the dichotomy was until graduate school, when I was asked to write a pastoral poem, a poem that regales the bucolic aspects of nature. When I attempted to write the poem, I hit a wall, a psychological and historical one. It wasn’t until my last semester, when I studied a poem from Lucille Clifton’s book Mercy that I began to understand why the pastoral poem was causing me so much deep-seated angst. Clifton’s untitled poem begins:

surely I am able to write poems
celebrating grass           ….[Keep Reading]…

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Alumni Updates

Alison Moore (fiction, ’90): Alison’s new novel Riders on the Orphan Train is now available from Roadworthy Press.

Fourteen years ago I “jumped the tenure track for the orphan train.” I’ve never regretted the decision. I left my assistant professor post at the University of Arizona MFA creative writing program to become an itinerant performer in collaboration with my husband, songwriter Phil Lancaster.  Since 1998 we have been presenting a multi-media program about the Orphan Trains in museums, libraries, and universities. Between 1854 and 1929, over 250,000 orphans and half-orphans were put on trains in New York and sent to every state in the US to be given away at train stations. I met many survivors at national reunions when I first started; now there are so few left. The historical novel is the result of research, travel, encounters, and a continuing passion for this little-known part of American history.

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Interview with Matt Hart

Justin Bigos (poetry, ’08) recently interviewed Matt Hart (poetry, ’02) for the American Literary Review.

JB:  And so then I feel torn: I want to keep reading your poems, but part of me wants to throw your book off the balcony and go write my own poems.  I don’t have a question here, I suppose.  But you can respond however you like.

MH: Well, as with the first question, I’m really flattered that you would say this.  If somehow the poems make you want to throw them off the balcony and do your own writing that’s perfect.  That’s a necessary part of all this.  Writing for me is always an extension of reading/listening, and the idea that something I’ve written might, even in some small way, spur someone to do his or her own work is incredibly gratifying.  I would say that that’s true of my intentions for this book in particular: Sermons and Lectures is my call for your response.  I mean, my actual address is even written out in one of the poems in hopes that someone might write back, thus making their own response a call that I would then respond to, etc...[Keep Reading]…
Matt’s book Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless is available from Typecast Publishing.

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Alumni Updates

Joanne Green (fiction, ’93): Joanne’s new book Peach is coming soon from Gemma Open Door.

Everyone has a prom story – the culmination of the vibrant and painful years of high school.

Throw in the sexual revolution, a stuttering cousin for a date, and a parking valet dressed like Abraham Lincoln, and looking cool is an impossible dream. Edith, the fierce and vibrant narrator, tries to leave nuns snapping prom pictures and her painful past behind, and find a way to be both the free spirit her friends require and to be herself.
You can also check out Joanne’s blog, including:
S**t Peach Says

“Everything my mother says would look good printed on a dishtowel.”
“We have a big fight about wearing a bra.  My mother is the Jean Paul Sartre of underwear.”
“Albert Camus wouldn’t laugh at an exploited worker with underwear caught in his ass crack, I know it. “
“All the guys look like Easter eggs.  All the chicks look like toaster dolls. “
“The bathrooms are labeled ‘Abes’ and ‘Babes.’”
“He can do it for one hour forty-five.  Which is really beautiful, but pretty uncomfortable.”

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Alumni Updates

“Three Thousand Lunches,” a new essay by Geoff Kronik (fiction, ’12) was recently published in The Boston Globe:

I’VE LEARNED NOT TO MENTION them in social settings. “You don’t do that for me,” a woman says to her suddenly defensive husband. “I wish someone would make mine,” remarks another woman, as her partner glares at me. “Boy, you must worship your wife,” a man suggests, as if that’s a crime. These folks assume that pure, unselfish love is why I pack my wife’s lunch nearly every working day. And they’re wrong.

I started preparing her lunches for as unromantic a reason as there is: I’m cheap. I noticed my wife was buying her midday meal, and at around six bucks a pop, this added up to serious cash. As the cook in our home, I knew I could feed her just as well and for a fraction of the cost. Fifteen years and 3,000 lunches later, just thinking about the savings makes me smile...[Keep Reading]…

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My Father’s Glasses

“My Father’s Glasses,” a new essay by Geoff Kronik (fiction, ’12) is up at The Good Men Project:

I took my father’s glasses with me when I left the hospital that day, but five years later, I still have not put them on. Holding the glasses starts a movie in my memory, a biography of my father, but if I imagine wearing them a stranger appears on the screen.

That morning, my sister and I each boarded Los Angeles-bound flights, she from Philadelphia and I from Boston. Our plan was to meet at the airport, rent a car, and drive to the UCLA Medical Center.

We both landed ahead of schedule, as if time itself sensed an urgency we did not. Freeway traffic was light, and I could have gone faster; but having left New England’s winter gloom behind me, I enjoyed the drive under California sunshine and briefly forgot the mental chill of why we had come—my father had pneumonia again...[Keep Reading]…

 

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Alumni Updates

Elisabeth Lewis Corley (poetry, ’10) and Mark Prudowsky (poetry, ’08) both have poems online at the Magazine of Arts and Humanities.

First Person Plural
by Elisabeth Lewis Corley

A woman falling—the rest goes by too fast.
The rest go by the fallen, on the pavement.
We breathe a little faster. We try not to see
the rise and fall. Or we recreate
the cavity as it emptied and filled.
We must not pause, it might be still...[Keep Reading]…

Neighbors
by Mark Prudowsky

Each April, a black rat snake emerges from the thaw,
make its way through the fresh and green timothy grass
to an old barn and climbs a creosote pole

twenty feet to a swallowtail’s nest under the roof...[Keep Reading]…

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Alumni Updates

Maya Janson (poetry, ’06): Maya’s debut poetry collection Murmur & Crush  is now available from Levellers Press.

Murmur
This is for the woman in pigtails on the median strip
holding a hand-lettered sign: Find what you love
and follow it. It’s the day before the vernal equinox
and there’s so much standing about in sandals
amidst mounds of discouraged snow, so much
refraction in the cathedral that it’s hard to hear
the inner sparrow. The birds come in
on the in-tide and then they’re trapped.
There’s a man wearing a tee-shirt, logo of
boots and spurs on his chest. Emblazoned.
Like the slash of white
across the muzzle of your favorite horse.
And the couple at the corner table, whispering
into each other’s mouth, stroking each other’s hands
and cheekbones like there’s something hidden there.
There is always something hidden there.
Think of your past as the study of plate tectonics.
Once in the Upper Peninsula in the car of a stranger.
Once beneath a train trestle.
Certain truths abide.
Nobody wants to be the poor in spirit.
Everyone loves a good downpour.
Visit the publisher’s website for more information or to purchase.
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Alumni Updates

Rose McLarney (poetry, ’10): Rose’s poem “Story with a Real Beast and a Little Blood in it” is online at Slate:

The night the bull broke loose,
there was much to learn. Like,
when a bull lowers his head to charge,|
step close. This is when you can
slip a rope around his neck. Or,
when the men, butted and bruised
with rope burned  hands, give up,
make a path of sweet feed...[Keep Reading]…

Rose is the author of The Always Broken Plates of Mountains (2012, Four Way).

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