Recently added articles from The Southern Review:
The Chair.(Poem)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> There's a chair in the snow-covered field where I left it, and you, dead now a year, are sitting in it, looking at three crows, their black nearly burning in the morning sun. <Italic>Thanks for the chair</Italic> , you say when I make some crack ...
To Begin With, the Sweet Grass.(Poem)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"><Bold>1.</Bold> Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eatof the sweet grass? Will the owl bite off its own wings? Will the lark forget to lift its body into the air orforget to sing? Will the rivers run upstream? Behold, I ...
Hostal Jamil.(Short story)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> The exit permits came in the fall, and Abuela Segunda knelt like a visiting pope and kissed the tile where the embarrassed soldier stood clutching the envelope. The state inventoried her things, put pale orange tape over her front door, and she wedged herself in with ...
Trees in the Yard.(Poem)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> Quick-tempered tribe, this is your season, You who take scant notice of a breeze in winter And will forbear a major snowstorm, Now take offense at any little puff of wind, And get-to-whispering and gossipmongering. What calumnies are you ...
In That Gray Schoolroom.(Poem)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> Where we sat together forever and a day, While specks of dust floated in a ray of sunlight, There's no one now. Could it be Sunday? Or some long holiday They haven't yet returned from? There are no lights in the schoolhouse, So I have to feel my ...
At Adam and Evie Tanning Salon.(Poem)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> It may be night; it may be drizzling a bit, The streets all puddled and dark, The ghostly storefronts awaiting demolition, The one grocery store still in business Being robbed at gunpoint by two punks. As Evie rubs scented oil on your chest, The ...
Haunt.(Poem)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> In the beginning there was the beginning there was bafflement in the beginning there was in the beginning the bewildered asking questions <Italic>you've got to be kidding</Italic> there was bafflement in the eyes in the beginning & then in the ...
Beautification Campaign.(Poem)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> Liposuction for everyone who can recite the pledge of allegiance! Lip gloss, Lee Press-On Nails arrive weekly in the mail. The turkey is always fat free & the cottage cheese is nothing but protein. Helicopters drop leaflets, but in truth, no one ...
Rivers to Gilead.(Short story)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> The river stinks tonight, and Mackey Rottler's running into the headlights of evening traffic. Past the big metal Piasa Bird and its backdrop of limestone quarry, he imagines half-breed Mustang LaForte hiding up there in the bluffs.Postcard in the mail exactly ...
Vienna Spring.(Poem)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> Beethoven: April 1803 <Preformatted type="other"> A lunatic angel has descended on Vienna! No sooner had I given up on the violin as no more than a tiny, querulous beast suited solely for dilettante monarchs and their peg-leg street beggars, do I make the ...
Ode to the Moon.(Poem)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> George Bridgetower, prodigy: London, 1790 <Preformatted type="other"> Diana wants to be a boy like me. Stripped of turban, cravat, chemise: perhaps a shirt of printed muslin to blend in with the trees. She is bright; she shines like I do not. I'll be the firmament, ...
War and Peace.(Poem)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> Paris, 1870 <Preformatted type="other"> Any idiot can start a war. Some fireworks, flags, a little song, a dance, soupçon of ethnic hate, six grains of ire, and patriots pack pistols in their pants. A Prussian king for Spain--would Bismarck dare? The emperor dashes ...
Daughters of Invention.(Poem)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> Paris, 1870 <Preformatted type="other"> The Prussians can't create a dancing bear or crowing cock, no sorcerer flicking hoops around a floozy floating in midair. They can't out-engineer automatons like ours. They settle for sending up our troops to dance in the sky ...
Hand-Me-Down War Stories.(Essay)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> Wars don't only affect those who fight them, wars go on for generations. TIM O'BRIEN </Preformatted> <Bold>1991: GOODSPRINGS, NEVADA</Bold> I was twenty-six, sitting in my parents' kitchen. Photos hung across ...
Piece.(Poem)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> I mistake it for coral, this thin ivory whistle filled with sediment and sea scum, riding the tanned back of the afternoon sand. A bone, I realize. Trim as a pencil, and human. The surf churns its secret among ghost crabs. Here lies a piece of a ...
Miss Peach: A Historical Reenactment.(Poem)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> "Once Upon a Time" involves a horse. It involvesan outlying moor and a young woman riding a horse until she grows parched. Her parchingmakes her pale, her paleness makes her weak, her weakness makes her beautiful, etc .... Her ...
Careful.(Poem)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> Pyrex is supposed to be durable, but my husband assured me that anything dropped from that height would shatter. My heart. It was utilitarian, that bowl. and the tile was hard, but my arms were at arms' length. When my son rolled off his changing ...
Dead Languages.(Short story)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> She hadn't put down the grocery bags when her boy finally began to talk. She hadn't even closed the door. He stood there sure as the Pope and pointed at her with sticky fingers. "Apo," her little Nicholas said. He looked at the ceiling, and his eyes were shut. "Apo tou ...
A Simple Man's Inadvertent Treatise on Celibacy.(Poem)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> The thimble suit made such noise that he wasn't allowed to his own wedding. "How was it," he asked his wife, "kissing me at the altar without me?" "The priest stood in for you" she said, which explained the priest's hand up her dress. So it was ...
What If Language Were True?(Poem)
Jan 01, 2009; ... <Text rich="yes"> <Preformatted type="other"> As will sometimes happen, upon the death of the lousy father, the children "bloomed." Harold went back to school. Kathleen stopped shaking when the phone rang. Alice actually bloomed, a single flower from her left breast, a bog asphodel, her ...