The Southern Review back issues from September 2004:
Acknowledgments.(Short Story)
Sep 22, 2004 ... OFF AND ON over the past two or three years I've read a bedtime story called Bread and Jam for Frances to my now five-year-old daughter, Marina Gobnait. In the conclusion to that book, the eponymous little badger, who until that time has adamantly refused to eat anything for snacks, for ...
What to Keep.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> What to Keep After the operation, after the casket closedsome years later, your father's glasses, which hehad sent you through the hospital to find Of course the powdery water-damaged portraitsof great-grandparents, survivors of shtetl,steerage, ...
Fatherhood.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> Fatherhood It's been a tough summer. The other night before bedI was pouring a drink of heather cream from the bigbrown bottle, shaking it into the shot glassto get the very last drops. We were all in thekitchen, wife and daughters, dark outside, late,...
Pneumonia.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> PneumoniaAnd then the dark fell and "there has never" I said "been a poem to an antibiotic: never a word to compare with the odes on the flower of the raw sloe for fever ..." --Eavan Boland, "The Journey" All Sunday night I rocked her, ...
Wonder.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> Wonder November, and Cinderella's coach is molderingamong the windfalls. Sunken and puckered by frost,still it holds much of its former grandeur--the vaultedceiling, the gold leaf burnished by October sun. Here, among the cushions, mice have chewed...
Close Quarters.(Brief Article)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> Close Quarters (After hearing Jim Wickwire's account of the ascent of K-2 and the loss of a companion while climbing Mount McKinley) Having never opened a can of sardines,I decided to have a look, to seeif they really are "packed in ...
Canterbury Tale.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> Canterbury Tale The flowers she buys at the groceryspray from a jam jar, though wecan afford crystal now.When in April, twenty years ago,on a campus sidewalk, stoppedby a glance of sunlight on a bell tower,she exclaimed, "How like this isto ...
The Side to the Wall.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> The Side to the Wall Considering this is the last Christmas treein Hattiesburg, Mississippi, it's not bad.I recall all of the childhood lots, whitebreath on the night air as gloved, rough menheld trees by the horns like trophies, stabbingthe stobs into ...
The God of Georgia.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> The God of Georgia Are you washed in the blood? --hymn didn't like the senior prom,knew it was aboutrubbing bellies to saxophones,and afterwards in the backseaton the honeysuckled highwaysto ...
In the Land of Three-Legged Dogs.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> In the Land of Three-Legged Dogs Coming back down here is cominghome to all our dead dogs--notthe cocker puppy in the basementdying of distemper, or the brave mongrelconvulsing under the house, snakebit--but all the ones we found lying by the roads, ...
Remote.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> Remote Spooky how, drinking late at night,I always seem to flipto a channel showing GWTW justwhen Scarlett shows up at Tara, nearJonesboro, where my parents got married.She thinks if she can just get home,it'll all be alright. It's beautifully ...
An Undertaking.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> An UndertakingIn memory of Charles Anderson Harrison (1955-2002) 1. The Call The undertakingof his suicide a taskbeyond understanding exerts its forcelike a huge dark moon we hadn't known beforebut ...
Amish.com.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> Amish.comYour site for everything Amish. --amish.com will soon offer shirtsmade entirelyof buttons. They'll clack and rattle,those shirts, and needto be oiled and fed thread, suchis the appetite of buttonsfor ...
The blessing.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> The blessing There's a coal train to the west, it whistlestwice, and the faint pulse of wheelsdreams down the valley. I went for drinksyesterday with a minister who believeswe are fallen but not doomed. He drankthree double Maker's Marks with ice...
Founder's day.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> Founder's day I introduced John Adams to the Pacificand likewise I am sure. The bookby McCullough, not the bookby Chinard. Carried itin December from Michiganwhere it's cold to Californiawhere it's not Michigan. Americadid not include Point ...
Football at the School for the Deaf.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> Football at the School for the Deaf By poor Paul's barbershop, I meet his eyes.They're clear enough, he's steady on his feet,he seems unruffled by my snapped-off stare,and by the after-appraisal I make, sideways, more subtle, I trust, but--I catch his ...
Riddle at the Infertility Clinic.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> Riddle at the Infertility Clinic In the reception room a basket overflowswith artificial roses. Some bloom scarletmonth after month, others remain furled,tight buds or blind eye sockets mercifully seamed shut. I recount moons, eclipsed,harvest, ...
Name & Address.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> Name & Address When I call my father long-distance on a Saturday night, he knowsmy voice and doesn't need, as he did yesterday, to ask memy name. He says, "Don, I'm in a bit of a jam.'" I hear him read from the ...
Ground Transport.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004 ... <Pre> Ground Transport Above the clouds, the weatheris always clear, sunlight's glare off the leading edge of the 757's wings, endless blue of the sky's glass dome cupped over us, cloud cover stretching ...
Translated.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> Translated Crowned with an ass's head, you get to partner the queen, the queen of fairies, the queen of the company. Stumbling as in a swoon, as if you've lost your glasses, ...
Chaconne.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> Chaconne In the chaconne the steps are elegant.The couple walk like gods, almost fallen,in fragile majesty. Their arms extendpermitting her sweep near the ground, her orbitjustified by gravity, her planetgranting them momentum, an illusionof love, ...
Gulls.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> Gulls The cry of a gull, very like that of a flying baby. You look upstartled, walking to the quay. Wind whisks a fringe here andthere on the sound's surface, which from a distance you mayconfuse with gulls, their wings out and resting on a wave's lip.The ...
Ebony: John Wilkes Booth Recites "The Raven".(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> Ebony: John Wilkes Booth Recites "The Raven" In cold Louisville to commit eloquent murderand be praised, he rehearsed before the mirror--Richard's winter of discontent, Macbeth, the Moor.His train the week before delayed by blizzard,he'd fought off black ...
At Tea.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> At TeaTo be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died, who neither listen nor speak ... --Edna St. Vincent Millay Yes, I sit at their table, but my dead speak to meSometimes. Handsome boy with dark brows-- ...
When the Movers Took the Bed.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> When the Movers Took the Bed they left the pan full of changeI kept beneath it. Emptyingmy daily pockets, I'd put wadded billson the dresser and coins in the pan.I'd skim enough quarters from the stashto cover the cost of coffee,maybe a sandwich ....
A Palm Print in Lascaux.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> A Palm Print in Lascaux 1.I, too, want to reach behind the stone veil, To follow the rabbit down its winding holeInto the whisper chamber, bosses like sails Billowing in an earthen wind, this first worldWith its presences ...
To Acedia.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> To Acedia ... like those who go down to the Pit. Razor of nothingness, ashOf soul thrice burned, Thought with its armiesOf malice turned inward, Pygmy soldiersOverrunning the field. Slay one, a hundredRise to kill in ...
A Shadow of My Former Self.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> A Shadow of My Former Self darts like fish shadows in thick water,fleet light by day, motley by night, or as a furtive walker hurries on the river's other bank,dipping into rhododendron,skittering the ...
In Thrush Light.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> In Thrush Light How was it that day the car cantedalong those dry, blond hills, courtingthe road's camber as the needle dipped toward empty and we whisked through manzanita,live oak, madrone, the landscape simplifyingto those few elements, the road ...
Feeders.(Poem)
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre> Feeders When he asks why her daughter's crying, Barbara says,"One of her turtles killed the other ones. Look at it there!"Plesiosaur neck, thick olive limbs, spotted pancake shell,the turtle swims the way a leopard pads: back and forth,up and down a tank ...
What the bird says.(Short Story)
Sep 22, 2004; ... JIM CUTLER HAD FLOWN DOWN TO ASHEVILLE to be there while his father died but it was taking longer than expected so they'd given the old man morphine and now he was seeing things. "Not things. A bird." "What kind of bird?" "How the hell should I know? A ...
Ackerman in Eden.(Short Story)
Sep 22, 2004; ... TOMORROW, HE KNOWS, THEY WILL COME BACK with their Thorazine and their rules, but now Ackerman, alone of all his kind, stares into a pool of water and thinks of spearing fish in a twilit eddy of the far Euphrates. For tomorrow, when they return, they will not find him. He will be in the ...
Annie Taylor and the horse from the sea.
Sep 22, 2004; ... YOU CHOOSE THIS TIME," she tells me. "Something fancy." From the pile of sprinkled laundry I unroll my favorite, a dresser scarf embroidered with heaps of shells at each end, ribbonlike seaweed edging, and a fierce lively shape like a young dragon in the center. Annie takes the scarf from ...
To give ghosts the finger.(Short Story)
Sep 22, 2004; ... YOU'RE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE this story, believe me. Hell, even I don't believe it, and I'm its only teller now. I can tell you, though, sitting in that dim cell across from Jebediah, listening to him tell it, there was no question. I believed it. While Jebediah told it. The minute I left ...
The days of the Peppers.(Short Story)
Sep 22, 2004; ... MY MOTHER HAS FALLEN IN LOVE. We talk about this while we feed stray cats in the parking lot of Culpeper General Hospital, where I work in the cardiac ward. "It's silly, I know," she says, "at my age." The cats come gliding out from the shadows. She has trained them ...
Hunters.(Short Story)
Sep 22, 2004; ... KATE ANSWERED HIS PERSONAL AD in late summer soon after she'd been told for the second time that she was dying. She had always thought of herself as shy, not the type even to peruse such ads. But the news had been jolting, if not altogether unexpected, and had allowed her to act outside ...
Taku.(Short Story)
Sep 22, 2004; ... THE TAKU IS A HUGE RIVER, and begins in huge country. It headwaters in the largest remaining unprotected roadless area in British Columbia, nearly five million acres. The Taku, which leaves British Columbia to exit near Juneau, is Alaska's largest wild salmon fishery. The Yukon River lies ...
Lion's teeth.(Short Story)
Sep 22, 2004; ... HERE'S ME, AGE SEVEN: a bone rack tanned to dust, a mosaic of mud from kneecap to toe--a salt flat cracking under sun. You can play music on my ribs. I've always been fluent in mud, but here, its crumbling patches and crosshatched fingernail tracks seem more than a language, more than the ...
The hungry art of William Goyen.
Sep 22, 2004; ... <Pre>The beautiful is always strange. --Charles Baudelaire "Exposition Universelle 1855" In dammrigen GruftenTraumte ich lang ... --Hermann Hesse, "Fruling"Set to music by ...
John Clare for the twenty-first century.
Sep 22, 2004; ... JOHN CLARE'S POETRY, WHICH PRESERVES FOR POSTERITY the English countryside of his pre-Enclosure youth--its folkways and seasonal changes; its sinewy dialect ("swaily" for shady, "drowking" for drooping or wilting, "crankling" for winding, "suthering" for sighing, "progging" for poking); ...