New Millennium Writings, Issue 14

Issue 14 -- 2004-5

Contents - Departments

Cormac McCarthy, The author of Suttree, Blood Meridian, and All the Pretty Horses writes his way home,
by Don Williams 194

Photo of Cormac McCarthy by Marion Ettlinger

The Cormac McCarthy Society gathers Oct. 14-17 in Knoxville to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the publication of Suttree, See Page 193

Poetry Suite, Recent Poems By…

Charles Wright, La Doceamara Vita, 167
Sybil Kollar, The Cows, 168
Kathleen Driskell, Why I Mother You The Way I Do, 169
Art Smith, In Memory of the Georgia Sun, 170
Laura Still, Vanashing Act, 171
Karen Glenn, The Club, 172
Julie Ann Predny, Finding Freedom, 173
Judy Loest, The Cambodian Mother Writes to Her Daughter in America, 174
M. Ayodele Heath, eye of the beholder, 175
Marilyn Kallet, Horb, 176
William Wenthe, Bad Map, 177
Laurel Smith, Moving Wood, 178
Steve Sparks, Elegy for Felicia, 179
Rafe Jones, Ninety-One Years, 180
Eric Paul Shaffer, As A Shark Sees, 181
Patrick Bizzaro, Talking To My Dog Early In The Morning, At Noon, And An Hour Before My Wife Returns From Work, 182
Alice Friman, Cascade Falls, Lieber State Park, Indiana, 184
Cynthia Rausch Allar, Heat, 185
Nana Lampton, One of Those, 186
Cathy Capozzoli, The Other Side of Music, 187
Libby Falk Jones, Sex Under Glass, 188
Bobby C. Rogers, Folk Art, 189
Hilary Tham, Wonderful Wold (As Revealed on the Internet), 190
Carolyn Ogburn, Among the Living, 192

Notes on Contributers, 206

Cover Painting
by Will Rickenbach

Cover Design
by Rhonda Swicegood
of Hart Graphics

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Contents - Special Section
New Millennium Awards XVI & XVII, plus one

Read the Winners,
Special Section - 100 to 166
Honorable Mentions, 100 - 101
New Contest Guidelines, 166

1st Place, Fiction, NMW 17
CB Anderson,
China Falls, 118
'The spring Lorraine Poulin turned 34, in the mill town of China Falls, Maine, a flock of geese halted their northward migration to settle inexplicably in the pulp pond of the vast industrial yard at Katahdin Paper….'

1st Place, Nonfiction, NMW 15
Ann Pancake,
Tough, 133
'We were raised to be tough back there. Boys, girls, all of us were, although I didn't recognize it until I left…. We got beat on regularly, at least every kid I knew did. Got beat at school, got beat at home….'

1st Place, Fiction, NMW 16
Eliezer Sobel,
Mordecai's Book, 102
'Now our breakfast discussion has begun- that's the first lesson Reb Nachman taught: The path to God is a path of joy. There's no room for sadness. The fact that he himself could have used a little Prozac is another story. Not a cheerful man. But you think you're going to atract the Almighty with self-pity? She doesn't hear it. Her ears perk up when She hears laughter, and dancing… go, eat… try the nice cinnamon-raisin….'

1st Place, Nonfiction, NMW 16
Donn Irving,
The Shadow of Her Smile, 145
'She was raped in a wreck of a barn so picturesque that city pohtographers have worn a path around the canted hull… silver and charcoal wood with weather-etched grain that stares back at you with dust-bowl starkness….'

1st Place, Nonfiction, NMW 17
Judy Copeland, The Girl Who Didn't Believe in Love, 152
'They took her away to the States, never to return. For the next two years, she cried herself to sleep at night, longing for her friends and her dog in Japan, grieving for the staccato syllables of her mother tongue, for the way the frogs sang in the rice paddies and the pine trees bent in the typhoons. For a world lost to her forever….'

1st Place, Poetry, NMW 17
Jacqueline Berger,
The Warmest Day of the Year, 162
'I could have a child in the war
like the boys I read about this morning-
nineteen, twenty, twenty-two-
who love the rush of battle,
I can't imagine
being in a line of work that didn't
let me carry a gun/ one of them said….'

1st Place, Poetry, NMW 16
Charlotte Pence,
Closing Translations, 164
'I couldn't say, you will go quietly
the way a boy slides a stone
into his pocket or gently
as the white trumpet flower
closes at noon, escapes from heat….'

Contents - Featured Writers

Tom Larsen
Straight Life, 6
'Lucille left the birth certificate in the glove compartment along with a hundred dollars, a change of clothes, and a short note. Dear Buck, Lotsa luck. He still carries the note in his wallet through he hasn't seen Lucille in thirty years…'

David Morse
Digital Moon, 18
'It would all be shattered by the slightest breeze. The quality of light itself would be lost- the fleeting miracle he always told students they must capture instantly. Seize the moment! Why did that phrase now fill him with dread…'

Thomas O'Malley
Play the Reel Slowly, 26
'After Uncle Rory was placed in the bog his red accordion lay upon a top shelf in the cottage in Muckinaugh where Auntie Finnoula had placed it the night of the funeral after Father and Uncle Colie fought, and where it could utter no… discordant chord….'

Jack Neely
Our Sacred Ditty, 40
'I consider yself a patriotic guy. The Fourth of July is my favorite holiday. I've voted in every major election since I turned 18. I pay my taxes without complaint. I go to every Veterans' Day parade and applaud the songs the bands play. All of them except one….'

Dan Sullivan
Free Money, 48
'I was running down a Frisbee at the edge of our base camp in the Central Highlands when my right foot landed on a mine… BOOM… muffled whoosh of dirt up in my place… I work up in the Saigon… tons of righteous drugs… drifting in and out on a cloud of morning glories until some chaplain's voice brought me down…'

Naomi Benaron
Shedding Skin, 61
'A barren ridge rises, rocks jutting up like teeth. Even in April a crusty snow covers the ground. The camera has captured the breath that curls like smoke from noses and mouths. The air is so cold it pulls tears from their eyes and turns their souls to ice. Behind them the convoluted peaks of dead mountains reach toward North Korea….'

David O. Stewart
When They Did It, 74
'The flash was like a thousand stars in front of his hands, inches away. There was no noise. He could see through his eyelids, see the veins in them. He looked through the goggles and through his flesh at the skinny bones in his hands. They looked like bird's feet, or claws. For another instant it was still silent. The white light turned to red. The world glowed…'

Marc Levy
How Stevie Nearly Lost the War 85
'The war, Stevie is told, with its white tailed rockets and hard crack ricochets; the war, with its thumping whirl of trembling choppers; the war, with its shirtless gun crews manning stell-wheeled cannons; the war, with its fine plumed shells cutting silver arcs through infinite sky; the war… he is told on scheduled clinic days, had ended quite some time ago….'

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