We’ve just finished proofing the winter issue, which boasts—in addition to the usual singing signatures—a hundred extra pages. It’s the first of two issues devoted to long forms (thanks, NEA!), which of course makes it special, but what struck us most when reading over this winter’s ample offerings was their range—an especially appropriate word as pertains to voice. The voices in 11.2 are as varied as they are vibrant. A few snippets for your mind’s ear:
From Sam Taylor’s “GodIs (2.0)”:
Says your name, Please touch me
Please devour me enlist me become me
But not all the way, touch me
a little all over briefly forever and almost
with your octopus arms, your suction cups, your oversized flannel, your lace-top camisole,
Are you sure that’s your name, octopus arms?
Are you sure, suction cup, Miracle Bra, Jake brake, peacoat?
From Steve Almond’s “Okay, Now Do You Surrender?”:
Loomis was going to be helpful because it was the right thing to do. He held to this conviction until the precise moment his eyes fell upon a small container of Greek yogurt. He and Kate had discussed this product at length. They had agreed it was an unnecessary luxury. He tamped down the urge to speak, then realized he was tamping down the urge to speak, then glared at Kate, who was reaching into the fridge to put the almond milk away and humming—humming, of all things! Her ass looked delish. This made Loomis wish he had not seen the yogurt. But it was too late. He was going to say something now, something awful and thrilling—he’d had enough of muzzling himself, of kowtowing, of groveling, which is probably how Kate had got the idea that the fucking Greek yogurt was back in play. She turned from the fridge. Her eyes followed his. He suffered an exquisite moment of pre-regret, of wanting to fall to his knees in some kind of spiritual silence. Then his vile mouth began to speak.
From James Kimbrell’s “Pluto’s Gate”:
Lord we say
we need wings to match the other wings
we don’t have
we need a bubbling we can hold
Yahweh Hot Rod Sky Talker
Talk to us Mister Master
Cloud Cork of the Transcendent Cava
Amen and Amen.
From Tom Paine’s “It Was Just Swimming”:
The two stumbled over the sandbar, sore to the bones. Nothing better than total destruction by the sea gods. It tore the bullshit off you! You felt born again! Insignificant, but alive! He tossed an arm around Jimbo, and then stopped in his tracks. Jimbo stumbled on past the grandmother at the shoreline. She lay in an aluminum lawn chair as if she had fallen from a plane. . . . A wave suddenly toppled her over. She was on her back, waving her mottled arms in the swirling sand. Like she was trying to make a sand angel! Her wig floated away like a black anemone. She was bald. He scooped her up. She clawed her fingers into his chest hair and said, “Take me out there.” He looked back to the breaking surf, and there were two real surfers out there now. The beach was pretty empty. Catalina was watching him with her hands on her hips. She looked angry.
Jimbo was already up at the showers.
So he carried someone’s grandmother out to the sandbar. He walked with her in his big arms into the smashing waves. It was something he had to do. He cradled her body as the waves walloped them. She was in a cave of his strength. He had never been defeated as an MMA fighter. A surfer railed past them, cutting and spraying. Knocked to his knees once, he held her tight in the crashing water, only to rise again from the foam like Poseidon. Coughing, choking, and gasping, she kissed his lips hard when he returned her safely to shore, even slipped him some ancient tongue. Kinky as it might seem, it was his sexiest kiss ever, though he had no idea why.
From Kirsten Skrinde’s “Frackville”:
If Marge doesn’t want me, I don’t want her. I shall not focus on those serpents beneath my feet and at my back. I have a realm of music, art, and literature here in my home. What more could I require? The hideous kitchen light has begun to pulsate madly, perhaps to its doom. But no matter. Out, out, brief candle! I walk into the living room, past the welcoming forms of my uncle’s Depression-era furniture. The sofa is lumpy and sometimes exhales clouds of dust, but it is still perfectly good, as is the phonograph. What accompaniment is appropriate for the day? A wild gallop of Valkyries, I think. Hoyotoho!
As I place the record on the turntable, the lamplight goes out. The strobe from the kitchen stops as well. Two bulbs expiring at once, or is Con Edison expressing dismay at my negligence? I lower the needle onto the record, but it too lies inert. Oh, for a muse of fire!
From Brock Clarke’s “The Radical”:
She’s watching one of those television shows that are made from books that we couldn’t be paid to read but that, once they’re made into television shows, we can’t stop watching, even though we have to pay to watch. We’re watching this TV show on Therese’s computer. Because we are so through with watching TV shows on TV.
“The last I saw Romark he was galloping past the Keening Wall in West Remarksfen toward the Forbidden Realm,” one of the characters says to the other. This is the way they talk. They wear fur, and if they’re men they wear beards and long hair and usually they’re battling or riding off into battle, and if they’re not doing something battle related, they’re entering the womenfolk from behind. Speaking of, a woman walks into the chamber—there are no rooms in this show, only chambers—and you just know one of these two guys is going to enter her from behind before the scene is over, and I hope neither of the kids walks in.
From Ashley Anna McHugh’s “The Red Hours”:
Now place an ostrich feather on the scale—
slender, nearly weightless. Long ago,
the spirits of the dead could not depart
unless their hearts were light as this. Don’t grieve.
Most men don’t lose their bones to a common grave,
but if we sink to the ocean floor, the sea
will fashion of us something rich and strange—
like the platinum skull, its diamonds pavé-laid:
the opulence of light made manifest
in those dazzling sockets, where there once were eyes.
From John William McConnell’s “House of Wine”:
The morning of the Pommeroys’ visit, John William McConnell had woken up fetally curled beneath a towel, and on the couch. His hangover . . . Wagnerian: mountain dwarfs going hammer and tongs at the base of this skull. The towel was mildewed and damp. Whomp whomp whomp, hammered the dwarfs.
John sat up. The room around him flexed and contracted, a fishbowl effect. The light, the light. John thought, Hmmm. He threw off the towel and did a tactical risk assessment. Was he on the outs? The circumstances of the couch, he couldn’t remember: the whys hows and whose ideas. He’d been working on this story, about his surgery. Lilith at a show. He felt the pinch of his scar. He rolled an empty bottle with his bare foot. He picked up his laptop on the floor and turned it on and waited, closed his eyes and delivered himself yea verily unto his hangover, slid backward into it. The laptop blinked on: Wjatever upi wamt/ Sje saod/ Sjeodod mpt spimd omterested/
John mouthed the words. Had it been brilliant and lucid prose, originally? Had it been a suicide note? He looked up and found himself observed by Lilith, leaning against the doorframe. He thought, Her hair is red. She was smiling, almost.
From Jack Snyder’s “Come Deciduous”:
O little moon o light at the end of
convince me my brain-knots are not
for naught these trees are all buck
& burl even the blackout heavens
are gnarled w/ slender antler-sprawl
that connects the star-specks o little
moon o light at the end of the world
