The Iowa Review

Latham, Devin

the iowa review 117devin lathamMercy KillingDaddy didn’t let them kid in the pens because of the mess, and not all mothers eat their afterbirth. Under the metal barn, flies teemed over pellets and urine. Four rows of silver eight-by-eight-foot pens stood on packed dirt. I followed Daddy between rows to the stale hay where the brown goat had kidded during the dark morn-ing hours. Dogs trailed us with wet noses and hot, thick breath. They stunk, covered in their oils and filth. Tubby, the Great Pyrenees, stayed in the pastures with his herd. At the end of the barn, the brown doe licked the new kid clean. The white-bodied kid nursed, butting into her recipient mother’s warm bag for milk. The kid’s umbilical cord—longer and thicker than usual—curled into the old hay. Her hind end seemed heavy and oddly angled. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Daddy said. We stared openmouthed with our hands gripping the top of the wire fence. The kid’s two back legs held up two other legs that didn’t quite reach the ground. She had two small tails, two ill-formed butts and vaginas—shallow slits of pink skin. I climbed over and picked her up, holding her out at face level. Her thin ribs pulsed with breathing. Her thick, purple umbilical cord wound to the ground. She held still in my hands. I saw that her eyes were the color of walnuts, and then I understood that her intestines, attached to her umbilical cord, were spilling out of her. She had too many. I turned her around, looking at her legs, her tails, and all her tiny hooves that hadn’t yet hardened. She made my stomach hurt. “I don’t think she can use the bathroom,” I said. “I’ve never seen that,” Daddy said. His forehead wrinkled. Hungry goats bayed from the pens and pastures around us. I put the kid down. She jumped with spunk, even under the weight of her absorbed flush-twin. She was oblivious to what she’d be in a day’s cruel time. Without being able to use to the bathroom, she’d poison herself. We moved flush kids and their recipient mothers to the clean pens under the barn once they kidded, but we never moved the six-legged kid and her recip. There wasn’t much point. Daddy and I found the six-legged kid before the morning feeding. We fed twice a day, and once we finished the morning round, it already seemed time for the evening round. The feed sacks sat stacked on pal-lets under the barn. Daddy ordered feed by the ton—a bill we had a 118 devin lathamhard time keeping up with. We owned over three hundred Boer goats on our farm in west Alabama. South African Boer goats are white-bodied, redheaded meat goats that farmers don’t eat. They breed them, show them, and sell them. We had forty-eight acres, and we used every inch. My half-siblings were nearly a decade younger than me. Their mother didn’t go to the barn, so I was the only help Daddy had. I was fourteen years old. After I took pictures of the six-legged doe, Daddy and I loaded up the orange Yamaha four-wheeler with two sixty-pound bales of alfalfa and two bags of feed. The goats bayed loudly in the surrounding pastures with empty bellies. Daddy stayed near the barn and fed each of the small pastures. A road ran through the property, cutting off forty of the acres. We called those forty acres “across the road.” The recipient does lived across the road, waiting to be surgically impregnated. The recips weren’t full-blooded or worth much money, but they needed to have nice bags and big barrels because flush kids grew big in the womb, and sometimes that got ugly. We moved the recips to the pastures near the barn when they were about to kid in order to keep an eye on them. I opened the gate to the forty acres and drove the four-wheeler fast toward the troughs. The first feed is the hardest when you’re feeding 150 goats at once. The recip does heard the chain on the gate, and they took off toward the troughs. The sound of their hooves on the earth and their bodies rubbing together grew louder as they neared. Holding a bag of feed, I ran down the low V-troughs Daddy had welded, getting halfway down the line before the first bag ran out. The does dug their heads into the troughs, fighting for space. With wire clippers from the four-wheeler’s saddlebag, I snapped the baling wire. The bale slumped open, and I threw flakes of rough alfalfa into the tall hayrack. I checked the water troughs, too, because Daddy stressed clean water. He said it was key to growth and fertility, especially in the heat, but clean water couldn’t wash away what we’d done and what we’d yet to do. I went to church three times a week—twice on Sunday and once on Wednesday. My parents were conservative and religious, but they didn’t go. Daddy hated church, and my stepmother liked to sleep in. We called ourselves Baptist. I rode to church with the family down the street. They had two blonde-headed girls close to my age and a big white van that could seat eight people. I’d ride my bike to their house, or they’d pick me up, driving down our long gravel driveway. The girls giggled about the potholes and all the mutt-dogs that chased the van, biting at the tires. They never laughed at Tubby, though, because he was too smart to chase the iowa review 119cars. These were the kind of people who’d see a snake in the road, aim to run it over, back up to make sure they got it, and run over it one more time for good measure. We weren’t like them. My family was country or maybe even redneck. We didn’t have central heat and air. Our house was only half-built; the living room floor was painted plywood. But I went to church because I always liked church, the same way I always liked school. I liked rules and the simplicity of doing the right thing. The old people at church were nice. They liked when I sang. They said my voice was a gift from God himself. I sang with our neighbors’ two daughters. One time, one of those blonde-headed daughters told me I shouldn’t have taken communion because I hadn’t been saved yet. I didn’t like her talking to me the way my stepmother did like I was bad. During a Sunday night service when I was twelve, the man who owned the petting farm five miles from our house asked me if I’d like to wel-come Jesus into my heart. Daddy couldn’t stand that man, so when I got home that night and told my parents I’d asked Jesus to come into my heart, I left out the part about the petting-farm man giving me the idea. My parents came to the baptism, and Daddy stood in front of the congregation and read a list I’d made of ten reasons I’d asked Jesus into my heart. Standing above the white tub of water in the borrowed white robe, I listened to him read my words about “the indescribable feeling” Jesus gave me, reading things I’d heard grown-ups say before. The water was warm, and words were spoken, my nose held, my back bent into an arch, and then a gentle push against my forehead. I came up stoic—my holy emotion. I didn’t see angels or feel heavenly joy, but even at twelve I didn’t expect as much. I was baptized. I was a bona fide Christian. I was going to heaven. I had the right to take communion. I was good, and no one could tell me otherwise. By the time I was fourteen, the farm had tripled in size, and I didn’t go to church near as much. We traveled for shows most weekends. When we weren’t traveling, Daddy asked me to stay home from church on Sundays so we could clean out the runs and worm the recips. We spent morning service forking up layers of matted hay, maggots, and manure that smelled so strong we could taste it. We loaded down wheelbarrows and sprinkled out lime bags. We watched kids spunk on fallen logs and try to act grown by mounting, fighting, and pretending to rut. When we are children and still believe our parents, we mirror what we see, and we do as we’re told because that’s minding. Even if it might be wrong. When Daddy wanted to flush our goats himself, he asked John, the man who flushed our goats, to teach him. John agreed, but he kept out steps 120 devin lathamon purpose, and after a big flush, Daddy would dig through the trash, learning what to buy, which kind of holding medium the embryos were kept in, and what kind of tubing was used to flush the embryos out of the donor. Flushing works like this: You take a nice show doe and put a plastic cider that releases hormones into her vagina. A week later, you take the cider out, which makes the donor go into heat. You give her a hormone shot that makes her release twenty or more eggs, and you breed her (either artificially or naturally) to a nice show buck. You need about fif-teen good-bodied recips to put ciders in at the same time you put a cider in the donor, so that they’re all on the same heat cycle. Seven days after you breed the donor, you put her under and hang her upside down in a gurney to find her uterus laparoscopicly. You cut her open and flush out her embryos into a dish. You grade out the good quality embryos under a microscope. You inject the good embryos in pairs into the recips’ uteri. The point of flushing is to make more show kids in one season than the donor would make in her entire life. Genetics is like the lottery, and the more chances you get, the more likely you are to make a winner, which means money. The first time Daddy practiced laparoscopic artificial insemination, the black doe started kicking hard in the gurney where she lay on her back. He practiced on a recip because we couldn’t afford to practice on full-blooded show does. He gave her more xylazine to put her further under, but he didn’t realize that he hadn’t cut the bottle yet. He gave her three times what he meant to. She stopped kicking. Then, she didn’t move at all. “I think she might be dead,” I said, standing next to him and watch-ing as he found her uterus through his scope. He studied the coloration, searching for the pink knot—the corpus luteum—that signified a heat. He moved the scope up and down, the side of his hand hitting her shaved, iodined stomach. “No, she’s fine,” he said, concentrating on sticking her uterus with the needle at the tip of the semen straw. The doe’s tail relaxed, and she peed on the concrete floor. “She’s pretty dead,” I said as he worked. “Well, shit.” He pulled away from the doe’s belly, holding the scope inside her with his right hand. He studied her hard and wiped his fore-head with his left hand. “I’m just gonna finish.” He went on like she was alive. He needed the practice. He injected the semen to meet the egg, but the embryo would eventually die inside the dead doe.the iowa review 121I don’t remember where we put the body. We didn’t bury them. We only ever buried one goat, and that was early on. So many of them died; it felt silly. I imagine Tubby watching his dead goats tied to the four-wheeler by the horns, dragged to rot across the road. Sometimes we waited too long and they pulled apart when we accelerated. During kidding season, Daddy and I walked pastures in the early morn-ing, looking for new, wet kids born to the night hollers of coyotes. The grass was grown up for the expectant recip mothers. They hadn’t made much of a dent in the grass, but they’d made little dirt trails from the bottom of the hill up to the shed where their feed trough sat. The pas-ture sloped down into cedars and sweet gums. A low fog hung above the tall grass. The great white dog greeted us cheerfully but distant like they do. I said hey to Tubby and stuck my hand out. He sniffed the air and wagged his tail. That was as close as we got. Several recips had kidded. It was our job to catch the recip mothers, drag them under the barn, and put each mother in a pen with her new flush kids. Once one doe drops, they all start going into labor like it’s contagious. Some mothers are better than others, and the slow mothers can lose their kids to the eager ones who take as many kids as they can. In the overgrown pasture, Daddy called for me, and I walked up the pasture’s slope with the grass at my thighs. “What is it?” I asked while he studied the ground. I expected a dead kid—something ugly. We stood over a dead fox. His red coat and long bushed tail contrasted against the wet, muted morning. His neck angled broken in the dirt. “Tubby must have killed him during the night. I bet the fox smelled fresh kids,” Daddy said, and we both felt proud. We looked at Tubby, who lay in the tall grass watching his does graze. By evening, the fox was gone. Tubby ate him. The buzzards came later. They came when death was certain and Tubby was gone. They came when all the flush goats were sent to a sister farm in Louisiana, when the show trailer was sold and the recipes were left to starve and rot while Daddy found a dif-ferent hobby and I left for college. Tubby took care of the six-legged doe kid. Daddy should have done it the morning we found her. That would have been the right thing to do, but we wanted to see what would happen, how she’d progress. I should have killed her, but I didn’t think it was my duty. It was Daddy’s job, I thought. And to be honest, I was scared to take the life of something so new. Tubby didn’t usually eat flush kids. They were worth a lot of money. They were his herd. But he ate that one, and I was grateful. Daddy and 122 devin lathamI might have opened her up, looked inside her like we once did with a show doe that seemed to die for no reason. Kneeling on the cut grass in front of the show doe’s open stomach, we never found anything inside. Tubby’s intentions were better than ours. He protected his goats, even from us, even after they were dead. He protected them until he was no longer there. Daddy says he was poisoned. I think Tubby left us. When we made more goats than we could afford to feed and the bill went unpaid for months and the feed company threatened to stop deliv-ering, Daddy picked up a fresh kid—still wet with amniotic fluid—by the back legs. The buck kid was born small and sickly. His back legs were rubbery and weak. The kid didn’t have the strength to stand up to nurse. He wouldn’t make it. He wasn’t a flush kid, and he wasn’t even full-blooded. He was from a percentage show doe, and percentage bucks are worthless. We could have nursed him by hand, set up a heat lamp, and hoped for the best. If he’d made it, we could have banded him and made him a whether, but he didn’t even have a good build. Daddy swung the upside-down kid in his hand like he was swinging a baseball bat. The kid let out a small bay before his skull broke against one of the thick wooden posts holding up the barn. Daddy dropped the kid to the ground, where he fell unmoving. I kept my face still and my mind thoughtless. But now I can’t stop thinking about what we did. It’s been so long since I’ve lived at home; I can hardly believe I’m the same person who kicked goats caught in fences, who slid her hand in birth canals to pull out kids that were too big to come out, who let pastured does get so thirsty they’d choke themselves on the lip of the trough for a drink of water. When we create a thing, we have the onus to take care of it, but Daddy made like God and let his sired suffer. Near the farm’s end, Sally Ann—the first goat we bought back when we didn’t even know what flushing was—died at eight years old giving birth to a flush kid that never should have been put inside her. Sally Ann was a petite, black brush goat with a narrow barrel. Flush kids grow big in the womb. Sally Ann was too small to be a recip, but we needed to make more flush kids to pay the feed bill and pay for the show trailer. When it came time to put in ciders, we ran Sally Ann through the chute and said what the hell. The day Sally Ann died, Daddy told me to hold her horns as he grabbed hold of the flush kid’s front legs inside of her. We pulled at both ends of Sally Ann, and she screamed while we sweated. The flush kid had suffocated in the birth canal. We ripped Sally Ann open to get the kid out. Sally Ann lay in a pasture like so many of them and bled out slowly, next to a dead kid nearly the same size as her. the iowa review 123When I was a child, I’d pull down maple branches, and Sally Ann would stand with her front hooves against my stomach, trying to reach the leaves. She’d let me pet her, and pieces of her black hair would stick to the sweet sap on my hands. One winter, Tubby saved her from a pack of coyotes. He fought off the coyotes as they ripped holes in the side of her face. But Tubby left, and Daddy and I watched Sally Ann die, wish-ing she wouldn’t. Killing is easy except when it’s not. Daddy should have shot her in the head, but instead he let me sit in the wet grass and pet Sally Ann’s scarred cheek as she lay on my lap. I wouldn’t cry and refused to speak, afraid my voice would give me away, like my pride was bigger than her life, as her blood ran in thin rivers down the slope of our land. 

English

Mercy Killing

Freeman, John

the iowa review 107WimbledonWalking on the common in heavy blue light,  she says to him the time for children, were there ever one, has  passed, that would be that, and two close calls aside,  she proves to be right, and the years pass with happiness  too great to be measured, because one does not measure what feels  endless, just as this land was once a queen’s private hunting estate,  everything around it hers too, there were no boundaries, until a village grew to service  her horses andpart-time tailors, the cobblers and  surgeons and cooks neededto properly entertain guests, and  then the uninvited came, took what was not desirable, built  their limestone houses,rolled carriages down two-track  paths until the dirt was stone, 108 john freemanwatching the eternal from their  hand-blown windowsas it tilted through centuries, like  a faithful planetthat doesn’t regard its reflection  bouncing off distant moons,light traveling back so slowly the  world has moved on, its orbitendless, drawn by forces  exerting their will in the darknesswhich on this falling January night  has drawn the sky closelike a wool coat, the lights in  homes once run by servantsflickering without a wince of post-  imperial shame,and South London looks up  at wisdom winging downat them like a bat flying on sonar:  how nothing remains, that inmere years, their love, with no one  but each other as witness,will have found some other way  to mark time, not by beingboundless, but bound, as the sky  is to ground at the close of day.

Wimbledon

Baillie, Martha

124martha baillieTopographies*A multitude of deaths produces a fiercer wind, or so it seems to those observing from a distance—the distance required to take in so many.*A man lies in his bed. When helped to his feet he walks, supported by a cane. In his final days he will sink his hand into a substance smooth as raw dough. The woman who comes to make the mold will say that she has arrived too late, his hand already reduced to sinew and bone. Nonetheless she will pursue her end, slipping from its airless sack the Alginate—the synthetic clay sold to her by the dentist, whose recog-nized role is to clean and mend her teeth. Any unused Alginate she will wrap and set aside for some future hand or foot. Once the dying man is gone, a choice will remain for his wife: plaster or bronze. If she chooses bronze, an initial cast will be made of wax, and from this wax the bulge of his knuckles, the tapering of his long fingers, the fine fissures and whorls—all will mark and shape the metal. His widow will choose bronze though it costs more. His hand forever hers; she will yearn to be caressed.*the iowa review 125From necessity, Spinoza ground lenses. Scientists from across Europe purchased the curves he imposed upon glass discs. He was a master. His lungs full of powdered glass, he died, a thinker, an outsider.The glaciers, now that they have completed their work as grinders of rock and gougers of valleys, are departing. From across continents we come to admire them. By placing one foot in front of the other we approach, and they retreat.*The hoof of a donkey sent me racing across the city. The article in the small community paper, accompanying the photograph of Rose’s split and curling hoof, explained how Rose had been rescued (in the nick of time) from years of confinement in a small shed, hooves submerged in feces and urine. I arrived out of breath at my mother’s door, knelt at her feet. I removed her socks and shoes, examined her gnarled toes, inhaling their mushroom scent. “We must floss,” I explained and slid a warm, soapy cloth up and down between her digits. Head bent, I explored the pink valleys, removing dead skin. Each toe, in bonsai con-tortion, grasped at the air as I lifted her foot. The silken cream I applied to her skin spread a tender silence throughout the room. I slowed my pace. *The art critic has told many times the story of his first encounter with Velazquez’s painting, Las Meninas—how he rushed from the airport straight to the Prado, sleepless, having fallen drunk then sober then drunk several times during the flight across the Atlantic. He stood in front of the painting. Its “tissue of decisions” invited him in, and his mind was thrown open at such a sharp angle that he heard silk skirts 126 martha baillierustle and knew that the painting had changed him forever. Never before had he experienced an auditory hallucination. Several of the figures in the painting did not notice him, their gaze land-ing elsewhere. But those who were looking straight at him had caught sight of him an eighth of a second before he arrived. It was visible in their expression: that eighth of a second. On another wall hung a large portrait of a king, also by Velazquez. The critic stepped close to the splatters of paint. He retreated several meters, and the steel blade of a sword sprang into existence, as did a lace collar, a satin sleeve, and a velvet pocket. Now the critic, his presentation over, the projector put away, his story of his encounter with Las Meninas once more applauded, is boarding a plane. Now he flies, home, hurtling high above tiny mountains, having stood in an auditorium and addressed a crowd of listeners, certain of whom had envied him the moment in which he was altered in his youth by standing in front of a painting, while for others his words had evoked similar moments in their own lives, when they too dangled between the tiny and the immense, between the singular and the many, suspended by time carded and spun, time twisted thin as thread.*I stepped onto the library roof and saw that I was one of many small figures, the others each charting a diagonal path across the vast and flat surface. What game was being played? Into what “jeu de société” had I wandered? I half expected to hear the knocking of dice, to feel a thumb and finger pinch the scruff of my neck, to be lifted then placed in a new position. At the far side of the roof the sky, weighed down by cloud, fell in a huge curtain. Through a large rectangular hole in the center of the roof poked the tips of coniferous trees. The forest, rooted at the level of the lowest reading rooms, grew straight up, enclosed by glass walls. On one singular day, yearly, the public was permitted (even invited) to enter the forest. the iowa review 127The library’s books, kept in four transparent towers, were ceaselessly multiplying and traveled by rail to the reading rooms that circled the forest. In the four towers, each the shape of an open book, the volumes of text waited, arranged on shelves and protected from the sun by wood-en blinds, which shifted in response to the smallest changes in daylight. This is not where I’ll find my mother, I thought, as I stepped onto the escalator beside the glass wall enclosing the forest, and the seamless movement of the mechanical stairs carried me down. I glided past the forest, close but not close enough to scratch the glass wall with my fin-gernails. Blue, stenciled silhouettes of birds flew across the glass enclos-ing the trees, trees brought to Paris from the four corners of the world. I’d been invited to an international conference on digital archives. This unexpected invitation had brought me to the National Library of France. I was not a librarian and had no doubt received the invitation by mistake but had accepted, eager for a change of scene and curious to observe and learn. In truth, it was my mother I was searching for.*Wrapping his tongue around her wrist, the cow pulled the woman deeper into his dripping mouth, his dark muscle caressing as it tugged. Her hand disappeared then her forearm. “Ooh, Dudley, you’re such a suck; you’d suck all day, wouldn’t you, you wuss?” her voice cooed, maternal. The pleasure-heavy lid of the steer’s eye descended, obscuring the superfluous world. Twitches of desire rippling under the skin of his flank, he stretched his powerful neck. “Ooh, Dudley,” she admonished.Bliss consumed him.*128 martha baillieA friend once took me up in an airplane he’d built from a kit. Two wings, two suspended seats with seatbelts, three wheels, a frame of extreme lightness and strength, also a small engine that fit behind our seats and was fed through a tube from a plastic tank full of gasoline, this poten-tially explosive tank located above our heads. “You’ll probably want to wear this,” he advised, handing me a helmet. “Not because it will do you any good if we crash, but because the engine makes a lot of noise. You’ll be less bothered by the loudness.” We rolled out into the field. The frame must have included a tail, or how could he have steered? I don’t remember. I was looking straight ahead, trying not to think about the gasoline sloshing above my head. The field had been given a clean shave, its grass reduced to stubble. Every bump in the dirt jolted our frame. We rose into the air. I knew that we’d separated from the ground because we were now traveling through smoothness. The air was warm and windless. We were advancing so slowly I had no sensation of being propelled from A to B. It was an experience without glory or excitement. I looked down. A was a line of trees at the edge of a field, B the opposite side of the same field. B was now behind us, and we were headed for C; therefore we were moving. *Color-coded rubber stoppers prevented the blood from escaping the bottles. Orange, green, pink, yellow, and blue indicated which tests were to be performed. From beneath taut skin or slack, her needle sucked. “Please form a fist”—the words used for collecting blood pleased her, as did the rows of colored stoppers in the slender bottles stacked horizon-tally above her desk.*In the Collision Reports Office, the art critic waited in line for the next available police officer. On the wall hung a white metal board. Statistics the iowa review 129had been jotted in black felt pen. An officer approached, cleaned away a number and in its place wrote a new one, as if he were a waiter correct-ing the day’s menu, warning that a certain dish had been entirely con-sumed. The numbers represented fatalities. The cyclists had a column of their own, as did the pedestrians. The drivers of motorcycles were stacked one on top of each other and kept separate from the passengers in cars. Over a period of four years the number of dead pedestrians had jumped from nine to forty, whereas not one motorcycle passenger had died. There was room on the board for a span of four years.An officer beckoned to the art critic, who advanced and was asked to describe the collision involving his car. He told of the slow movement forward, of his bumper pressing someone else’s bumper, causing a man to step out of his parked vehicle. The officer pulled on his heavier jacket, as the warm air and tenderness of spring, though approaching, had not yet arrived; together cop and critic crossed the room preparing, each in his own way, to step out into the brisk wind and have a look at the critic’s car. As they crossed the room, the absence of any visible clutter reassured the critic. Soon he would accept a verdict arrived at in a room with clean surfaces, legible signs, and updated statistics. It is not my car, he explained, as the officer opened the door and the wind grabbed at them both. The car belongs to my sister. I was driving, as she does not know how to drive.*For several days, following her return from Milan, the banker’s wife did not dare put her hand inside her purse, which was new and made of alli-gator skin. She caressed the outside as if taming it, her fingers lingering on the animal’s umbilical scar. Here, two rows of oblong cells collided in a narrow space of disorder, producing tangled lines. Twice within the same hour she caught herself exploring this area of compressed, unpredictable pattern. A week passed and she was no longer taming the purse. She yearned for its wildness and opened it. Exploring the interior, her fingers encountered the cool metal of keys, a thick tube of lipstick, several pens, a rubber-tipped pick for removing food from between her 130 martha baillieteeth, the smooth bulge of her wallet, and deeper—a dampness that trembled. Tonsils? The purse exhaled a fetid cloud of gain and loss.*“Between the singular and the many,” the young woman thought, slid-ing the DVD once more into the player.Such effort of will expended to gather hundreds of men, for each to move into his assigned position. They are armed, and between their thighs the restlessness of horses. They wait. They are soldiers and they wait. Their fear is terrible and they yearn to be released into motion. To shoot the scene, the cameraman must have positioned himself on a high and windy ridge. The young woman watches the one scene repeat-edly. Under her feet she imagines the dirt of the hard hill, and when she looks down, or rather the cameraman looks down (as he is doing all the looking for her), a blade of wind slices through the sea of grass. In the valley, the opposed armies converge in clattering agony, their chaos rises, it swells in the air, ascends the ridge and drifts. The high moan of carnage ripples, unraveling the afternoon. The cameraman pulls back and the soldiers shrink, their numbers increasing. Each time the young woman watches she listens for the silence that will follow, the absence that will sweep the world clean. The film has a name, as do the director and the cameraman. It is the extras that intrigue her—their willingness to perform, nameless. *They proceed in a single file along the ridge of gravel, orderly as ants or soldiers patrolling a great wall. From my perch, higher, on a slope of scree, eating my apple, clothes and hair tugged by wind, I observe their the iowa review 131advance towards the glacier. By placing one foot in front of the other we (for I am one of them) are entering the distortions of distance.The mountains lure us into their immensity; they promise that each rise will prove to be a summit, and we clamber. Beyond each rise another rise rises. We are buffeted by wind. Far below, a child has arranged hills and rivers, placed trees in rows, a child escaping boredom and the fears that curl beneath boredom, a child soothed by patterns.*On each dark green sign his name is clearly printed in white—Hans Christian Andersen and an arrow points where to go next. On a bor-rowed bicycle, wobbling a bit, the woman, no longer young, glides beneath the boughs of so many trees in bloom that when she shakes her head white petals fall from her hair as if she were a bride. Though she is all attention the grave of the storyteller eludes her. Abruptly she comes upon the Kierkegaard family instead, Søren crammed amongst kin, their names carved in stone. What a peaceful place to leave our tourist. Dappled light, circuitous paths, and the drooping generosity of ancient trees. Boughs brush the ground, while everywhere excited new foliage springs free in the cool air of a rainy day in May. A thick yellow wall encloses the whole. But if we abandon her here, how are we to learn whose bicycle she is riding?She has removed her extravagant black hat because of the low branches. The hat now rides in the basket attached to the handlebars. Happily this scene does not exist as a photograph and so cannot be used to promote Copenhagen as a travel destination. Half an hour away, less if you are riding a familiar bicycle and not unnerved by the press of cyclists speeding beside, before, and behind you, a cluster of men and women march along a stretch of sidewalk in elegant Frederiksberg, carrying makeshift signs that read: “Freedom.” Past the immaculate hair salon, the clothes boutique, and the real estate agency, they advance, protected by six police officers. A short woman dressed in a raincoat of a classic cut, guaranteed never to go out of fash-132 martha baillieion, hands out flyers. This woman should, I feel, be wearing curlers and sipping a glass of Akvavit while admiring the buttocks of the postman who is trotting up a flight of stairs to deliver a registered parcel, but my imagination has not been consulted by the woman in the raincoat, who at this very moment is thrusting a flyer into my hand. Her hair grows straight, to the extent she allows it to grow. She’s recently had it lopped off, two inches above her shoulders. She is moving on, has passed me now, and is offering her propaganda to the next pedestrian in her path. There she goes, neatly trimmed as a bush in an Enlightenment garden, a formal shrub evoking the clarity and order of Ancient Greece, the hierarchies of Mount Olympus without the mischief of the gods. The flyer she’s handed me warns against succumbing to the rise of Islam. “No to Racism,” “Yes to Freedom,” “No to Islam”—the words on the signs carried by the protesters lilt and sway as the defenders of Denmark advance. It is a parade without floats, no inflatable statue of a woman, ten feet long, lounging on her side and wearing a hijab, is being pulled behind the group. It must have been in Amsterdam, Cleveland, Gdánsk, London, or Neuilly-sur-Seine that I saw a woman made from a plastic membrane, pumped full of air, swollen almost to the point of explosion yet supine as Olympia, and wearing a hijab while being towed behind several dozen chanting protestors.Our tourist, wearing the extravagant black sun hat, has left the grave-yard and is sailing beneath the flowering chestnut trees that line the rectangular lakes leading down to the planetarium, lakes constructed at the time Copenhagen ceased to be a fortified city, lakes contained by outdated ramparts. A brisk breeze lifts the water in rows of tight waves. The patrons on the floating café have wrapped themselves in blankets. Swans paddle here and there, and white plastic boats in the shape of swans ferry passengers here and there. The men and women sipping drinks on the floating café consider taking a ride in a swan boat, a delight they remember from childhood; but they decide to wait, to save the adventure for the next time friends arrive from abroad or family from Jutland visit the city.*the iowa review 133The birds that look beautiful but are so destructive are called sulphur-crested cockatoos. They sharpen their beaks on the leaves of the gum trees. We call them cockies. The main types of trees we have are Acacia victoriae, which are very spiky but the cattle love the leaves, flowers and seed. The seed can be ground, roasted, and used in cooking and is often used in the native food industry. We also have black oaks and northern cypress pine up where we walked in the hills when you were here visiting with us, which seems so long ago. There’s too much work to be done: holes in the fences, thanks to the dastardly emu, and wild goats to be shot as they have no business here, drinking the water and eating the plants until the birds fall silent, nothing left to imbibe in the hills, goat-pellet calling cards strewn about—proof of culpability. They never should have been brought here in the first place; of course they escaped and bred. We should shoot the kangaroos as well, but we don’t. We should, for the sake of the cattle. We keep moving the cows, so the native perennials can take hold and the water won’t all rush away, carv-ing gullies as it departs, trenches twenty feet deep that grow and grow. Fifteen years of good wheat, a hundred years ago, and now the soil is ruined. We also have bullock bush (Alectryon oleifolius).*In great haste the travelers retrieve their carry-on luggage from the overhead bins. The plane has landed, taxied across the runway, and the seatbelt sign is no longer illuminated. The passengers stand in cramped aisles between rows of narrow seats, suitcase in hand, voluminous sack suspended from shoulder, and wait. They wait in fear. Though they have safely landed, they feel anything but safe, the search for mean-ing not over, never over. With every remaining ounce of energy coiled within their bodies they push their way out of the aircraft and through the maze of corridors to where their luggage, if it hasn’t disappeared between home and here, sails in a loop.*134 martha baillieAs a child, repeatedly I watched my father’s arm disappear, fingers then wrist, followed by elbow, up to armpit, into rubber glove, into vagina of cow. It was my first experience of sex. Quickly it was over. Elbow, wrist, and fingers holding syringe became visible once more. In his notebook, my father jotted down the date of anticipated delivery and with a frown moved on, efficient inseminator.*

Topographies

Contributors' Notes and Back Matter, The Iowa Review, 46/2 Fall 2016

Akbar, Kaveh

30kaveh akbarRoom in a Tempest Mimmo Paladino, 1984my lonesome pink egg you have to pay close attention      in the din of an angel’s blaring trumpet      wild chicory rocksmoke and nightly sleep      if you wait on that clay floor long enough       eventually the stars will bore through you like the tunneling whiteworms that tore the town’s prize bull from hoof to horn      remember the bones’ song      we are glad to be scattered       we did little good to each other      again you’re confusing insides with outsides      a brass heart       and the warm blood clotting around it       there is such a delicate membrane between kindness and weakness      a chip of ice in a folded palm        when the fishbirds arrived       they tore apart the flowers sprouting from your jug      the bruised petals lay like unpeeled faces in the buttery firelight        now your seizures begin to run together      now they are blissing over their own textures      to keep hold through the violence the birds slide their claws into your back      the puncturing almost tender      though such erotic potential is lost on a mind so blank as yours       you are a rockwith a cave inside       it’s hard to even see it through the fog     your poor mouth awaiting its next disaster      steam is a ghost who lives in water      he owns only a minnow’s sneeze of time      when you hear him whistling up welcome him sweetly      he will wrap like a cloth over your soft gold eyes      to hide them from the birds       their horrible beaks 

Room in a Tempest

Machado, Carmen Maria

190carmen maria machadoLost on Planet GodA Review of Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New ThingsBefore he begins the space mission that will comprise almost the entirety of Michel Faber’s newest novel, The Book of Strange New Things, Peter Leigh’s wife Beatrice begs him to pull the car over to the side of road. She wants to have sex with him one last time before he boards a plane at Heathrow and leaves her.Peter balks. They’d had a lovely final day of lovemaking and togeth-erness—all of it so right—the day before. “You’re wonderful,” he says hesitantly, stalling.“I don’t want to be wonderful,” she tells him. “I want you inside me.”In many ways, this scene—startling, erotic, and over as quickly as it begins—is the embodiment of the approaching, sprawling narrative, a perfect diorama of the strain and tensions to come. Faced with her husband’s long absence, Beatrice’s sex drive kicks in, muddled with love and anxiety and missing him even before he’s gone—a deeply human response. But Peter stubbornly clings to the symbol of their “last day,” the woman next to him—on him, around him—be damned. And after it’s over, Peter is bundled onto an airplane, flown to the U.S., and then launched an unfathomable distance away from her.A private company has settled a planet they call Oasis. It is habitable, with wet and living but breathable air akin to a rainforest’s, and a stripped-down landscape that resembles the emptiest parts of Utah. Its indigenous population—referred to as residents of “Freaktown” by some and, more respectfully, as “Oasans” by others—have requested a Christian minister. And so the company has hired Peter, a deeply reli-gious man with a troubled past: alcoholism, drug addiction, and crime, all of which he abandoned when he met the compassionate Christian nurse who later became his wife. He has the fervor of a convert and a fawn-like naïveté all his own. The engineers, scientists, and medical personnel at Oasis are friendly but oddly muted, with the exception of a woman named Grainger with whom Peter develops a cautious, mercurial friendship. With its use of last names, its intense group workouts, and its flattened emotions, the atmosphere is almost military (“It’s a bit like the army,” Grainger tells the iowa review 191Peter, “except we don’t harm people”), and often the strangeness of the human base outpaces the mysteriousness of the alien world. Ominously, the previous pastor—the one Peter has been sent to replace—and a lin-guist have vanished. Not dead, Grainger explains to him. Just missing. The native inhabitants of Oasis—bipedal life-forms with thoughtful, serene dispositions that bring to mind A Wrinkle in Time’s Aunt Beast—call themselves Jesus Lovers. With Peter’s help, they set about building a church in their community while Peter translates the Bible (which they call The Book of Strange New Things) into a version of English they can speak and understand. As Peter travels between the human base and the Oasan settlement, the world shifts dramatically. At the base, he agonizes, writes letters to Beatrice, reads her responses, and attempts to make sense of the human interactions happening among the crew. But among the Oasans, he is deeply content, as if he were meant to be there. The world of their civilization floats outside of time, even as the reader knows that reality is nearby and waiting to pounce. It is these sweeping brushstrokes of world-building—and the tension of seeing how everything has changed each time Peter returns from a stint with the Oasans—that keeps the engine of the novel humming. In many ways, The Book of Strange New Things seems to be following the beat of Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, an interstellar journey with religious and philosophical implications—light on the sci-fi details because it’s not really about the tech—and an encounter with an alien race that seems like it will end in tragedy. But here, the real horror is unfolding back on Earth: food shortages, catastrophic natural disasters, and a general dissolution of the social order, while the alien planet remains safe, womb-like, unchanging. The missives between Beatrice and Peter are the backbone of many chapters and the only insight into a fracturing Earth, giving the book the feel of an epistolary novel. Each letter from Beatrice is more desperate, terri-fied, and furious than the last, and the gulf between husband and wife becomes wider than mere interstellar travel could accomplish. Beatrice tells Peter that she’s pregnant with their child, and Peter’s response to this news and to her increasing fear is cruelly muted. As Peter writes pleasantly about his post, relating the joys and oddities of the planet and the Oasans, Beatrice struggles. She writes,You’ve been given the cushiest treatment any Christian missionary has ever had in the entire history of evange-lism. Other missionaries have been thrown into prison, 192 carmen maria machadospat on, speared, pelted [with] stones, threatened [with] knives and guns, hacked to death by machetes, crucified upside down.. . . [But] you arrived to a hero’s welcome.. . . Any other husband, once he got wind [of] what’s been going on here would have offered to come home by now. Or at least made noises about it . . . .You devote so much time [and] energy to pondering exactly the right words to choose in your Bible para-phrases for the Jesus Lovers but when it comes to com-municating with me your [infinite] attention to nuance deserts you.And a few exchanges later, after she dares to use the word “Godforsaken” in a letter about the horrors of the dying world, Peter’s response—equal parts condescending and gaslighting—confirms the truth of Beatrice’s accusations:Please don’t use the word “Godforsaken.” I know you’re upset and rightly so but we must honor with our mouths the fact that no one is truly forsaken by God. In all your distress, I get the feeling you’re not leaning on Him as trustingly as you might. In the literary world, there is an ongoing discussion of the unlikeable character and the way this quality is discouraged in female protagonists but welcomed in male ones. Peter is a new entry in the long line of male literary characters who are permitted the space to be odious. But he is much closer to, say, Humbert Humbert than to Sherlock Holmes, as he’s startlingly self-centered but wrapped in enraging gentility and euphemism. This quality is balanced by Faber’s meticulous attention to psychological detail; Peter’s personality does not feel random, but a natural outgrowth of his conversion, privilege, and zealotry. And so The Book of Strange New Things is not so much a meditation on exploration or faith as it is an incisive portrait of the well-meaning nar-cissism of missionary work. Even while Peter muses over the mistakes of his colonist Earth predecessors and pleads with the human occupants of Oasis for tolerance of the Oasans’ way of life, his obsession with his mission trumps everything—his wife, his child, his health, his former the iowa review 193life, and even the mission itself. He isn’t just on Oasis; he’s on, as Beatrice observes, “planet God.” As he is broken down inch by inch, the novel’s thesis reveals itself: a man must be pulled away from his faith, not toward it, in order to survive. One of the most distinctive markers of Michel Faber’s literary career is the diversity of his projects. Their settings have drifted between turn-of-the-century London and our own nebulous near-futures, each feeling natural and effortless despite their disparities. The Book of Strange New Things is a sort of hybrid of the author’s previous novels, as if Faber needed to write each of them to master their individual elements. There’s the delayed reveal and uncanny hum of Under the Skin, the com-prehensive world-building and exploration of faith issues of The Crimson Petal and the White, and the social tensions of The Courage Consort. The result is something new entirely—urgent yet old-fashioned, optimistic but grim, exciting while measuredly paced. It’s easy to devour, but don’t be fooled: it will linger.Last fall, Faber said in an interview that The Book of Strange New Things would be his last novel. “I think I have written the things I was put on earth to write. I think I’ve reached the limit,” he told an interviewer. Given the novel’s extraordinary achievement—and the exciting arc of Faber’s singular career—one can only hope this isn’t true.

Lost On Planet God: A review of Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things

Witte, John

156john witteThe CloverIf you had more money you’d be happy you wouldn’t always be thinking OK that would be nice but where’sthe money coming from you’d enter a mall you’d movethe little angel of your cursor and click on this andalso this and why not is there a problem here does itappear in your dream as excrement and those childrenlike skeletons in Africa that isn’t your problem is itall you’re thinking about getting it getting some moreloving the sweaty smell of it like flesh the smell ofall the hands it’s passed through but now it’s yoursyou want it now not tomorrow you open your walletslide out your card and say here I am world receive me

The Clover

Wheeler, Joshua

The Light Of God: America's Pastime in the Age of Drone Warfare

Charleston, Cortney Lamar

the iowa review 191cortney lamar charlestonJumpman: A Ghazal with Pivots In a city where bird is basketed on a bed of white bread and french fries,flyness is predicated on what emblem is rocked on feet, see: Jumpman.   Gospel’s basis begins by testimony, always. In this case, He: Jumpman. God disguised as Michael Jordan quipped the man nicknamed Legend. It’s gotta be the shoes, right? Gravity-defiers. Deifiers, for real. The wayhe hangs crooked in the air like a hanged man’s neck. He got jumps, man!    The latest pair released. Bad move: these kids just might be jumped, man. Tongue sticking out: how boys brashly walk windy streets when they got them things, three digits easy. He makes shoes for Republicans, too. Puffscigars, clipping balls off tees. Logo of a personality: he been jumped, man. Posts up. Double-teamed. Kicks out. Re-posts. Three dribbles in. Fakes right.Pivots baseline. Fades away. Defender? High enough? He can’t jump, man!   Hoop. Ear ring. Peddle cologne. Open restaurants. Eat free: like Jumpman. All I want to do is ball. Be at least six feet six inches tall. Wear that gold.   Die. I’m a kid, you see. I got dreams of mansion wings. Let me jump, man! Don’t start talking to me about sweatshops. Wife-cheating. Rolling loaded—   another pair snatched off a body: should’ve ducked, but he jumped, man. If I could be like Mike! choirboys sing, but come June, His phone just rings. He came back a second time, but with no growth spurt in sight, I minded tobookish things: ballistics, statistics, saving lives. A better me jumped, man.    

Jumpman: A Ghazal with Pivots

Davis, Isabelle

164isabelle davisMaybe Flowers Would Grow Soon I like to walk.1 This comes from my mom. Her legs are longer than mine, but when we walk together they do not cover more area than mine do. I know this must be some type of magic, miracle, result-ing from our closeness. I first discovered it in the sixth grade when we hiked together in Wyoming, in Yellowstone, and our feet fell next to each other at every step.When people, my mom, me, get upset, walking is sometimes the only answer. Things will seem especially wrong and we will put down our wine. This always means trouble, to put down our wine. We pull out the leash. We say, Come on, Commiskey. He gets very excited, running around the house, jumping into our laps. My mom likes to walk for miles when the winter finally ends.2 We walk in the bright, bright sun and we do not bring any sunglasses, we let it hit our eyes. We let it in. A horrible-ness lifts when the tops of our heads warm up, and then our shoulders, and then the rest.It is hard to pretend that seasonal depression does not affect you when you are already sad, sensitive, crumbling at the touch. Winter lasts years3 and then it is over.41. you & i had been walking all day but this was different. this was cleaner. our first mistake was to think things would be simple on the beach that day. we should have known better. but we have the same favorite sound: waves crashing when it is very quiet & we put our bags where the ice had already melted & dried &2. maybe flowers would grow soon.3. we have just done the math & discovered that we have been together for twenty-one months. i say our relationship could have a drink & you say no, you say our relationship is a baby. we are just those parents who look at this perfect little baby they have somehow brought into a world they do not feel is ready for it yet & refer to this life in months. the baby is two. 4. when i talk to m. about you i refer to it as an unreal amount of time. a surreal amount of time. she has just broken up with her boyfriend because he became apa-thetic & i tell her the truth: i cannot imagine an ending to this but sometimes it ap-pears in dreams & i wake up so cold.the iowa review 165Men do not say anything to me when I walk with my mom. They look, but this is different because I am very good at blocking out, at being oblivious to, attention of any quiet variety. Today I am walking alone; my mom cannot always come to meet me simply for a walk. We do not live together anymore.5When I am alone they tell me they like my body like popsicles on their tongues, or are imagining me with a popsicle on my tongue. Girls don’t say anything, that’s safer, that’s the way to not get hurt. Winter6 has just ended, I am the first woman they have seen in a skirt without tights this year. I am all bare legs. I am newly shaven. They want to know if I need a sample, or any help out of this outfit. I wish I was no longer wear-ing it, the skirt, my skin, but neither falls off me the way I hope it will.I am not sure if I was born to be very small or if they, men, men like this, made me this way.I am trying to take up more space with my mouth. My body7 is not very intimidating, but I am learning how to manipulate other factors. I do not know how to be quiet unless I am being degraded.Once a man came up to us at the beach, B. and me. He came up to us and said he had seen us kissing earlier. That it had been beautiful. It had been, but that is not the point. He made a shadow over my sun while we were reading poetry and he offered to pay us money, to buy us dinner, for a picture of that moment. Before then, my harassment had always happened as I walked, it had always been a passing moment, there and then, easily, not. Queerness takes away that simplicity. It 5. sometimes when i look at you i feel a sudden need to become a blanket. you laugh because i am always trying to cling to you but i am really just keeping you warm. i am really just giving you my heat. it was like that on the beach, with the bunny.6. someone else had found it before you, & they had wanted to keep it warm. they had draped it in a baby blanket.7. the body is too far away, stuck on ice that wants so badly to slip, melt into the water, to touch with our hands, but you want to put the little body into the lake. i say won’t it be cold? & you say that doesn’t really matter anymore. you ask me to stay with our backpacks while you search for something to push the bunny into a resting place. you find a stick you think will help the bunny & you stretch & stretch until we both know that your limbs are not as long as mine. until i have stood up to take the stick out of your hands, gently gently. the only way i know how.166 isabelle davismakes me more vulnerable,8 strangely approachable, in a way I had not been before.People continue to approach and ask us for favors. To be our third. To join in. To get some of that. For us to please not stop doing what we are doing. When we do stop, I hope it hurts them because I am stopping B. from breaking9 noses.I do not tell my mom about this sort of thing. She does not understand me, my queerness, even though she tries. She worries that it will hurt me to be un-straight, it will make the world10 so much harder to get through when I am dating not-men. She worries it will negatively affect my life, and I have no way of explaining that it does and it does not. That it lets me take a hammer to things she will never want to take a hammer to; that that is both good and bad for me. That it is just me. I have learned, so quickly, my own strength, since realizing my sexu-ality. This is because there is only a certain amount of degradation a person can take before they notice that it is happening, that it is not flat-tery, but dangerous. After that realization, we get angrier and tenderer all at once. Raw.Girls don’t say anything, that’s safer, that’s the way to not get hurt.But I bought pepper spray a year ago. I bought it and put it in my purse the way I would put a cookie in my purse, gingerly, so it did not crumble.11 I will not have to say a word to use it. I will just have to feel adequately threatened.8. i have to straddle on ice to touch the stick to the tiny body, to the blanket over it. & i nudge until i feel the weight of resistance.9. weight which once lived. it was too much.10. when i put the stick down, my hand shakes & it slides into the lake so easily. right past the bunny in its blankie. when we hear it hit the water, everything in me needs to get out.11. we hold hands over the bunny. over the ridge of ice the bunny will not move from. we stand & hold hands the way we have seen people do these things at funerals in movies, as if we are praying together. neither of us knows what it is to pray but your hand is warm & mine is cold & together this makes some sort of balance. people and rabbits have loved you, we will continue to love you. you said that while i tried not to cry again & i knowthe iowa review 167Central Illinois is different from Chicago. Corn grows everywhere. My mom grew12 there, the way plants do, seemingly slowly, but when she compares pictures, things have changed so much. In this way, things were not so different there. But she learned things differently, like how to deal with men. She learned because her stepfather treated her moth-er, my grandmother, like an object until she punched him in the jaw.I have never hit anyone but I have thought about it. I have thought about that scene in Heathers where Winona Ryder lights her cigarette with Christian Slater’s exploding body. My mom told me for the first time about the punch after my grandmother had already died. She told me when I came home crying about a boy who made my insides a type of fire that I could not identify as good or bad. She told me so I knew that I had options; so I knew other things too. I have always been given the impression that I am my own.1312. what we are doing will stay in present tense until one of us goes into the lake.13. in the dark so many months later, you tell me that you want to spend time living on both coasts, but that you are like an elephant. when you feel you are going to die, you will return to the midwest, to where you were born. you want to be ashes & you want to be in the lake you have always known.

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