Episode 05: Fascinating and Terrifying

Painted Bride Quarterly’s Slush Pile

Apr 11, 2016•52 min•Ep. 6

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Episode description

When we asked Maggie Queeney for permission to discuss her work in this podcast, her response was “this sounds fascinating and terrifying!” We’re considering that as our tag line (and a life philosophy).

We discussed Queeney’s pieces, "Last Case on the Murder Task Force,” and to be honest, we didn’t want to stop, even when all of the editors’ comments clearly illustrated how the vote would go! This poem’s craft is so beautiful to linger in, even though the images are heart wrenching and tragic.

"Nox” was a little less accessible for us, more difficult to simply understand, but that didn’t deter our enthusiasm for the piece—not with this many arresting images.

"Cry Wolf” takes the classic fable, expounds upon it, and changes it for you forever.

We meant to discuss three poems from Adam Day, but we had such a good time discussing Maggie’s poems that we didn’t feel we had enough time to really get into the discussion, so we thought we’d “reveal” another issue that comes up when culling through work for PBQ.

Adam Day’s work came in via Submittable and was assigned to our Abu Dhabi staff. Two editors there liked a few of his pieces, but alas, before the work could come to the editorial table for a vote, the pieces we had interest in were accepted elsewhere!

Listen to us discuss the “notes” in Submittable. Adam was about to get a straight up boiler plate rejection and she realized he would never know he had fans at PBQ. So, she took action…

Tell us what you think about simultaneous submissions (and anything else) on our Facebook page event, Episode 5.

Read on!

-KVM

Present at the Editorial Table:

Kathleen Volk Miller

Marion Wrenn

Jason Schneiderman

Miriam Haier

Tim Fitts

Production Engineer:

Joe Zang

PBQ Box Score: 3=2

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Maggie Queeney

Last Case on the Murder Task Force

A telephone splices the night—lit nerve ending or lightning strike—and the child rises all lung, all mouth

and howl. The man rises from inside the mother, rises from the casts of his fingers clutched into the sheets

and separates the boy’s head from his chest. He runs, knife in hand, body in arms, floor to floor,

beating on doors as the thin limbs jog at his sides. He palms the boy’s head, guides the jaw back

to the neck, but blood leaks and blacks his bared chest in the stills taken later that night.

The state assigns my father to the defense. He twists the tinny, stripped facts into a cast outlining a life.

He tells the jury the man grew up a thing burnt by his grandfather, his mother, that his thin body smoked

and scabbed taut. And then the foster homes and the beatings and the drugs and the howl and the boy and the knife.

The state threads a new heart into the man’s chest. He is kept living. He is sentenced to death. Nights on trial,

my father walks the floor with my infant brother, crouped up and wailing the mucus out of his lungs, his mouth with a howl.

My mother sleeps, buried tight as a drawered knife, gleaming through what beauty her children had left.

Nox

A child teethes. Through the door, a loop of scream and whimper

traces the length of the porch. Morning, I find the blood

left by the raw gums rubbed like a hand along the rail,

the floor, the frame and lock to the front door. At night,

I stay inside, listen to the tap somnolent in the pipes, the house drafts,

the moon pushing to perfect circle. The birds curl into their fists

of nest, their small breasts hot hulls above the shriek of owl-torn mice.

Animals take a human voice in dying. Their wet tunnels of throat,

slick and holy as the inside of a flute, bottom into the black running under. Cry Wolf

What difference between crying and calling, cursing and summoning, the frantic limbs of a lamb and the bared legs of a boy.

What difference between the desire to laugh at the adults running, spades and rakes in hand, and the need to know they would run at his call.

Remember most do not know the name of what they want, even as they are wanting— the body incandesces, numb and ecstatic, as it is destroyed.

Remember the wolf, drawn only by gut and jaws, insistent as divining rods— heart stilling at its name called, finally, between the trees.