Iron Horse Literary Review Excerpts & Contributors: Fall 2000  On this page we provide excerpts and biographical notes for our Fall 2000 contributors.  If you wish to read the author’s entire work and their comments about their work, please purchase a copy of this issue.  Order forms are available by clicking here or by clicking the “Subscribe” link at the bottom of this page.  You can also view excerpts from the book reviews in this issue and links to copies of these issues that are available on Amazon.com by clicking here.   Fiction  Kathleen de Azevedo, Excerpt from "The Clarinet Section"  Terry couldn’t think of music. Hunger was making her tremble. She wouldn’t be caught dead eating in the free lunch program so she brought an orange from home. She imagined herself digging her nails into the peel, and the orange would break into a sweat from its pores, then she’d peel the orange, and save the skin. She’d break apart the sections so the membrane burst like white lace. Then she’d bite each section so that the moist fruit came apart in thick juicy hairs. Then she’d take the peel and scrap her lower teeth on the white part so that it curled under her tongue, and eat that; finally, she’d chew on the peel itself.  Suddenly someone tugged her hair from behind. Terry hurled around and found a pig snout staring right at her, that blockhead bully Bob Brown who sneered: "You love Janet. You look at her all the time." Terry pressed the cold metal keys of her clarinet, then she swung the instrument around and smacked it against the side of Brown’s head. A crack busted up everyone in a chorus of yek-yek, their cruelty swelling into a big doughy ball. Terry didn’t care. She saw where the clarinet had nipped a bit of his flesh, saw the little spots of blood where her rage had nibbled neat cuts of wrath on his skin. Terry was glad to see Bob crying. She wished clarinets were even bolder, even more brutal.   Biographical Note             Kathleen de Azevedo’s fiction has been published in many journals including Other Voices, Brooklyn Review, The Raven Chronicles (a multi-cultural publication), Hayden’s Ferry Review, Cream City Review, Michigan Quarterly Review (“The Movies” Issue), Writers’ Forum, and Green Mountains Review.    Tony D’Souza, Excerpt from "The Plague"  The reception area—that was comfortable at least. Elaine and I, we hadn’t had to come to Edinburgh to have the procedure—we could have had it in Glasgow or Inverness, we could have had it closer to home—but when we were talking things over back on Skye, we thought we’d make a little vacation of it. I knew Edinburgh well enough. I’d washed dishes in a Sing restaurant there, then an Indian one, for a couple months before I’d heard about the work on Skye, and I told Elaine I’d take her around and show here what I knew. Despite being Scots born and bred, she’d never made it through the capital. I told her I’d take her on the Ghost Tour—out of work actors, dressed up in Gothic cloaks and boots and capes, led groups into the vaults under the Old Town for five quid a head, telling tales of Bloody Mary and witch covens, of ghouls and poltergeists, of how they’re still finding rooms full of skeletons sealed up since the time of the plague—but when we stepped off the train at Waverly holding our small weekend bags against us amidst all those strangers hustling away to make that city run, we both kind of realized what we were really there for, and sightseeing, that wasn’t it.   Biographical Note Mr. D’Souza’s stories have appeared in a number of journals, recently winning prizes from the Black Warrior Review and Stand Magazine, as well as in anthologies released by St. Martin’s Press and Story Press. His reviews appear regularly in the Hollins Critic, Notre Dame Review, and the Electronic Book Review.   Brian Evenson, Excerpt from "Out of Work"  Which is how I end up, still a little drunk and mostly confused, a little bit sleepy still despite being almost smothered, walking back and forth on the steps of Morrill Hall in the morning rather than afternoon. I am holding a sign which says, Out of Work and Discriminated Against. Nettles has a sign too which says Able and Willing—Any Job Will Do.  We spend a few hours walking the steps, sitting down every once in a while. Sometimes we see the woman with bleach-blond hair peering out at us through glass doors, holding a cigarette in her fingers but never coming out to smoke it. Students come and go. Some try to give us a dime or a quarter, which we take out of politeness; others try to bring Jesus into our lives. When we tell them we already have Jesus in our lives, they mostly look happy and leave us alone.   Biographical Note Brian Evenson is the author of four books of fiction, including Father of Lies (Four Walls Eight Windows, 1998) and Altmann’s Tongue (Knopf, 1994). He is also the recipient of an O. Henry Award. A new collection of his stories, Contagion, was published in August 2000.   Keith Irwin, Excerpt from "Asteroids"  Moriarty crawled over his asteroid’s rubbled horizon to reach the ruins of a former neighbor’s gazebo. After the end of the world, he had taken to visiting the gazebo—the flooring untouched, the roof overturned, half-buried like an ancient soldier’s shield—when he wanted to be alone. Recently, a chunk of New York had been approaching, the sunlit World Trade towers like the masts of an old ship, the ungainly two front teeth of an enormous Cheshire child. The spot had become popular. This time he found his daughter Saphron watching, her arms wrapped around a paisley silk skirt, staring off at the slow moving city. The obscured sun, reflected off the rocks, lit her body and, though she wasn’t crying, the tensed muscles in her face made her seem as if at any moment she might.  "I miss the seasons," she said.  Moriarty sat beside her, imitated her posture, his arms around khaki-covered knees. "I miss the time of day," he said.  "The weather," she said.  "The wind," he said.  "That’s the same thing," she said. ‘That’s what I meant."  "I still miss it," he said. "And the noise, Birds. Children screaming on some other street. Big fat tires squishing along."  "An empty can scuttling on concrete."  "My wife."          "Jesus, Dad," she said. "Quit whining."   Biographical Note After earning his Ph.D. in Literature at the University of North Texas, and teaching Creative Writing there for a spell, Keith Irwin recently headed west to seek his fortune in the high-tech ecotopia of Western Oregon and surrounding environs. There he lives still, not for a minute trying to recall how to survive a hot Texas summer.   David Jauss, Excerpt from "Tell Me Something"          She had been dying for nearly two months now, and each day he sat beside her bed in the nursing home and told her how much he loved her. At first she had liked hearing him say that, after all these years of silence on the subject, but now she didn’t think she could bear to hear him say it one more time. Biographical Note David Jauss’s most recent collection of short stories, Black Maps (1996, University of Massachusetts) won the Associated Writing Programs Award for Short Fiction. His stories have appeared in numerous magazines and been reprinted in the O. Hentry Prize, Pushcart Prize, and Best American Short Stories anthologies. He teaches at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and in the M.F.A. in Writing Program at Vermont College.   Jim Sanderson, Excerpt from "The Golden State"          Harry was a social worker, a counselor of sorts, and his job was to advise people to control themselves, not to give into violent or passionate outbursts. But on this night, he was a badass, kick ‘em-in-the-balls Texan, who had been dumped by his third one-true-love, and now twice by his second one-true-love, and he was not about to take any more shit from these wimpy-assed Californians. He swung himself around and brought his elbow up to catch this thief in the face.         His elbow caught no chin or cheek Harry just whirled right over the head of his assailant. He thought to himself that he was being held up by a midget. Harry stopped his spinning, braced himself, doubled his fist, and waited to feel a knife blade in his guts. He was prepared to die. And then he saw this ragged lump of clothes holding a knife. The twelve or thirteen-year-old looked up at Harry as though shocked, as though he were about to cry.          Harry’s instinct and muscle suppressed his mind and any sympathy, and he kicked the kid in the shin. The kid reached for his shin and hopped on one leg. Then Harry pushed the flat of his hand, not his fist, no broken knuckles for Harry, into the bridge of the kid’s nose. The kid stumbled back against the opposite wall, dropped his knife, grabbed his nose, then slid down the wall. Harry saw this blackness ooze from between the kid’s fingers. "Sorry," Harry said and reached for the child, who jerked away. But Harry caught the kid’s stocking cap and pulled it off the kid’s head. Her hair fell down, tears mixed with blood, she heaved. Harry had just kicked the shit out of a pubescent girl. He ran.   Biographical Note Jim Sanderson teaches fiction writing and American literature and film at Lamar University. His collection of short stories, Semi-Private Rooms, won the Kenneth Patchen Prize for fiction in 1992, sponsored by Pig Iron Press. He has published numerous other books, including A West Texas Soapbox (Texas A&M University Press), El Camino del Rio (The University of New Mexico Press), and Safe Delivery (The University of New Mexico Press). His stories, essays, and scholarly articles have appeared in Pleiades, Chariton Review, Descant, The Cimarron Review, The High Plains Literary Review, The Journal of American Culture, Literature/Film Quarterly, Early American Literature, and many other journals.   Pamela Schoenewaldt, Excerpt from "Near Brazigovo"          A child’s light low knock tightens Maggie’s stomach like a drum. The door opens. A bright orange flash, urgent words, and then a slender, fawn-like girl is pushed into the room. Sweatshirt, ripped pants and rippling brown angel hair, dark bright eyes and the softest skin. She hovers near the door, gripping a balding naked doll in front of her heart, but her head is up. "Anna," they hear, and "Amerikanski." The director points to Maggie and Stephen. The child, too, regards them top to toe but does not speak, in fact moves the doll to mask her face.  "She’s shy," Sylvia announces, then makes insistent words to Anna that must be, "Go on, show yourself, speak!" But what child could speak, on display like this? Maggie lays a hand on Sylvia’s and whispers, "Never mind, we wouldn’t understand her anyway." Anna peeps around the doll’s bald head and her breaking smile, arcing up and out, catches Maggie unprepared, falling in her heart like a pebble in a pool, deep to the bottom. Maggie has to look away. "Hold on, watch out," she tells herself. "Remember you wanted a toddler." Biographical Note Pamela Schoenewaldt has lived outside Naples, Italy for the last ten years, teaching at University of Maryland, European Division, writing, and translating. She’ll be moving to Knoxville, Tennessee this summer with her husband and daughter. Her short stories have been published in Belletrist Review, Paris Transcontinental, Crescent Review, Mediphors, Pinehurst Journal, Cascando (England), Nero Su Bianco (Italy), and other journals. Her one-act play, "Espresso Con Mia Madres" was produced last year in Naples, and she is now writing a novel based on the fictive diary of the 12th-century Sicilian empress, Costanza D’Altavilla.   Poetry  Katie Degentesh, “Colors Are Named for the Light Rays They Don’t Admit”  Biographical Note Katie Degentesh’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Many Mountains Moving, Natural Bridge, Lungfull!, The Washington Post, The Hawaii Review, and Plum Review. She was a 1999 nominee for a Pushcart Prize, and she co-edits a new literary magazine, 6,500. Recently, she completed a MA in Creative Writing from the University of California.   Meg Files, “Voyeurs”  Biographical Note Meg Files is the author of a novel, Meridian 144, now in trade paperback and foreign editions, and a collection of stories, Home is the Hunter. She has published numerous stories, poems, and articles in magazines and anthologies. Her awards include a Bread Loaf fellowship and the James Thurber Writer-in Residency at Ohio State University.   Loren Graham, “The Other Man,” “Infidelity,” “Flight,” and “A Postcard to You, Far Away” Biographical Note Loren Graham is a graduate of the M.F.A. program at the University of Virginia and now teaches creative writing at Hollins University. His first book, Mose, was published in 1994 by Wesleyan University Press/University Press of New England. He is currently at work on a narrative sequence of sonnets.   Mordecai Marcus, “A Dip in Dover Beach”  Biographical Note Mordecai Marcus is a cancer survivor and Professor Emeritus at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, from which he retired in 1997. Since 1970, he has published approximately 550 poems in journals and also six chapbooks. He has published numerous scholarly articles and a book on Robert Frost’s poems, and several of his articles have been reprinted in anthologies, mostly textbooks.   Andrew Miller, “The Brown Before Us”  Biographical Note Andrew Miller attended California State University, Fresno, where he received hi B.A. in English. Later he attended Virginia Commonwealth University where he received his M.F.A. in creative writing. He now lives abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark. His poems have appeared in Yemassee Magazine, Shenandoah Review, and Laurel Review.   Melissa Morphew, “Barnum’s Feejee Mermaid” and “Fathom”  Biographical Note Melissa Morphew is a native of Tennessee who lives in Riverside, Texas. Her poems have appeared in The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, and others. She is currently working on a manuscript titled Answering Neruda.   Daniel Tobin, "Chin Music"  Biographical Note Daniel Tobin’s book of poems, Where the World is Made, won the 1998 Bakeless Prize. He is also the author of a critical study, Passage to the Center: Imagination and the Sacred in the Poetry of Seamus Heaney. His work has appeared in many journals, among them Poetry, The Paris Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, Doubletake, and The Tampa Review. His poems have been anthologized in The Bread Loaf Anthology of New American Poets, Urban Nature, and The 1996/97 Yearbook of American Poetry and Anthology of Magazine Verse. His awards include The Discover/The Nation Award, The Robert Frost Fellowship from the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, and a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He currently teaches at Carthage College and at The Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.   Kathrine Varnes, "Her Ex-Husband’s Choir in Seven Voices" and “Job Search:  On the 56th Day of Year Three” Biographical Note             Kathrine Varnes recently moved from Delaware to Columbia, Missouri, where she teaches, writes, and gardens.  Her poems and essays have appeared most recently in Slant, Poet Lore, College English, Antipodas, and After New Formalism.  In August 2000, she was featured on the Poet of the Month site edited by Mark Jarman and John Canaday (http://members.aol.com/poetrynet/month/)   Donald Mace Williams, "Wind" Biographical Note Donald Mace Williams is a retired newspaper reporter and editor. He lives in Canyon, Texas, where in the early 1970s he taught English at what is now West Texas A&M University. He is the author of Interlude in Umbarger: Italian POWs and a Texas Church, and his poems have been published in Western Humanities Review and North Dakota Review.   Carolyne Wright, "Last Dream in Peru"  Biographical Note             Carolyne Wright’s new collection, Seasons of Mangoes and Brainfire, won the 1999 Blue Lynx House Press (selected by Yusef Komunyakaa), and was published by Lunx House Press in 2000.  Other titles include Premonitions of an Uneasy Guest (AWP Award Series) and From a White Woman’s Journal (Water Mark); a collection of essays, A Choice of Fidelities: Lectures and Readings from a Writer’s Life; and three volumes of poetry in translation from Spanish to Bengali.  Wright is working on an investigative memoir of her experiences in Chile during the presidency of Salvador Allende, The Road to Isla Negra, which has received the PEN/Jerard Fund Award and the Crossing Boundaries Award from International Quarterly.  Wright has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Society of America, and the New York State Council on the Arts.  In 2000-2001, she is serving as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Central Oklahoma.   Photography  John Hodges, “Holding Things”  Boy Holding Basketball with Two Hands      In Chicago I thought, What's Chicago if I don't see the South Side, so I took the train, got off, walked across a lot and asked this boy if I could take his picture.  He didn't say anything, but stood like that frozen.  As I walked down another street, a police officer pulled over and shook his head.  Get in, he said and drove me to the city, pointing out the El Rukin gang house along the way.  It was neatly-shaped with moons and stars on it, and the cop said, You're lucky, this favor, he said.  He didn't want to help me out on an ambulance call which was where I was heading.  Biographical Note             John Hodges has published photographs and fiction in various journals, including Apalachee Quarterly, Alabama Literary Review, Witness, Coe Review, New Stone Circle, and Contact Sheet.  He currently attends Florida State University as a graduate student in creative writing.  His story, “Filet Mignon,” will appear in an upcoming issue of Mississippi Mud, which will include a CD-ROM on which he reads his story. Click here to see excerpts from this issue's book reviews.

____________________________________