In the Great Wide

In these months of pandemic, is it the time to petition a saint or two? Perhaps St. Roch, called upon during the plague? Or Ste. Thérèse of Lisieux, asked for in periods of illness? Thinking of all the cities in which so many have become ill, where doctors, nurses, and medical staff are overwhelmed and without desperately needed supplies, New Orleans among these cities.

“In the Great Wide,” a New Orleans story of floods and faith and finding one’s way, petitions a number of saints and recognizes a series of miracles. Published in Spring 2020 issue of The Massachusetts Review, the story is just a story, only fiction, somewhat on the speculative side, with a metaphor that is working overtime. In our world right now, it is only a distraction. Still, I’m taking the publication of this story at just this time as a sign that we all need a miracle.

And so the narrator Antoinette begins…

On a warm day in May, some years ago, Mary’s uncle set up a crawfish boil for his family of twenty-five and ended up feeding the five hundred members of St. John’s Cathedral. Hard red crawdad shells piled up on the newspaper-covered picnic tables and the altar boys swore the ice-cold beer never ran out. Across town that same spring, in the churchyard where my parents’ graves had already shifted in the soft soil, swarms of cream-colored roses grew, though no one had planted them. In late summer, a hurricane’s eye rested over the delta while the outer storm stalled and eventually gave up. The winds changed to light breezes, and the sideways rain became a calm sighing mist. That autumn a rumor floated through the neighborhood that the dying old woman one street over had woken up twenty years younger. By evening she was an infant in her daughter’s arms, and before the moon rose, she had disappeared.

            And then there was the Saturday afternoon I came home with my friend Mary from the winter sales down on Canal Street. We were breathless from walking all those blocks from the streetcar stop, the day’s gray cast and our thin-handled shopping bags weighing us down. As we neared the corner, a bloom caught in a crack in the sidewalk made us both pause. A fist of tiny white roses reached up, the same kind we had read of in Catechism class, the ones associated with Ste. Thérèse of France. Mary crossed herself and whispered, “Another miracle.” We didn’t even think of plucking them from the crevice and walked on. Miracles kept crowding in, taking up space. I preferred to think of my own miracle, baby Daphne, nearly a year old, growing in a new way. 

Here is a link to The Massachusetts Review, Volume 61, Issue 1, if you’d like to buy a copy and read more. Gratitude, stay well, and keep the faith!

Bobwhite

In 2008 I began writing a story about a young girl growing up in the 1950s, sent by her father to live with relatives in Picayune, Mississippi, while her mother lies in the Touro Infirmary in New Orleans. Now, twelve years later, “Bobwhite” has been published by Five Points Journal. I’m honored that the story appears among the work of many fine writers and poets, including Terese Svoboda, Katherine Soniat, Barbara Hamby, and Heather Sellers, as well as artist William Gay. I’m grateful to my agent Valerie Borchardt and Five Points editor Megan Sexton, as well as the many friends and fellow writers who spent time reading and responding to beginning drafts, among them Lauren Inness Norton, A.J. Verdelle, Alicia Hyland, Laurie Foos, and Mark Fabiano.

This quiet story begins:

She’d turned nine in October of 1955, that year when presidents and mothers were sent to the hospital. Carly’s father called the president Dwight instead of President Eisenhower, and he called his wife Vivienne instead of Mrs. Robicheaux. Carly paid attention to what her father said, especially when he called her by her given name: Caroline. Especially when her mother was driven to the Touro Infirmary, and her father became a man of few words. 

Here is a link to Five Points, Volume 19, Issue 3, if you’d like to buy a copy and read more. Gratitude all around for those who love and support the literary arts!

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Photo credit: Annie Spratt

"Rock Salt and Rabbit"

Though celebration in a time of chaos seems an unlikely, untruthful action, I want to pause and breathe and acknowledge a moment in my life as a writer. This week my story, "Rock Salt and Rabbit," one of eight finalists for the 2016 Nelligan Prize, was published in Colorado Review. The experience of working with Editor in Chief, Stephanie G'Schwind, and all the CR staff was amazing. To add to this honor, the story was the featured fiction on the CR website for their 2016 Fall/Winter Issue and in their November podcast. CR editor Lauren Matheny's beautiful reading of the story and CR podcast editor Kylan Rice's introductions and following interview allowed me to listen and learn even more about the characters and their world than I realized in the all the months and years of writing.

"Rock Salt and Rabbit" stands alone as a story, but is also a chapter in the novel, SYBELIA DRIVE; hence, the years of writing. It is Royal's story, set when the war in Vietnam is still going on, and when soldiers like Royal were returning home. While I have never been to war, through research and time spent writing and rewriting, I came to understand this character - his stamina, his dilemma, his honesty and generosity.

Through writing, we learn empathy. And I'd say through reading, too. I'd like to imagine that if Royal was more than a character, that if he were alive and breathing, he would be one of the thousands of veterans deploying this weekend to Standing Rock in North Dakota to "assemble as a peaceful, unarmed militia" and "defend the water protectors from assault and intimidation at the hands of the militarized police force and DAPL security."

In a time when the world spins in mad and maddening directions, I'm grateful for this moment. I encourage everyone to disengage from the madness for an hour each day, to take in something positive, like a story. Read in order to understand, then go out and make the world a better place.

Leap Day 2016

I'm thinking about dance, music, and writing these days. A year has passed since last reading and thinking on the words of Zadie Smith, and in this leap year, on this leap day, Zadie reappears. And she is leaping and dancing toward a new novel.

From The Guardian:

Swing Time is “a story about friendship and music and stubborn roots, about how we are shaped by these things and how we can survive them”, said Hamish Hamilton [ZS's publisher]. Set in north-west London and west Africa, it will follow the lives of two girls who both want to become dancers, but only one of whom has talent.

“The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It’s a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly in their early 20s, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either,” said Hamish Hamilton, which described the novel as “dazzlingly energetic and deeply human”.

In the last moments of this gifted day that comes every four years, I'm grateful for Zadie Smith's take on the world, her leaps from here to there, resting in heightened realism, in multiple viewpoints and urban, racial, and social class differences, and in the rhythms and rituals that bring us together.

Rappahannock, Waccamaw, and Pushcart

Rappahanock, Waccamaw, and Pushcart. Go ahead. Say it as fast as you can, again and again. 

A lucky trio. Unlike December's rain, sleet, and snow. More like ribbons in your hair, buttons and bows down your shirt front, and bells on your boots. Go ahead and dance!

And here's why:

“Gorilla” was nominated for a 2016  Pushcart Prize by the editors at Animal Literary Magazine. Many thanks to Sarah Cedeño, Fiction Editor, and Danita Berg, Founder and Co-Editor!

“Something for Nothing” was published in Waccamaw Journal, Issue 13. All my best to Cara Blue Adams, Fiction Editor, for her gorgeous edits and wonderful guidance!

“Waking” was published in  Rappahannock, Issue 2.1. Many thanks to Robert Kingsley, Fiction Editor!

Buttons, bows, and bells! Join me for a spin around the floor!