Editor: Frederick Barthelme
Managing Editor: Rie Fortenberry
Assistant Editors: Angela Ball, Steven Barthelme, Jordan Sanderson, Erin Smith, Lynn Watson, Jane Woodman
Published by the Center for Writers, at the University of Southern Mississippi
The magazine is published quarterly however there are only two print copies per year
The Mississippi Review contains an extremely experimental form of writing however the publication remains true to the form of prose/poetry specifically. I have not seen any submissions that have been published under the Mississippi Review that would not be classified under this category.
The Mississippi Review is published by the Center for Writers, at the University of Southern Mississippi: 118 College Drive #5144,
Hattiesburg, Mississippi 39406-0001
The Mississippi Review awards prizes of $1,000 in fiction and in poetry. Winners and finalists will make up next winter's print issue of the national literary magazine Mississippi Review. Contest is open to all writers in English except current or former students or employees of The University of Southern Mississippi. Fiction entries should be 1000-5000 words, poetry entries should be three poems totaling 10 pages or less. There is no limit on the number of entries you may submit. Entry fee is $15 per entry, payable to the Mississippi Review.
The magazine tends to publish both prose and poetry and where the two meet in the middle. It is focused on the mesh of writing called prose/poetry.
...the pieces from the literary magazine that I selected are in hard copy form. I can scan them sometime tomorrow and post them seperately.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
I find myself often
I find myself often
Staring,
At the boys who go to the gym
And wonder
- God, what would I look like
If I had chiseled cubist pecks?
Think to myself,
Well there’s no better time to start than the present,
Drink another tin can beer,
Then write another chiseled cubist poem.
Staring,
At the boys who go to the gym
And wonder
- God, what would I look like
If I had chiseled cubist pecks?
Think to myself,
Well there’s no better time to start than the present,
Drink another tin can beer,
Then write another chiseled cubist poem.
Chef's House (Alternate Take)...the first had contradictions
One afternoon Wes was in the yard pulling weeds when Chef drove up in front of the house. He opened the door of his car and left the car running. Wes had stopped on his knees with his fists full of weeds staring at Chef’s off yellow Buick- the piss boat they called it. Chef sat in the driver’s seat with one leg hanging out of the car. He finally pulled himself out after what seemed forever. Wes rose from the earth, his knees soiled in what kept his mind clean- kept his heart dry. They met in the middle of the yard and they took a look into each other’s lives. Chef parted his lips and then drew them closed again.
Nervous eye met nervous eye.
“ ‘Bout the house I reckon” said Wes
“Mhhm” Chef confirmed his thoughts in mere body language.
“Suppose you’ll be selling?” said Wes
“Mum’s going the sweet bye and bye” he muttered under his breath,
“If you want the house you can have it. I’ll be selling it cheap on account of I got to get home quick. Mum needs me.”
That was that. Chef wrote us from Northern Wisconsin where he had grown up as a kid. He told us that he grew up on a farm until his dad left his mom and two brothers at the age of twelve. Chef was the oldest brother of three. His mom moved to Madison when they were fifteen and made a living as a waitress in a roadside diner. It was 1976 when Chef was twenty years old and working for the United Trucking Co. Wes and I had just met at the University of Illinois. We all had our lives in front of us, but now where were we with everything so far behind?
A month later Chef wrote us that his mother had died and then the letters stopped. We all knew what had happened to Chef. He had stopped going to his don’t drink meetings and was 900 miles from the only friend who could truly convince him otherwise. Life moved on and I got a job at the post office. I was Eureka’s finest post-woman. When news arrived that Chef had died of a perforated liver we both cried. Chef had left us the house. We had been paying it off at a monthly rate. Wes and I had the house a good sum of money but everything else had evaporated over the years. Our kids were gone. Chef was gone. We had everything in front of us but no one to share any of it. The only thing that kept us company was the memory of a troubled past.
Wes came home drunk and one night and the following morning was gone. I knew if he ever let himself drink again he would be gone. It was no surprise to find the note on the sofa that read: “Darlin’ there are no more shots at what we had or who we were. We are who we are and we have two choices: To accept, bow my head, and quietly leave, or to deny and stand on buckling knees as the world reels”. Wes left to where I will never know. I went to work, removed my ring, and delivered the news I knew that people so desperately needed.
Nervous eye met nervous eye.
“ ‘Bout the house I reckon” said Wes
“Mhhm” Chef confirmed his thoughts in mere body language.
“Suppose you’ll be selling?” said Wes
“Mum’s going the sweet bye and bye” he muttered under his breath,
“If you want the house you can have it. I’ll be selling it cheap on account of I got to get home quick. Mum needs me.”
That was that. Chef wrote us from Northern Wisconsin where he had grown up as a kid. He told us that he grew up on a farm until his dad left his mom and two brothers at the age of twelve. Chef was the oldest brother of three. His mom moved to Madison when they were fifteen and made a living as a waitress in a roadside diner. It was 1976 when Chef was twenty years old and working for the United Trucking Co. Wes and I had just met at the University of Illinois. We all had our lives in front of us, but now where were we with everything so far behind?
A month later Chef wrote us that his mother had died and then the letters stopped. We all knew what had happened to Chef. He had stopped going to his don’t drink meetings and was 900 miles from the only friend who could truly convince him otherwise. Life moved on and I got a job at the post office. I was Eureka’s finest post-woman. When news arrived that Chef had died of a perforated liver we both cried. Chef had left us the house. We had been paying it off at a monthly rate. Wes and I had the house a good sum of money but everything else had evaporated over the years. Our kids were gone. Chef was gone. We had everything in front of us but no one to share any of it. The only thing that kept us company was the memory of a troubled past.
Wes came home drunk and one night and the following morning was gone. I knew if he ever let himself drink again he would be gone. It was no surprise to find the note on the sofa that read: “Darlin’ there are no more shots at what we had or who we were. We are who we are and we have two choices: To accept, bow my head, and quietly leave, or to deny and stand on buckling knees as the world reels”. Wes left to where I will never know. I went to work, removed my ring, and delivered the news I knew that people so desperately needed.
Chef's House (Alternate Take)
One afternoon Wes was in the yard pulling weeds when Chef drove up in front of the house. He opened the door of his car and left the car running. Wes had stopped on his knees with his fists full of weeds staring at Chef’s off yellow Buick- the piss boat they called it. Chef sat in the driver’s seat with one leg hanging out of the car. He finally pulled himself out after what seemed forever. Wes rose from the earth, his knees soiled in what kept his mind clean- kept his heart dry. They met in the middle of the yard and they took a look into each other’s lives. Chef parted his lips and then drew them closed again.
Nervous eye met nervous eye.
“ ‘Bout the house I reckon” said Wes
“Mhhm” Chef confirmed his thoughts in mere body language.
“Suppose you’ll be selling?” said Wes
“Mum’s going the sweet bye and bye” he muttered under his breath,
“If you want the house you can have it. I’ll be selling it cheap on account of I got to get home quick. Mum needs me.”
That was that. Chef moved a week later and we bought the house for everything we had. Chef wrote us from Northern Wisconsin where he had grown up as a kid. He told us that he grew up on a farm until his dad left his mom and two brothers at the age of twelve. Chef was the oldest brother of three. His mom moved to Madison when they were fifteen and made a living as a waitress in a roadside diner. It was 1976 when Chef was twenty years old and working for the United Trucking Co. Wes and I had just met at the University of Illinois. We all had our lives in front of us, but now where were we with everything so far behind?
A month later Chef wrote us that his mother had died and then the letters stopped. We all knew what had happened to Chef. He had stopped going to his don’t drink meetings and was 900 miles from the only friend who could truly convince him otherwise. Life moved on and I got a job at the post office. I was Eureka’s finest post-woman. When news arrived that Chef had died of a perforated liver we both cried. Chef had left us the house. We had been paying it off at a monthly rate. Wes and I had the house a good sum of money but everything else had evaporated over the years. Our kids were gone. Chef was gone. We had everything in front of us but no one to share any of it. The only thing that kept us company was the memory of a troubled past.
Wes came home drunk and one night and the following morning was gone. I knew if he ever let himself drink again he would be gone. It was no surprise to find the note on the sofa that read: “Darlin’ there are no more shots at what we had or who we were. We are who we are and we have two choices: To accept, bow my head, and quietly leave, or to deny and stand on buckling knees as the world reels”. Wes left to where I will never know. I went to work, removed my ring, and delivered the news I knew that people so desperately needed.
Nervous eye met nervous eye.
“ ‘Bout the house I reckon” said Wes
“Mhhm” Chef confirmed his thoughts in mere body language.
“Suppose you’ll be selling?” said Wes
“Mum’s going the sweet bye and bye” he muttered under his breath,
“If you want the house you can have it. I’ll be selling it cheap on account of I got to get home quick. Mum needs me.”
That was that. Chef moved a week later and we bought the house for everything we had. Chef wrote us from Northern Wisconsin where he had grown up as a kid. He told us that he grew up on a farm until his dad left his mom and two brothers at the age of twelve. Chef was the oldest brother of three. His mom moved to Madison when they were fifteen and made a living as a waitress in a roadside diner. It was 1976 when Chef was twenty years old and working for the United Trucking Co. Wes and I had just met at the University of Illinois. We all had our lives in front of us, but now where were we with everything so far behind?
A month later Chef wrote us that his mother had died and then the letters stopped. We all knew what had happened to Chef. He had stopped going to his don’t drink meetings and was 900 miles from the only friend who could truly convince him otherwise. Life moved on and I got a job at the post office. I was Eureka’s finest post-woman. When news arrived that Chef had died of a perforated liver we both cried. Chef had left us the house. We had been paying it off at a monthly rate. Wes and I had the house a good sum of money but everything else had evaporated over the years. Our kids were gone. Chef was gone. We had everything in front of us but no one to share any of it. The only thing that kept us company was the memory of a troubled past.
Wes came home drunk and one night and the following morning was gone. I knew if he ever let himself drink again he would be gone. It was no surprise to find the note on the sofa that read: “Darlin’ there are no more shots at what we had or who we were. We are who we are and we have two choices: To accept, bow my head, and quietly leave, or to deny and stand on buckling knees as the world reels”. Wes left to where I will never know. I went to work, removed my ring, and delivered the news I knew that people so desperately needed.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
I will approach my son or daughter when I arrive at such & such age with a winded tucked behind sigh & slight smile & blurt,
-Your father was an idiot.
Let me be frankly honest; I am not a liar. Not that I am trying to present myself as someone who is holier than all of thee; I just can’t do it, which is why I find myself in the back seat of a squad car early Sunday morning with the elegant blues and reds swimming over my face. The evening she is painted with a scrupulous touch, superfluously expressionistic. This is me at age twenty. I have a hard head and a concrete constitution-not to say I’m built- I’m set. Often I have conceived the concept of my ageless self being everything that is and knows forgetting that, perhaps, everyone is very much susceptible to the nonsensery of the mind. This is no life lesson. This is no awakening. This is no greater understanding. This is a slap in the face. This is shame. This is democratic action in progress. So tell me how old you were when you had twenty of them? Did you think about the impurity of the law and the aggravation of the soul? Why or how did it come and what or when will it go? Like this,
-so your name is officer cocksucker?
-My name is officer Zabilski.
-What’s your first name Zabilski?
-I told you already-it’s officer.
-officer ain’t a first name, its ok, shit-head works fine with me.
Maybe my son will get caught spray painting graffiti on the wall of a church when he is fourteen. The younger he fucks up the easier it would be to approach him I think. I was one those ones who didn’t fuck up until I was practically out of high school. Dad was overbearing and uptight- wanted to control everything that I did. He taught at my high school, introduced me to students as a freshman- naturally I was cool. Mom was too liberal to really lay down the law when I convinced my friends to drive through the Harlem ghetto while fish bowling the car, or when I hurled a bottle of Irish whiskey and hit Bob Dylan’s drummer, or when I fell through the glass while climbing the green house at UMASS Amherst on LSD. I suppose they really never found out about too many of those incidents either. They were there when I was brought home by the cops for smoking pot at Salem State or when I broke down from the overt abuse of psychedelics that evening in the summer when dad was grilling for mom and me. I tended to crawl away and avoid the repercussions by the skin of my ass. God forbid I let myself become a reoccurring issue.
-I said who the fuck cares what I said about his mother?
-They won’t tell me the price of bail because I called one of them a Jew and I verbally sodomized another’s mother.
-Where are you?
-Amherst police station
-I was arrested for being FUCKING CHARLIE CHAPLIN. God forbid I mime on a bus.
-You’re an idiot
-Yeah?
-I’m not bailing you out
-I don’t care
My grandfather has a glass eye and that is why I can always see into him so well. Anthony and I were only ten years old when he gave us bb guns and a set of bow and arrows. In the summer we would wander into the woods behind his junked camper trailer and shoot at each other’s feet, sling arrows straight into the air and play run around but don’t get hit, rolled tires from the top of the sand dune towards the trailers and made sure to run when the tire took out the awning of some poor old man’s trailer- and we were young. When sweetie had her stroke I saw that the bitch in her wasn’t invincible. I hated my aunt and I’m sure Anthony hated the way she could be too. I remember sitting outside of the hospital in the deck chairs listening to anecdotes told by Grandpa Carl. In later years I would see him reflected through myself in unflattering ways and wonderful exhibitions. He told me how he defended my mother in a bar once and socked some bitch in the face. He told me how he hopped the fence to his neighbor’s yard (the asshole with the dog) and ripped out a bunch of his fence posts and threw them at his house or how the night Robin fell out of her fourth story window and hit the pavement face first- he drank until he couldn’t see the image of her broken face in the hospital anymore. I was still young when he would drive me to work at the seafood restaurant where I served prime rib and lobster to the elderly. He spends his days mowing the lawn, building gardens, painting pictures of New Hampshire when the family was still young, and taking his great granddaughter Ella for walks at Lynch Park. I can still remember his hogbrush kisses when I was seven, how awful and not like a mother’s kiss they were. They lived on turner st. and we drove from California- the grill on the blue, Chrysler, minivan was full of bugs.
-In the case of Antonio Hernandez charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest on the morning of Nov. 2nd the state of Massachusetts assumes one innocent until proven guilty. Will you be representing yourself or do you have a personal attorney? If you have neither the court will provide one if necessary.
-I would like to request a court appointed attorney your honor.
-Considering this is a first time offence permission is granted Mr. Hernandez, you will be scheduled for another court appearance at a later date and time. You understand Mr. Hernandez that one is obligated to appear in court at every requested date and failure to do so will result in a warrant for your arrest.
-I understand your honor, thank you.
I see through the glass eye and into the walks on Dane st. beach. I see Carl who worked for the city his whole life and volunteers for lunch monitoring at the elementary school. I see the art and the memories captured in watercolors and acrylics. They hang in my first apartment next to Alanna’s trees. I will approach my son or daughter at such & such an age and say,
-Your father was an idiot
I am ageless and reflect upon the glass eye
-Your father was an idiot.
Let me be frankly honest; I am not a liar. Not that I am trying to present myself as someone who is holier than all of thee; I just can’t do it, which is why I find myself in the back seat of a squad car early Sunday morning with the elegant blues and reds swimming over my face. The evening she is painted with a scrupulous touch, superfluously expressionistic. This is me at age twenty. I have a hard head and a concrete constitution-not to say I’m built- I’m set. Often I have conceived the concept of my ageless self being everything that is and knows forgetting that, perhaps, everyone is very much susceptible to the nonsensery of the mind. This is no life lesson. This is no awakening. This is no greater understanding. This is a slap in the face. This is shame. This is democratic action in progress. So tell me how old you were when you had twenty of them? Did you think about the impurity of the law and the aggravation of the soul? Why or how did it come and what or when will it go? Like this,
-so your name is officer cocksucker?
-My name is officer Zabilski.
-What’s your first name Zabilski?
-I told you already-it’s officer.
-officer ain’t a first name, its ok, shit-head works fine with me.
Maybe my son will get caught spray painting graffiti on the wall of a church when he is fourteen. The younger he fucks up the easier it would be to approach him I think. I was one those ones who didn’t fuck up until I was practically out of high school. Dad was overbearing and uptight- wanted to control everything that I did. He taught at my high school, introduced me to students as a freshman- naturally I was cool. Mom was too liberal to really lay down the law when I convinced my friends to drive through the Harlem ghetto while fish bowling the car, or when I hurled a bottle of Irish whiskey and hit Bob Dylan’s drummer, or when I fell through the glass while climbing the green house at UMASS Amherst on LSD. I suppose they really never found out about too many of those incidents either. They were there when I was brought home by the cops for smoking pot at Salem State or when I broke down from the overt abuse of psychedelics that evening in the summer when dad was grilling for mom and me. I tended to crawl away and avoid the repercussions by the skin of my ass. God forbid I let myself become a reoccurring issue.
-I said who the fuck cares what I said about his mother?
-They won’t tell me the price of bail because I called one of them a Jew and I verbally sodomized another’s mother.
-Where are you?
-Amherst police station
-I was arrested for being FUCKING CHARLIE CHAPLIN. God forbid I mime on a bus.
-You’re an idiot
-Yeah?
-I’m not bailing you out
-I don’t care
My grandfather has a glass eye and that is why I can always see into him so well. Anthony and I were only ten years old when he gave us bb guns and a set of bow and arrows. In the summer we would wander into the woods behind his junked camper trailer and shoot at each other’s feet, sling arrows straight into the air and play run around but don’t get hit, rolled tires from the top of the sand dune towards the trailers and made sure to run when the tire took out the awning of some poor old man’s trailer- and we were young. When sweetie had her stroke I saw that the bitch in her wasn’t invincible. I hated my aunt and I’m sure Anthony hated the way she could be too. I remember sitting outside of the hospital in the deck chairs listening to anecdotes told by Grandpa Carl. In later years I would see him reflected through myself in unflattering ways and wonderful exhibitions. He told me how he defended my mother in a bar once and socked some bitch in the face. He told me how he hopped the fence to his neighbor’s yard (the asshole with the dog) and ripped out a bunch of his fence posts and threw them at his house or how the night Robin fell out of her fourth story window and hit the pavement face first- he drank until he couldn’t see the image of her broken face in the hospital anymore. I was still young when he would drive me to work at the seafood restaurant where I served prime rib and lobster to the elderly. He spends his days mowing the lawn, building gardens, painting pictures of New Hampshire when the family was still young, and taking his great granddaughter Ella for walks at Lynch Park. I can still remember his hogbrush kisses when I was seven, how awful and not like a mother’s kiss they were. They lived on turner st. and we drove from California- the grill on the blue, Chrysler, minivan was full of bugs.
-In the case of Antonio Hernandez charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest on the morning of Nov. 2nd the state of Massachusetts assumes one innocent until proven guilty. Will you be representing yourself or do you have a personal attorney? If you have neither the court will provide one if necessary.
-I would like to request a court appointed attorney your honor.
-Considering this is a first time offence permission is granted Mr. Hernandez, you will be scheduled for another court appearance at a later date and time. You understand Mr. Hernandez that one is obligated to appear in court at every requested date and failure to do so will result in a warrant for your arrest.
-I understand your honor, thank you.
I see through the glass eye and into the walks on Dane st. beach. I see Carl who worked for the city his whole life and volunteers for lunch monitoring at the elementary school. I see the art and the memories captured in watercolors and acrylics. They hang in my first apartment next to Alanna’s trees. I will approach my son or daughter at such & such an age and say,
-Your father was an idiot
I am ageless and reflect upon the glass eye
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