{"title":"Mother Tongue","authors":"D. K. Lawhorn","doi":"10.1353/mar.2023.a907330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mar.2023.a907330","url":null,"abstract":"Mother Tongue D. K. Lawhorn (bio) Keywords D.K. Lawhorn, prose writers, fiction, Indigenous authors, Indian school, nuns ________ CAUGHT BETWEEN Sister Eustace’s fingers, my ear is close to ripping off as she drags me through the schoolhouse and toward the steps that lead to the Mother Superior’s room. This is the only part of the morning that hasn’t gone to plan. I focus on the comforting weight of the silver dinner knife tucked into the waistband of my skirt. Its cold length digs against my hip bone and reassures me. My trip upstairs won’t end like the others. All those girls who have gone before me. I will come back down. I will slay the monster waiting up there. I will kill the Mother Superior, ear or no ear. Normally, Sister Eustace hauls us girls along by our hair, straight black strands wrapped around her hand for the best grip. Because all of mine was shorn off earlier in the week for refusing to use silverware as I ate, Sister Eustace makes do with my ear. I’d hoped for something along the lines of a bone-grinding wrist grip, but here we are. For two days, my scalp bled from the ravages of the dull knife she used to strip away my honor in front of all the younger girls trapped in this boarding school with me. As Sister Eustace chopped and hacked, she told me, with a smug smile on her face and loud enough for the whole schoolhouse to hear, that this was a light punishment for being such an uncouth Indian. She said that I should be grateful for her deep mercy, which she was showing only because it was my birthday. I smiled through the runnels of blood streaking my face. This further enraged Sister Eustace and gained me a bare-bottom paddling that lasted until Sister Francis burst into the room and pulled me from the dining hall, away from Sister Eustace. Even with Sister Francis’s intervention, I haven’t been able to sit down comfortably since. The clacks of little feet in hard-soled shoes follow us toward the staircase. At its base, Sister Eustace spins, jerking me around with her. I bite off a yelp of pain and pull in a shuddering breath through flared nostrils to keep tears from welling. Sister Eustace sweeps her dull gray gaze over the group of girls trailing us. They are all dressed in the foolish black and white uniforms the Sisters force us to wear, little choking bows tight around their necks. Their beautiful black hair is cut short to rest on their narrow shoulders, as if each of them are in mourning. [End Page 120] Even though the full heat of Sister Eustace’s fiery fury is on them, none of the girls back away. Twelve sets of brown eyes, all shimmering with held-back cries, are stuck on me. I’m the oldest girl in the boarding school by four years. Even before I turned thirteen, the others looked to me as the mother of our fractured little Monacan Nation inside these stark white walls. My chest tightens. It grows hard for me to breathe as I look at each of their pretty, round faces. They’ll be devastated if I meet the same fate as","PeriodicalId":43806,"journal":{"name":"MASSACHUSETTS REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135428457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pleurotomaria, and: The First Water","authors":"M. K. Foster","doi":"10.1353/mar.2023.a907323","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mar.2023.a907323","url":null,"abstract":"Pleurotomaria, and: The First Water M. K. Foster (bio) Keywords poetry, M. K. Foster, silence, womanhood, marriage, transformation, fire, ice, light, music, sound, religion, body, violence, flood, birth, death PLEUROTOMARIA a woman turns to salt and silence, a woman turns to ice and blindness and niceness the way a woman turns to drying hyacinths hung and strung upside-down at the window as a woman turns to trying, turns to pressing, turns to portrait after portrait hanging above a fire of a woman turning into fire by telling it her name height sex age weight (for real, no rounding) which is all just: a woman saying to herself (so saying to no one) if I marry him, some part of my face will never be the same, ruined and stained in a way that’s not stated, but seen as a thing to be unseen when: a woman turns to gleaming, a woman turns to mirrors to pluck out chin whiskers and grey hair to floss her fangs: is all there is, all it comes down to for a woman made of bones made of women made of broken bones, no children, bad joints, and run-away juice, which is all we’re looking at when a woman turns to ‘two pigs fighting under a blanket’ because a woman is a turning-into; and it’s chronic and largely incurable, this condition because being a woman is a condition, a user agreement term, and a state of existence all at the same time (and who says women are bad multitaskers?) because (try it sometime!) you try having an origin story where you’re made of sleep and rib, you try getting sucked into thinking you were born to suck and suck at it, because, if she is nothing else, a woman is changing, making change a woman turning into a bird turning into a god: a god who turns her face to the sun as into oncoming traffic and lifts her gaze to make eye contact with whatever’s followed her down an alley, past a dumpster; and she is both: the alley and the dumpster; so she turns and she turns, because turning is womaning, they finally learn when it’s a woman’s turn: hiking up her skin, unpinning her jaw, and showing all the volcanic knives she hides by day behind her face and grinds each night against it’s fine it’s fine I’m fine, is a woman holding herself stiller than a pillar of salt with crimson lipstick; and holding, and holding: carnivorous, breathless, raw with wanting, waiting, preying for bitch would it kill you to smile [End Page 57] THE FIRST WATER what else is there to say?all night we held down the light— until it split us like old ice at dawn— thaw by another name— the large magellanic music of cracking and gasping, gnashingand almighty crashing filling us as divine sacrifice is said to fill— no, flood the body— or something like that: they say if you’re doing it right, god comes in your heart—and maybe that’s where I’ve been going wrong all along: here I am thinking it’s about holiness and shit, when really it’s just another man who thinks he’s god so hardhe won’t even let you look at him unless you’re on your knees— figures. what else is there to d","PeriodicalId":43806,"journal":{"name":"MASSACHUSETTS REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135428601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Four Tales","authors":"Jake Marmer","doi":"10.1353/mar.2023.a907318","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mar.2023.a907318","url":null,"abstract":"Four Tales Jake Marmer (bio) Keywords hybrid, Jake Marmer, Eastern Europe, Ukraine, immigrant, birch, writing, class, wealth, music, nostalgia AGAINST THE BIRCH (AND THE FIR) EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT to be a self-respecting Eastern European émigré writer, you must learn to long for the birch. Before you can even attempt to tackle the whole second-language issue, alienation, lost loves—you gotta take your first wobbly steps around the poeticized-to-death, they-bend-but-don’t-break, “oh under her window” birch tree. It’s the shibboleth, the rite of passage, an affirmation of having lived and lived again, elsewhere, and taking up the feather to write your big, nostalgic immigrant novel. Can I tell you something? I feel no nostalgia, nothing at all, and I never did. Even before this war in Ukraine started and these stories of mine needed immediate evacuation—and not nostalgia’s lukewarm soup of faux feelings. In the meantime, all over his memoir (an actual classic of émigré nostalgia, written, by the way, in part during World War II), Nabokov pines over birches & firs & his family’s fancy-ass estates, populated with barefoot peasant girls named Polina or Tamara, who lingered mysteriously in some doorway as he, barchuk (“the young master,” geez) was inhaling this or that scent while riding on his fancy-ass bicycle with a butterfly net. Let me tell you this: no one I grew up with back in Ukraine owned a butterfly net. Barchuk! Just that word alone awakens the old communist fervor in me. Nostalgia is for rich people in safety, or rather, those who were very rich once and are now moderately well off. I guess those who grew up poor but became rich and are now miserable can feel it too, and it’s not that different, feelings-wise—I just don’t really care. It’s all about the crossover, see, the grassy patch between classes. In that patch grow impenetrable, mean birches. Yes, mean and pompous: that’s why I hate them. A writer I admire once asked me: Why is it that you Eastern Europeans always cry at classical music concerts? The music reaches crescendo, and you can pretty much count on it. Sitting there, with your noble tears running down the cheeks. Some folks even bring kerchiefs knowing it will happen, too. Like they come expecting it. You want to cry? [End Page 17] Stay home and cry—why does it need to be in public like that? I didn’t tell him, but I will tell you: the types who cry at those concerts sit and think about birches. Me, I rub my eyes trying to stay awake and look cultured. One time, an old Soviet-style army choir came to the Lincoln Center and sang all the little folk songs my grandmother used to sing along with the television, and that really got to me. Good thing I didn’t go with my sarcastic writer friend but instead brought an American-born date who looked politely bewildered as I sat there, bawling all through the concert over aging, red-faced army dudes singing about the rowan bush and the little raspberries. Sometimes I turn off the news, ","PeriodicalId":43806,"journal":{"name":"MASSACHUSETTS REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135427338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Three Works","authors":"Juanita Morrow Nelson, Louis Herbert Battalen’s","doi":"10.1353/mar.2023.a907324","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mar.2023.a907324","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This portfolio presents three works—an essay, a play, and a poem—all previously unpublished, to honor the late Juanita Morrow Nelson, an anti-war activist, on the centennial of her birth in August 2023. Nelson was involved in various activist fronts including the civil rights movement of the 60s and war tax resistance, and these works represent the spirit of Nelson’s politics and the examination of the injustices of America in the second half of the 20th century.","PeriodicalId":43806,"journal":{"name":"MASSACHUSETTS REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135427347","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Poem in Which I Have Read the Terms and Conditions, and: Battle Hymn of the Hymen","authors":"Denise Duhamel","doi":"10.1353/mar.2023.a907315","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/mar.2023.a907315","url":null,"abstract":"Poem in Which I Have Read the Terms and Conditions, and: Battle Hymn of the Hymen Denise Duhamel (bio) Keywords poetry, Denise Duhamel, God, policy, health, capitalism, body, blood POEM IN WHICH I HAVE READ THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS I’ve checked the box acknowledging that, whatever happens,it won’t be your fault—that my insurance policy will covereverything, except what actually breaks, that you are not responsiblefor any data corruption, any mistakes in my bloodwork results,that your mammogram can only detect so much. I knowyou are not responsible for the brakes in my car, the asbestosthat might have crawled into my lungs, whatever germsyour germ killer can’t kill, the long o’s of my moaningif I get sick. You can’t possibly be responsible for the contentsin an envelope you send my way, any viruses or spywarethat may injure me. I understand there may be disruptionsand I shouldn’t complain. I understand there may be shipping delays,stolen packages from my porch, and that’s, of course,not your fault. You can’t be held liable for damage, director indirect, consequential or incidental. What you sell mecomes “AS IS” and I will deal with that. I understandwars or “acts of God” have nothing to do with you,that there is no such thing as “perfect” and you never claimedto be. Of course you reserve the right to cancel my orderdue to product availability. I understand you cannot—and do not—guarantee the accuracy or completenessof any product images or description of services. I understandprices may go up—you need to make a buck. I understandthat you are not responsible for typos or omissions,that, heck, you can terminate this agreement at any timewithout notice. I understand that your help deskis not required to help me and that your “chat” buttondoesn’t necessarily mean someone is there to talk.I understand you may use cookies and pop-up ads—that’s all fine and dandy with me. I have waived my rightsto sue should you cause me inconvenience or harm. [End Page 10] It only makes sense that you can’t be blamedfor the shenanigans of any third-party vendors.I get it—you can sell my information to anyone you wantand I won’t get a cut. Needless to say, you are takingreasonable steps to protect my identifying info,but shit happens and, hey, what are you going to do?I, in turn, will do nothing as I have no recourse.I understand I am consulting you at my own riskand I, alone, am responsible for keeping myself safe.I agree that my password has an “!” and a jumbleof letters that will be hard for me to remember.I agree to refrain from any abusive, pornographic,and obscene behavior and that you will determinewhat those behaviors might be. Should I have a lackof enjoyment, that cannot possibly be your fault—enjoyment is subjective after all. I respect that your brandis your brand and I will never try to copy it.I agree that I will never scan, probe, or testyour vulnerability. I will not “deep-link,” “page-scrape,”“robot,” or “spider” you. I also attest that I, myself, am not","PeriodicalId":43806,"journal":{"name":"MASSACHUSETTS REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135427342","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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