the embattled fishermen
combing the sea with nets,
the girl with a dove in her suitcase.
I had wanted to count the steps. The end.
12.
Or to begin again having quoted, inscribed,
having changed a few words
along the way, a gesture toward
the gaps between is not, is, is not.
Eve gives me a map traced on thin paper
with a red dot. The boys walk along the road,
their hoods up, their speech riddled.
The red dot is where they were headed
in the year of the snake. We decided
against perfection. We said
perfection is a morbid
judgment against the living.
The girl with red hair was imperfect.
They did not come with only a suitcase on a boat,
Eve said. The Dutch, I said, made paintings
of nature arranged as perfect death. The end.
13.
Or to begin again: thisness abbreviated:
margins, earshot. Have no herald, no scope
under such bearings, only an instruction
to carry on under the new doctrine’s law.
A friend is known to speak
about the difficulty of understanding.
Could he climb higher to see better
as from a distant star
occluded beyond ever knowing?
Now obey this.
The steps lead nowhere, so only
the small bird, hiding under boughs, escapes
the mirage of escape.
Fidelity ruptures at the core.
Over there, where he hurls
his oath at the corpse of belonging. The end.
14.
Or to begin again: lavish permission,
ribbons placed back in their bag,
pulled through the sleeves
of the prisoner’s coat, the suicide’s
gun. The Arab men
are playing backgammon in the courtyard.
The preacher’s voice fills the chapel
with iconographies of faith.
Our tears turn to ice
and the mourners stop along the path,
informal now, unretrieved, makeshift.
So that with nothing held back we sigh,
beyond time, for that green pasture where time
stands still. Does not. Does. Go back
before the beginning, before
a promise was made. The end.
15.
Or to begin again: chronicle of thaw
and the sitting hawk
and the tilting stones.
The place a
saturated edge
moving quickly along the road
up over the arc of bridge, flag, sun,
and the hanging man. Fact
dissolves into fact, proximate to
the slowest economy, the most forbidden dream.
The girl enters knowledge.
You can see her on the trail
of the smallest bug, the most inglorious weed.
We join her in the aftermath of promise
where she is studying the tides.
World without image dilates. The end.
16.
Way over in the particularities of evening
gold touches the back of her neck. It spawns
in a zone of supposition and indirection.
Auden imagining the good at a sidewalk café.
Origin marked by tracks in mud.
At whose approval? The call stuffed in a sock?
Begin but stay back in the infrastructure
nothing noticed, nothing gained
as it fears the dawn when the moon
recessed into the harbor of play:
the head of the beheaded despot
judgment against the living
the mirage of escape
stands still. Does not. Does. Go back
where she is studying the tides.
Go back to the beginning. The end.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
ROBERT ANTONI is the author of Divina Trace (Overlook), Blessed Is the Fruit (Henry Holt), My Grandmother’s Erotic Folktales (Grove), and Carnival (Grove). His forthcoming book is a historical novel entitled TES: The Tropical Emigration Society in England and Trinidad, W.I.
RAE ARMANTROUT’s recent book, Next Life (Wesleyan), was a New York Times Notable Book of 2007. She teaches at the University of California, San Diego.
JOHN ASHBERY’s most recent books of poetry are A Worldly Country and Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems (both Ecco/HarperCollins). His translation of Pierre Reverdy’s Haunted House was recently published by Black Square/Brooklyn Rail. The first volume of his Collected Poems will be released this fall by the Library of America. Since 1990 he has been Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College.
MARTINE BELLEN is the author of several collections of poetry. Presently, she’s collaborating with David Rosenbaum on an opera/nonopera entitled AH!
CHARLES BERNSTEIN’S most recent books are Girly Man (University of Chicago), Shadowtime (Green Integer), and Republics of Reality: 1975-1995. Content’s Dream: Essays 1975-1984 (Northwestern) and Controlling Interests (Roof) have been reissued recently. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
MEI-MEI BERSSENBRUGGE recently published I Love Artists, New and Selected Poems (University of California) and Concordance (Kelsey Street), a collaboration with artist Kiki Smith. She lives in New York City and New Mexico.
BRIAN BOOKER’S stories have appeared in The Antioch Review, Tin House, and TriQuarterly, among other journals. His collection, The Sleeping Sickness, was a finalist in the 2005 Iowa Short Fiction Awards.
CAN XUE’s novel Five Spice Street, translated by Chen Zeping and Karen Gernant, will be published by Yale University Press in the fall. A collection of her short fiction, Blue Light in the Sky and Other Stories, was published by New Directions in 2006.
MARY CAPONEGRO’s new collection of stories and novellas will be published by Coffee House Press in 2009.
JONATHAN CARROLL is the author of fifteen novels. His latest, The Ghost in Love, the opening chapter of which first appeared in Conjunctions, will be published in October by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
CHEN ZEPING, professor of linguistics at Fujian Teachers’ University, has published numerous books and articles in the field of Chinese dialects.
SANDRA CISNEROS is a novelist, poet, short story writer, essayist, and founder of Macondo, an association of socially engaged writers. Among her many books are My Wicked Wicked Ways (Knopf), The House on Mango Street, and Woman Hollering Creek (both Vintage). She lives in San Antonio, Texas.
PETER COLE’s new collection of poems, Things on Which I’ve Stumbled, is forthcoming this fall from New Directions. Recently named a MacArthur Fellow, he lives in Jerusalem.
ROBERT COOVER’s newest work of fiction, Noir, will be published in Paris this spring. “Red-Hot Ruby” is a chapter from his current work in progress, a sequel to his first novel, The Origin of the Brunists.
EDWIDGE DANTICAT is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, which was an Oprah Book Club selection; Krik? Krak! (both Vintage), a National Book Award Finalist; The Farming of Bones (Penguin), an American Book Award winner; and, most recently, Brother, I’m Dying (Knopf), a memoir.
RIKKI DUCORNET’s newest collection of fiction, The One Marvelous Thing, is forthcoming in October from Dalkey Archive Press. Many of these stories, including the one in this issue, first appeared in Conjunctions.
The long poem project of RACHEL BLAU DuPLESSIS is collected in Torques: Drafts 58-76 (Salt Publishing) as well as in Drafts 1-38, Toll (Wesleyan) and Drafts 39-57, Pledge, with Draft Unnumbered: Précis (also from Salt). In 2006, she published Blue Studios: Poetry and its Cultural Work on gender and poetics, along with a reprint of the groundbreaking The Pink Guitar: Writ
ing as Feminist Practice (both University of Alabama).
JULIA ELLIOTT’S fiction has appeared in Best American Fantasy, The Georgia Review, Puerto Del Sol, The Mississippi Review, previous issues of Conjunctions, and other magazines. She lives in Columbia, South Carolina, where she sings and plays keyboards for the band Grey Egg.
BRIAN EVENSON is the author of seven books of fiction, most recently The Open Curtain (Coffee House). A new collection of stories, Fugue State, is forthcoming in 2009. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University’s Literary Arts Program.
THALIA FIELD has published Point and Line, Incarnate: Story Material (both New Directions), and Ululu (Clown Shrapnel) (Coffee House).
EDUARDO GALEANO is one of Latin America’s foremost writers, as well as a distinguished journalist and historian. The winner of the first Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Prize in 1998, he is the author of Voice of Time and Upside Down (Metropolitan); Walking Words, We Say No, The Book of Embraces, and The Memory of Fire trilogy (Norton); Soccer in Sun and Shadow (Verso); and Open Veins of Latin America (Monthly Review Press). He lives in Montevideo, Uruguay.
WILLIAM H. GASS’s most recent book is a collection of essays, A Temple of Texts (Knopf).
KAREN GERNANT is professor emerita of Chinese history and divides her time between homes in Oregon and China. Translations by Chen Zeping and Karen Gernant have also appeared in Manoa, Words Without Borders, Black Warrior Review, and Ninth Letter.
PETER GIZZI’s recent books include The Outernationale and Some Values of Landscape and Weather, both from Wesleyan. He currently serves as the poetry editor for The Nation.
MATTHEW HAMITY is a recent graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program.
LYN HEJINIAN’s most recently published books of poetry are The Fatalist (Omnidawn), A Border Comedy (Granary Books), and My Life in the Nineties (Shark). Forthcoming in 2008 are a collection of poetry collaborations between her and Jack Collom titled Situations, Sings (Adventures in Poetry) and Sage/Circus (Omnidawn). She is also one of the ten authors of The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography (Mode A), which, when finished, will run to ten volumes.
SHELLEY JACKSON is the author of Half Life (HarperCollins), The Melancholy of Anatomy (Anchor Books), hypertexts including the classic Patchwork Girl (Eastgate Systems), several children’s books, and Skin, a story published in tattoos on the skin of 2,095 volunteers. With artist Christine Hill she is co-founder of the Interstitial Library, Circulating Collection. Her Web site can be found at www.ineradicablestain.com.
Among ROBERT KELLY’s most recent books of poetry are Threads (First Intensity) and May Day (Parsifal). A novel, The Book from the Sky, is forthcoming from North Atlantic.
PAUL LA FARGE has published two novels: The Artist of the Missing and Haussmann, or the Distinction (both Farrar, Straus and Giroux). His third book, The Facts of Winter, was published by McSweeney’s in 2005.
ANN LAUTERBACH’s collection of essays, The Night Sky, has recently been published in paperback by Penguin. She is Schwab Professor of Literature at Bard College and co-chair of writing in the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts.
RICHARD “BROWN” LETHEM lives and paints in Berwick, Maine. Aucocisco Gallery in Portland shows his work, and he is on the faculty of the University of Southern Maine.
BEN MARCUS is the author of The Age of Wire and String (Dalkey Archive), Notable American Women (Vintage), and The Father Costume (Artspace). He has recently published stories, essays, and reviews in Harper’s, Bookforum, and The New York Times.
VALERIE MARTIN’s most recent novel is Trespass, from Doubleday (Nan A. Talese). A new novel, My Emotions, is scheduled for publication in 2009, also from Doubleday.
CAROLE MASO, author of nine books, is currently working on a novel, The Bay of Angels, and a collection of stories, Mother & Child. She teaches at Brown University.
CHARLES McLEOD’s fiction has appeared in CutBank, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, and Third Coast. He was a writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and a Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University.
EDIE MEIDAV is the author of Crawl Space (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), The Far Field: A Novel of Ceylon (Houghton Mifflin), and the forthcoming The Beauty of Choice. She is the recipient of a Bard Fiction Prize, a Kafka Award, and a Village Voice Writers on the Verge Award.
RICK MOODY is the author, most recently, of Right Livelihoods: Three Novellas (Little, Brown). He is currently at work on a new novel.
BRADFORD MORROW is the founding editor of Conjunctions. He is the author of Come Sunday, Trinity Fields, Giovanni’s Gift, and Ariel’s Crossing (all Penguin). The recipient of a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction, he also received the 2007 PEN/Nora Magid Award for excellence in literary editing. He is currently at work on a new novel, The Prague Sonatas, and teaches at Bard College.
JAMES MORROW’s most recent novel is The Philosopher’s Apprentice (Morrow). He is also the author of the postmodern historical epic The Last Witchfinder (Harper Perennial) as well as the Godhead Trilogy (Harcourt). From the book The Philosopher’s Apprentice, by James Morrow. Copyright © 2008 by James Morrow. Reprinted by permission of William Morrow, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
ANDREW MOSSIN’s new collection of poetry, The Veil, was published by Singing Horse Press, which also published his book The Epochal Body. He is currently revising a manuscript of critical prose, New Americans: Readings in Masculine Subjectivity, Literary Partnering, and Poetic Form, and is at work on a book of documentary poetry.
NAM LE’s debut collection of short stories, The Boat, is newly published by Knopf. He is the fiction editor of the Harvard Review.
JOYCE CAROL OATES, a frequent contributor to Conjunctions, is the author, most recently, of the novel The Gravedigger’s Daughter and the story collection Wild Nights! (both from Ecco).
STEPHEN O’CONNOR is the author of Rescue (Harmony Books), Will My Name Be Shouted Out? (Touchstone), and Orphan Trains (University of Chicago). He teaches at Columbia and Sarah Lawrence.
PETER ORNER is the author of The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (Little, Brown) and Esther Stories (Houghton Mifflin). Among his many awards are the Rome Prize, the Bard Fiction Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He recently completed editing a book of oral histories called Underground America, forthcoming this spring from McSweeney’s.
RICHARD POWERS is the author of nine novels. His most recent book, The Echo Maker (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), won the National Book Award. A MacArthur Fellow, he currently teaches in the creative writing MFA program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
JOAN RETALLACK edited and wrote the introduction to Gertrude Stein: Selections, just out from the University of California, which also published The Poethical Wager. Her books of poetry include Memnoir (Post-Apollo), How to Do Things with Words (Sun & Moon), and Afterrimages (Wesleyan). She is John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Humanities at Bard College.
DONALD REVELL is the author of ten collections of poetry, including, most recently, A Thief of Strings and Pennyweight Windows: New & Selected Poems (both from Alice James Books).
JOANNA SCOTT’s most recent books are a novel, Liberation, and a collection of stories, Everybody Loves Somebody (both Little, Brown/Back Bay Books).
REGINALD SHEPHERD’s most recent book of poems is Fata Morgana (University of Pittsburgh). He is also the author of Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry (University of Michigan) and editor of Lyric Postmodernisms (Counterpath).
CHRISTOPHER SORRENTINO’s latest book is American Tempura (Nothing Moments Books), a collaboration with artist Derek Boshier and Counterspace, a Los Angeles design firm.
COLE SWENSEN is the author, most recently, of Ours (University of California). She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the San Francisco State Poetry Center Book Award, the National Poetry Series award, and the PEN USA Award in Translation. She
is the co-editor of the anthology American Hybrid, due out from Norton in fall 2008, and this year’s writer in residence at the Beinecke Library at Yale.
FREDERIC TUTEN has published five novels: Tintin in the New World, Tallien: A Brief Romance, Van Gogh’s Bad Café (all reprinted by Black Classic Press), The Adventures of Mao on the Long March (New Directions Classics), and, most recently, The Green Hour (Norton).
DIANE WILLIAMS’s most recent book is It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature (FC2). She is the founding editor of the literary annual NOON.
EDITOR: Bradford Morrow
MANAGING EDITOR: Michael Bergstein
SENIOR EDITORS: Robert Antoni, Peter Constantine, Brian Evenson, J. W. McCormack, Micaela Morrissette, David Shields, Pat Sims, Alan Tinkler
WEBMASTER: Brian Evenson
ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Jedediah Berry, Eric Olson
ART EDITOR: Norton Batkin
PUBLICITY: Mark R. Primoff
EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS: Alice Gregory, Jesica Loudis
CONJUNCTIONS is published in the Spring and Fall of each year by Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504. This issue is made possible in part with the generous funding of the National Endowment for the Arts, and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by CONJUNCTIONS
Cover design by Jerry Kelly, New York. Cover painting by Richard Lethem. The Ring, 1991, oil on linen, 60 x 50 inches. Reproduced by kind permission of the artist.
978-1-4804-6386-8
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