Indiana Review back issues from December 2005:
forgetful angel
Dec 01, 2005; ... vanished attributed to verse and voiceless expanded logically read catholically repetition but keyed for a yellower flute gory cantillations sprayed with texticide eggs taken from their nest won't hatch in martyred light she hid a grey stone in the house ...
poor angel
Dec 01, 2005; ... and the may earth the was the as of a gentle returning return to an edge of night's park madness in tones uncatalogued and pale arms each soaks in a language of winelike conventions remaining the shreds of a hymn however Es kommt der morgen des elften ...
Bianca
Dec 01, 2005; ... Jelly bracelets materialize from under the black lace of the 80's and slink up the wrists of girls, vibrant rubber bending to the touch: great propensity for snapture. They're pop bracelets, says my 13 year old niece. She's cinch-waisted, ...
The Memoirs of Sam Wesson
Dec 01, 2005; ... I'm Sam Wesson. You may have heard of me; I'm known in Torrentown and some parts around. In fact, I was featured on KTRY's folk hour a couple of Saturdays ago. It was a real nice interview, all live, real homey, and people called in and everything. They played a few cuts from gigs I did around ...
The Age of Glass
Dec 01, 2005; ... A window's deepest frequency must remember something of sand, the soft angle of warm rain. I did not want to wake in this age. I would have preferred the age before the age of glass. I was happier in the time of ice and knives. Happier still in the ...
Marvin Gaye Hears Doo-Wop for the First Time
Dec 01, 2005; ... (Washington, D.C. 1950) It fell from the heavens and hit him between the ears- the blue-dappled harmonies, the moonlight in the chapel, the luxuriant pain. It soared out of the radio and opened its arms in the air. Little Marvin with his eyes closed wills himself ...
The Promise of Cheaper Premiums
Dec 01, 2005; ... has the nurse at your house again to examine the prospective insureds. Last time you were younger. The exam is all facts on the form: when the fathers died, of what, the mothers alive and far-flung, thriving, your height, how many drinks per day, of what, your husband's ...
Gossiping the Week Before Sarah Bernhardt Arrives, 1905
Dec 01, 2005; ... They're busy clearing cornstalk stubble, so as women's dresses won't catch, and fitting out the revival tent with a stage. The Wonder of the World is fixing to perform in Silver Lick, Missouri on her third farewell tour. She won't be getting twenty-nine New York curtain ...
Hotel Window, Capitol Hill
Dec 01, 2005; ... 1 On one branch, these magnolia blossoms range from reaching their spongy white petals toward you to withdrawing withered and brown on the branch. All on the same branch: rotting blossoms, lifting seed pods, new blooms, buds, unfurling shiny green leaves. I like how the tapered bud and ...
First Sunday
Dec 01, 2005; ... Moa He lives in his mother's house, with no electricity or hot water, yet somehow he always has a ready supply of condoms. The notion strikes me one night as he rolls away from me and gets out of bed. He stands in the shadows of Cheryl's bedroom, a stripe of yellow light coming through ...
Birthday Cake
Dec 01, 2005; ... be the prayer bowing the deciduous congregation into huddled gridlock around us, the only thing holding against the shatter of crockery hurled, be there when we are stunned awake by the poison in her command: to get downstairs, to do it now in the moments ...
Autoposy Report & Objet Inquiétant I: Unfortunately the Chief Coroner Couldn't Be with Us Tonight His Part Then Played by the Mother of the Groom
Dec 01, 2005; ... from time beyond time to us from before archers dispatched by the Sultan bows trained on futility to intercept the tentacular advance schools of gargantuan jellyfish we've deciphered cave murals & half-digested writings of the Eyelid Misers hieroglyphs ...
New Precedent from the Fifth Circuit : Tried as an Adult A Five-Year-Old Quotes Rilke on Cézanne "It's as If Every Place Were Aware of All Other Places" or Similar Words of Willful & Malicious Contempt for Cause & Effect
Dec 01, 2005; ... never needed a map to the warm pit of my own belly & no ear phones could block the way my sister howled at the step mother of coincidence on Saturdays searched the empty field for the brutal boy named Vincent who'd painted sunflowers & ...
Twixt
Dec 01, 2005; ... A hummingbird with a tongue about a Dachshund's-nose long explores the bonbonnaire Of ...
When the Wreck Has Been
Dec 01, 2005; ... -Emily Dkkinson, #305 You thought the sun was a wild yellow, insistent on burning the earth. You closed the curtains, locked the bathroom door. A shot blown back inside your mouth, as your mind filled with metallic clouds, a backwash of silence. I am lost in that ...
Eyewitness
Dec 01, 2005; ... It wasn't the lure of repealed taxes that drew her to the movement, it was the sight of hundreds of women wielding cooking implements; pestles raised skyward in a declaration of war. It was the power she felt coursing through her ...
Leaving Texas
Dec 01, 2005; ... Having left, we pause ten times an hour to make out. The backseat swells to occupy the cosmos, bronchial air blurring windpipe, tailpipe, individual cells. Our itinerary blends gum, denim, and soda into sixteen years blinking. The radio ...
Domestic Air Quality
Dec 01, 2005; ... Thank you, in advance, for participating in this market research study. The information you provide in this journal ,as well as in your responses to prompts, will be used solely for the purpose of creating new products to enhance the quality of air in your home. Due to market competition, we ...
Poem for Kate
Dec 01, 2005; ... I really like your shoes, your hair, you sit on the edge of the couch, your skin, those jeans, you say I have a question not really related and you say sort of that was sort of that's what you say. You sit on the edge of the couch in a room perfect ...
Horizon
Dec 01, 2005; ...[Author Affiliation] Lisa Russ Spaar is the author of Blue Venus: Poems (Persea Books, 2004) and Glass Town: Poems (Red Hen Press, 1999), for which she won a Rona Jaffe Award for Emerging Women Writers. She is also the editor of Acquainted with the Night: ...
Two Brothers
Dec 01, 2005; ...[Author Affiliation] Bronwen Butter Newcott grew up in Washington D.C. and currently lives in ...
A Conversation with Tim O'Brien
Dec 01, 2005; ... I picked him up at the regional airport in Sioux Falls. It was a muggy day in late April, but I knew that Tim O'Brien was used to such weather because he grew up only fifty miles east of here, in Worthington, Minnesota. It must have been a bittersweet return for him because it was here that he ...
Sweeping Back the Ocean
Dec 01, 2005; ... February 1, 1992 Dear Diary, I want to tell you I had this girl. Let me start with this person, a girl, near the steam heater in winter. Sometimes things don't have a name but in the pause I called her a darker color. It's many things, without names. We walked across the quad. It ...
from "a fundamental history"
Dec 01, 2005; ... we admit we close our eyes just long enough all the forwarding addresses billed the evidence pushed out the windows whom do we propose to now that the shades are drawn no wings left to rest the scattering what is while in this ...
The Boy Who Asks Why They Leave the Sky Off of Maps
Dec 01, 2005; ... He kicks my shin when I tell him they ran out of blue ink. What about the sun, then, and the moon, I ask. He wails. I tell him he's free to draw his own map of the sky and he mispronounces ridiculous. Our heads tilt on their axes as we look at each other. Down to the floor. Back to each other ....
Remembering Luoyang
Dec 01, 2005; ... 1. When I think of you, I see grey streets like veins on a tired hand and a dim corridor- silence is a held breath. We slid down the banister: often one of us, in dream or memory, fell. 2. I was always ...
The Hum
Dec 01, 2005; ... And then I swallowed power lines and taunted the hum to kiss and tell but the hum is the word smoothed what comes to blows in the throat or the word in waning apparel leaving its delicates strewn about like tiny blossoms in the mouth. And ...
Saint of Secrets
Dec 01, 2005; ... At the wax institute eyes never close. I touch cuffs, shiny mother of pearl buttons, slide fingers inside creamy hands when the guards look away. Permission to touch in small places. Permission to never stop. Watching ....
O.K., Goodbye
Dec 01, 2005; ... Let's say the first time she tries to walk out she loses her car keys in the front yard at night. She's sassy, maybe a little drunk. She tosses her keys in the air but misses them on their way back down. The next thing she knows she and her husband and the neighbors' kids are on their hands and ...
Disengagement
Dec 01, 2005; ... Mendocino County, California Julia brought me down to the wet rocks early that morning, anemones like scabs gaping, sun breaking the last ledge of shade. We leaned in to inspect the sea star she'd selected, maroon and ...
from Row
Dec 01, 2005; ... Heaven must subject itself to the city for the city to lose function. A throng of sparrows and one gutter pipe must be all that sing. The multitudes wilt from their professions and, thus, professing. Hollyhocks take light and are merciless. God dreamed a ...
Strange Fruit
Dec 01, 2005; ... Once, my mother found an orchid tangled in my hair. She pulled me towards her, dragged it out with a comb. It was early summer, and maybe my eyes were languid and opaque. She kept shaking me, scolded me for being useless. I ...
Blisters
Dec 01, 2005; ... "And last but not least-Mr. Impetigo- Man!" That's how Newt Jackson introduced me at our social with the girls' cabin-Newt, our cocky, cutup black impresario, who laughed as my face reddened past its blotches. The skin had blistered from that night in a ...
Aviary
Dec 01, 2005; ... The halved egg- shell, an absent face. Its waxy lines, specific variance of vein on film like a human fingerprint. Because of its perfect halfhess, jagged in the cedar chips, one story is about our separation. Performed in the ...
Fighter Plotter
Dec 01, 2005; ... Mitchell writes on his form that he wants to be a cook because rumor has it that the cooks don't have to eat the food they make for everyone else. Three weeks in basic training have taught him a lot about the effect of rubbery eggs on morale. Somebody, looking disconsolately down at his lunch ...
That First Day of Spring Kind of Feeling
Dec 01, 2005; ... Chill, it's called the moonwalk. Front yard glory. I eat frozen strawberries & watch falling clouds, God's muscle thick arms whipping savage. All of us will hang for belief in sunlight's rejuvenating power. Today, I wear ditch cheeks, horse ...
innumerable ones
Dec 01, 2005; ... How to count? Begin with one, or n + 1 where n is the number of ants in a colony, and 1 is you looking over your own shoulder, looking into the earth, driving a stick down into the mound like a gifted chimp, pulling it out to count the inscrutable bodies, ...
And the Way the Sun Was Positioned
Dec 01, 2005; ... I thought you were smoking a cigarette- just kicking back for the moment, against the warm metal of a deuce and a half truck, in the shade. There were puddles of oil running from underneath the truck, leaking from bullet holes where rounds had ...
A Rush of Bees
Dec 01, 2005; ... After you take off your shirt and bra and lie down, after he spreads the blue jelly under the breast over your heart, you are still so that your breast will stay beneath the towel for the first, cold touch of the instrument and then for each nod of its ...
Poem Written by a Bear
Dec 01, 2005; ... Here come those men again. As little guile as hair. They play at the hunt like drowsy cats, full and unhurried, stumbling upon game hoping for the quick end that men are so good at. Quick. Painless. That is their way. Yet, how I would like ...
No Returns
Dec 01, 2005; ... My sentiments linger like the plastic petals of flowers in the corner discount store. I barter with coupons. You offer a chipped, porcelain rabbit that doubles as a land mine. [Author Affiliation] Jasmine Dreame Wagner's poetry and ...
Revelations
Dec 01, 2005; ... The piano is a string instrument. And tomorrow you wake knowing the calculus of those who spray perfume and move into it as if into new light. Still, the people are ugly and the Lord is sad. You cannot avoid shaving and watching the white ...
Yellow-Tag Dog
Dec 01, 2005; ... Jody steps into the hallway and sets the dogs to barking. "It's not you," Glenda shouts from behind her. "They do that to everyone." Jody takes another step down the hall. The smells of dog, spray cleaner, and microwave burritos waft up her nostrils. Everything is shiny in ...
Defense of Stupid Action Movies
Dec 01, 2005; ... I like to watch fake blood slapstick death, samurai girls who fell sixty men with one sword, robots who shoot off your knee caps, bombs that explode in the subway, in the White House, in cop cars, on space ships, mischief in the crawl space ...
Up to Speed
Dec 01, 2005; ... Rae Armantrout, Up to Speed, Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2004. $28.00 unjacketed cloth, ISBN: 0-8195-6697-7 $13.95 paperback, ISBN: 0-8195-6698-5, 80 pages. Reviewed by Amelia Martens When words are selected or plucked from time and space by a careful ...
Beautiful Trouble
Dec 01, 2005; ... Amy Fleury, Beautiful Trouble. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004- $13.95 paper (ISBN 0-8093-2598-5), 50 pages. Reviewed by Joanna Lin Want Beautiful Trouble won the 2004 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award, though its overarching ...
The Maverick Room
Dec 01, 2005; ... Thomas Sayers Ellis, The Maverick Room. Saint Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2005. $14.00 paper (ISBN 1-55597-414-7), 121pages. Reviewed by Janet Pocorobba Thomas Sayers Ellis is the only poet I've seen whose work receives spontaneous applause after each poem. Though his ...
The Apple's Bruise
Dec 01, 2005; ... Lisa Glatt, The Apple's Bruise. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, $12.00 paper (ISBN 0-7432-7052-5), 195 pages. Reviewed by Chris Harvey "People change," a teenage boy informs his mother as explanation for his newfound friendship with the town bullies. "I couldn't ...
Dog on the Cross: Stories
Dec 01, 2005; ... Aaron Gwyn, Dog on the Cross: Stories. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2004. $14.95 paper (ISBN 1-56512412-X), 217 pages. Reviewed by Paula Carter Dog on the Cross, an image that repulsively and thrillingly becomes literal in the final story of Aaron ...
The Bright Forever
Dec 01, 2005; ... Lee Martin, The Bright Forever. New York, NY: Shaye Areheart Books, 2005. $14-00 paper (ISBN 1-0307209865), 288 pages. Reviewed by Amos Magiiocco Lee Martin's newest novel, The Bright Forever, manipulates light and shadow to expose the fictional Indiana town of Tower Hill's ...
Armor and Flesh
Dec 01, 2005; ... Obadike, Mendi Lewis. Armor and Flesh. Detroit, Michigan: Lotus Press, 2004. $12.00 paper (ISBN 0-916418-93-60), 61 pages. Reviewed by Jacqueline Jones LaMon Armor and Flesh, Mendi Lewis Obadike's first collection of poems, is a spiraled exploration into the complexities of the ...
How to Breathe Underwater
Dec 01, 2005; ... Julie Orringer, How to Breathe Underwater, New York, NY. Vintage Books, 2003. $12.95 paper (ISBN: 1-4000-34364) 240 pages Reviewed by Robin Kish In her debut collection, How to Breathe Underwater, Julie Orringer explores how what is beautiful about the world intersects with the ...
Beautiful Motion
Dec 01, 2005; ... Roeser, Dana. Beautiful Motion. Boston, Massachusetts: Northeastern University Press, 2004. 91 pages. $14.95 softcover. ISBN 1-55553-622-0. Reviewed by K. Keener "The key to this life is / surprise." Dana Roeser's first collection, selected for the Morse Prize by Ellen Bryant ...
Year of the Snake
Dec 01, 2005; ... Lee Ann Roripaugh, Year of the Snake. Carbondale, Illinois. Southern Illinois University Press, 2004. $14.95 paper (ISBN 0-8093-2569-1), 67 pages. Reviewed by Tracy Truels At the crossroads of rebirth and imagination you will find Year of the Snake. The poems in Lee Ann ...
Where the Long Grass Bends
Dec 01, 2005; ... Neela Vaswani, Where the Long Grass Bends, Louisville, Kentucky: Sarabande Books 2004, $13.95 paper (ISBN 1-56512-412-X), 192 pages. Reviewed by Megan Savage When reading as global a collection as Neela Vaswani's remarkable first book, Where the Long Grass Bends, it is tempting ...
Elegy on Toy Piano
Dec 01, 2005; ... Dean Young, Ekgy on Toy Piano, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005. $12.95, paper (ISBN 0-8229-5872-4), 104 pages. Reviewed by Mary Austin Speaker Dean Young doesn't like labels, but nevertheless, he has been called a surrealist, a comedian, an experimental poet, ...