{"id":2855,"date":"2019-08-29T23:42:34","date_gmt":"2019-08-29T23:42:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/?page_id=2855"},"modified":"2019-08-29T23:50:51","modified_gmt":"2019-08-29T23:50:51","slug":"stone","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/stone\/","title":{"rendered":"Stone"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t4X2\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h1>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tan online poetry journal\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto by Melissa Hotchkiss\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<\/span>\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tHazards After Dark\t\t\t\t\t<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

by Hillery Stone<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re going to break a hole in the wall
\nyou\u2019ve got to do it soon. The mouse has left its trail
\non the table along the woodgrain
\nwhere it roved all night, corpulent and dimple-backed
\nas a yam. There isn\u2019t much to be found
\nbut you\u2019ve sealed every crack in the house and now
\nit can't get out. So unlike a mouse<\/em>
\nthe exterminator says, circling the room.
\nHe takes out his rubber cement
\nand lies down by the radiator. There was a time
\nbefore this house, miles of world
\nand not a thing of it yours. There were years
\nyou ruined everything good
\nbecause the outcome was incalculable.
\nNow you remind yourself about the shortened life span
\nof an animal in captivity.
\nYou nose around for hazards after dark\u2014
\nfaint odor, electric hum. Not a particular organism
\nor object in a specified circumstance
\nbut the unseeable. The stealth design. Now
\nthey\u2019re getting closer. They\u2019re closing in. The whole place
\nhas shrunk to the size of your table, smooth
\nas a map, ringed with secrets of our genes
\nand ancient climate. When you can\u2019t find your body
\nit will be there at the end, posed
\nfor equanimity, signing interminable forms.
\nRemembering the tastes of the outside.
<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/li>\n\n\t<\/ul>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>

\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t<\/span>\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tHow It Began\t\t\t\t\t<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

by Hillery Stone<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Alone in the San Juan mountains I scaled the dark,
\nfeeling in the sandstone and the snow
\nand the metal along the rails of the aerial lifts the hands
\nof my prospector, their pursuit
\nand girth, I\u2019d loved them for seven years and felt them
\nonly twice, but I could conjure them like a hymn,
\nlike the sounds during childbirth invoked
\nto counter pain. In the mineral belt, on the volcanic field,
\nI heard every directive from the Earth\u2019s stage:
\nthou shalt not keep
\nany messages; thou shalt not save
\na single call. Inside, a new story shook
\ninto being. Like Scheherazade who pulled her yarn of tales
\nlong after dusk, hours after sex transfixed
\nher body and lay it out
\nfor death. But death kept not coming, instead
\na strange root began to grow between her
\nand the murderous king, at first
\ngrotesque, then useful, then unequivocally desired.
<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/li>\n\n\t<\/ul>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

\n
\n\t

Poet's Statement: I was preoccupied for a while by a persistent mouse that stalked my apartment. I tried various live-capture traps. Sometimes I'd see its shadow. I thought about the particular dread of invasion, which has its own category in the biology of fear, and how, in pursuing each other each night, the mouse and I became intimates.
\n<\/span>
\nLooking at these poems together, I see that both carry the threat of death. One that night after night does not come.
\n<\/span>
\nBio:\u00a0Hillery Stone's poems and essays have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, Shenandoah, Green Mountains Review, Electric Literature<\/em> and on the Academy of American Poets site, poets.org. She has been the recipient of a Gulf Coast Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Adrienne Rich Prize from Beloit Journal.<\/em> She lives in Brooklyn.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4X2 an online poetry journal Photo by Melissa Hotchkiss Hazards After Dark by Hillery Stone If you\u2019re going to break a hole in the wall you\u2019ve got to do it soon. The mouse has left its trail on the table along the woodgrain where it roved all night, corpulent and dimple-backed as a yam. There…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"full-width-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2855","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2855"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2870,"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2855\/revisions\/2870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/barrowstreet.org\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}