“Lessons in Stillness From One of the Quietest Places on Earth” by Meghan O’Rourke (poetry, ’05)

Poet Meghan O’Rourke (poetry, ’05)

An essay by Meghan O’Rourke (poetry, ’05) appears in The New York Times Style Magazine:

Lessons in Stillness From One of the Quietest Places on Earth
In the wilderness of Washington State’s Hoh Rain Forest, a
poet searches for the rare peace that true silence can offer.

by Meghan O’Rourke

This story is featured in T Magazine’s Travel issue, on newsstands Nov. 12.

THE OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK stretches down coastal Washington and east toward Seattle on a thumb of land known as the Olympic Peninsula, some 60 miles long by 90 miles wide. Around a three-hour ride by car from Seattle, it feels much farther, as if you have passed into an otherworldly realm. Within it are volcanic beaches scattered with the remains of massive Sitka spruces, evergreen-crowded mountains, broad, flat valleys and the Hoh Rain Forest, through which 12 miles of hiking trails and the glacier-formed Hoh River run. The Park, in total nearly a million acres, is home to what may be the most complex ecosystem in the United States, teeming with big-leaf maples, lichens, alders, liverworts, Monkey flowers, licorice ferns, club mosses, herbs, grasses and shrubs of remarkable abundance. Today, thanks to federal protections, it is home to some of the largest remaining stands of old-growth forest in the continental U.S. [… continue reading here.

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An Excerpt from Day of All Saints by Patricia Grace King

Here is an excerpt from a new novella, Day of All Saints, from Patricia Grace King (fiction, ’13), available for purchase now from Miami University Press.

Day of All Saints

Ghosts in the trees. Martín wants to rip them all down. If he could, he’d bury them deep in the flowerbed that he’s uprooting, or stomp them into the grass. Sure, these ghosts are small, even playful, made of white handkerchiefs and—what?—Ping-Pong or Styrofoam balls? But even so: ghosts. With little magic-markered-on ghost eyes and smiles. Like they’re a fun thing to have. Dangling from maples around the gringa’s front yard, the ghosts jig on their strings with each shift in the breeze. The gringa has not made an appearance all afternoon, and waiting for her sets Martín on edge.

He stands from the cold-blackened bed of begonias to steal a look at Diego, piling bags of leaves down by the curb, then up at the maple branch over his head, aflutter with a family of ghosts. Someone—the gringa?—must be having a joke, for these ghosts are made from bright-red bandanas. Like a host of mini-sized demons, they’ve waggled around Martín’s ears for the past hour until all he can think of is blood. The blood inside his work glove, for one thing, which is oozing again, though he won’t take off the glove for a look. To remove it might cause an eruption—geysers of blood. Today of all days, Martín can conceive of such things.

With his good hand, he lunges after the branch full of ghosts. But a fresh bout of dizziness clouts him straight down through his brainpan, and Martín falls to his heels with a lurch. His empty hand swipes the air.

Diego is on him again in five seconds, garden rake over his shoulder. “Buddy, don’t think about it.”

If he holds very still, Martín has learned, the sick hollow feeling will pass. Even so, he swings again at the nearest ghost and gives it a furious yank.

“Cálmate, vos,” says Diego. “These people don’t mean nothing by it.”

They’ve been arguing the point for a month, ever since plastic gravestones began to loom from these well-tended yards and zombies appeared on the porches. It’s just a warm-up for Christmas, Diego has said: more candy, more pretty lights. But Martín cannot make peace with this holiday, and this very morning, heading to work, he tried to kick over a coffin. Diego had to drag him away.

Now the red baby ghost, its string unbroken, stepdances madly across the gray air, and wooziness does Martín in. With a groan he sinks back to his knees.

“Vos, what’s wrong with you now?” says Diego. “Are you sick or something?”

Gently clasping his stomach, Martín shakes his head. It’s not entirely a lie.

“What is it, then?” Diego sets down his rake. “You still worrying after that girl?”

Martín stares at the dead grass between them. “She hasn’t come back,” he admits.

… to order, continue here.

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“We Were In Our 20s and We Didn’t Have a Clue” by Peter Orner

An essay by Peter Orner appears in the The New York Times:

We Were in Our 20s and We Didn’t Have a Clue

Always hard to believe the ways details vanish. Even what John Cheever once called the marvelous skulduggery of illicit love, time chips away and scatters, and what you’d thought would be seared for life? Reach for it, it’s gone.

We were still in our 20s though she was already married, a weird novelty. My first conflict with that specter: husband. Society’s great, dull bulwark. We met at another wedding. She was a friend of the bride’s. I was an old roommate of the groom’s. The husband hadn’t joined her. I’d come alone also. We were both in the wedding party and had been assigned to walk down the aisle, arm in arm. She wore a lemon dress. It was my first time in a tuxedo. . . . continue reading here.

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“I Don’t Want Anything to Happen; I Want Something to Happen” by Alain Douglas Park (fiction, ’13)

2016-17 Beebe Fellow Alain Park at his Warren Wilson campus reading, Oct. 27, 2016.

A short story by Alain Douglas park (fiction, ’13) appears in The American Literary Review:

I Don’t Want Anything to Happen; I Want Something to Happen

Wednesday night, already dark, I fully intended to ask my lovely teenage daughter something quick about dinner, but she blew by me, dumped her green army bag on the tiles and headed to the bathroom. I’d been standing there awhile, smoking at the sink, trying to figure out what to make.

Hey, ClaireBear, good to see you, I said to the air, which, wouldn’t you know it, didn’t say anything back.

A typical scene since Claire’s moved in, because she doesn’t want to live with her mom right now, because her mom is getting remarried and Claire can’t stand the creep. I said, sure, I got room, I’ll take the couch. It’s no bother. And most days it isn’t. I don’t see her all that much. I see her green army bag more than her. It’s tattered and covered with safety pins and Sharpie and has been one of my best friends lately.

Last Wednesday when she came in, she tossed my little friend right into the cardboard boxes I’d brought home from the restaurant and stacked in the middle of the kitchen. … continue reading here.

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Three Poems by Rebecca Foust (poetry, ’10)

Three poems with audio by Rebecca Foust (poetry, ’10) appear in The Cortland Review:

Parts of Speech

We came to a grove and you drew me in;
I wondered about our right to wander
where we would in that wood of old pine,
my hand in yours and yours in mine.
Fair was the raiment of cloud overhead.
Or it was not fair, or it was just

… to continue reading “Parts of Speech,” and to read “Let Deer” and “Moose, Bear and the Moon,” click here.

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“The Ornamental Hermit” by Eric Rampson (fiction, ’16)

A story by Eric Rampson (fiction, ’16) appears in Typishly:

 

The Ornamental Hermit

Editor’s background note for the uninitiated: Wikipedia tells us that “ornamental hermits were hermits encouraged to live in purpose built hermitages, follies, grottoes, or rockeries on the estates of wealthy land-owners, primarily during the 18th century. Such hermits would be encouraged to dress like druids and remain permanently on-site, where they could be fed, cared-for and consulted for advice or viewed for entertainment.”

To: The Ornamental Hermit

Re: Termination

Elliott,

I hope this email finds you well. Diane and I are very much enjoying Tahiti—there is a pool directly outside the front door of our cabin while the beautiful sliding doors at the back open onto a flat wooden deck suspended over pale blue crystalline water warm as syrup and deep enough to dive into.

Your emotional state, I must admit, is less of a hope and more the reason I’m writing to you, sitting on that same flat deck, the waves lapping gently below me while Diane (who has agreed to wear high-heels with her bikini, at least around the cabin) suns herself in front of me, on her stomach, feet in the air behind her, ankles crossed. She is still so very lovely. And the high-heels? I don’t need to explain their effect, do I?

And that’s the problem. There was a time, back when we hired you, when you first moved into the grotto and the moss coloring the stones of your hut was still that fake, painted-on stuff, back then I would most certainly have had to explain the effect of a high-heel shoe not just on the leg of a beautiful woman but on the heart, mind, and baser instincts of the modern man. But it seems now that you understand perfectly what I mean.

Well maybe not a high-heel, specifically, but, you know, about the sexual, romantic power of the fairer sex.

… continue reading here.

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Excerpt from Cherry Cherry, the award-winning novella from Taryn Tilton (fiction, ’16)

Taryn Tilton (fiction, 16) has published a novella, Cherry Cherry, which won 1888’s 2017 Plaza Literary Prize:

 

 

an excerpt from Cherry Cherry

Jen is a junior. Jen is Annie’s sister.

At this moment, the first day of summer, I don’t think anything of her.

We are by the pool. Annie calls me every day to invite me to swim even though we both know I’m going over anyway. Sometimes the other girls come, but not always. I ride my bike.

Generally, we swim or we sit and read Cosmo. Sometimes, when we’re very bored, we run through the sprinklers. The water sparkles on our skin, and we push our fingers into our forearms and thighs to make pools of it.

Annie has long black hair, a white swimsuit with daisies on it, and a thin necklace with a single pearl, the chain like a unicorn hair in the sun. When she laughs her eyes disappear, a droplet nesting in her collarbone, the pearl knit to her sternum, Annie.

And when we feel like swimming, we really swim, brine our eyes and scour our lungs with chlorine, host underwater tea parties in some crystalline kingdom or bind our ankles with diving rings like mermaids. But we are not actually mermaids, so when our arms get tired, when our eyes and lungs are burning, we force ourselves up and rest.

*

Every day like that, more or less, and every day Annie’s mom brings us snacks. But today, a week into summer, Annie’s mom is on vacation.

Annie and I are by the pool. We hear the door click open. I look over my shoulder. It’s not Annie’s mom, though in the shadow of the house she is still a constellation of dark washes, a loose black shape, and I find myself wondering what form she will finally take.

It is Jen, of course, but I had not expected her to step into the sun like that, her skin reflecting the light in clean planes, her hair dark and thick, heavy and rich over her shoulder. She’s wearing bleached cut-offs and a tank top, black. She has an easy grace. She is bringing us Doritos in a mug. “Sorry,” she says, “I couldn’t find a clean plate.” She sets it down on the rippled glass of the poolside table and leaves as she came, soundlessly, except for a single bird trilling in the distance, in cahoots, announcing her exit. The door shuts, a dog barks.

Annie’s already eating. The Dorito dust sticks to her wet fingers and she tries to wipe one on me but I lick it instead and she giggles.

We read Cosmo. It gets warped from the water. “Whatever,” Annie says. The advice is the best, the embarrassing stories second best. Someone tripped over a backpack, someone called the wrong number, someone wore a too-tight skirt and it split. If no one is home, we read the sex parts. Jen is home so we don’t read the sex parts.

We do it again the next day, and the next. The summer stretches before us, infinite and the same, without event or task, like before we learned there were seven days in a week.

. . . purchase Cherry Cherry from 1888 here.

. . . or find the novella on Amazon here.

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“Kitchen Confession” by Adrian Blevins (poetry, ’02)

Adrian Blevins (poetry, ’02).

A poem by Adrian Blevins (poetry, ’02) appears in the Portland Press Herald:

Kitchen Confession

If I could put my Trump hate

in the Cuisinart & cut it with

a little basil & dill & my

semi-retired Bush hate & my

hate for war in general & for

. . . continue reading here.

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Two Poems by Nomi Stone (poetry, ’17)

Two poems by Nomi Stone (poetry, ’17) appear in The Adroit Journal:

Kill Class

The story says we are in the country of Pineland: grassy roads curving in, named
for longleaf pine, loblolly pine. Sassafras, black gum, slash pine
clethra sharp as pepper, shallowing
the land’s breath.

The story says I join the guerillas.
The story says I carry this tent in.

Three cages at the wood line:

. . . to continue reading, and for audio of “Kill Class” and “The Anthropologist Follows Baghdad’s Lost Books and Refugees” click here.

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“Mercy” by Susan Okie (poetry, ’14)

Susan Okie (poetry, ’14)

A contest-winning poem by Susan Okie (poetry, ’14) appears in Hospital Drive:

Mercy

And what about that winter night in Hartford
when a mother brought two kids
to the hospital, afraid she’d hurt them?
Something ticked her off, whatever the resident
said just made her madder:
Give me my kids I don’t need this
I can take care of them.

A nurse shoulders us

…continue reading here.

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