Episode 05: Fascinating and Terrifying
b'When we asked Maggie Queeney for permission to discuss her work in this podcast, her response was \\u201cthis sounds fascinating and terrifying!\\u201d We\\u2019re considering that as our tag line (and a life philosophy).\\xa0\\n\\nWhen we asked Maggie Queeney for permission to discuss her work in this podcast, her response was \\u201cthis sounds fascinating and terrifying!\\u201d We\\u2019re considering that as our tag line (and a life philosophy).\\nWe discussed Queeney\\u2019s pieces, "Last Case on the Murder Task Force,\\u201d and to be honest, we didn\\u2019t want to stop, even when all of the editors\\u2019 comments clearly illustrated how the vote would go! This poem\\u2019s craft is so beautiful to linger in, even though the images are heart wrenching and tragic.\\n"Nox\\u201d was a little less accessible for us, more difficult to simply understand, but that didn\\u2019t deter our enthusiasm for the piece\\u2014not with this many arresting images.\\n"Cry Wolf\\u201d takes the classic fable, expounds upon it, and changes it for you forever.\\nWe meant to discuss three poems from Adam Day, but we had such a good time discussing Maggie\\u2019s poems that we didn\\u2019t feel we had enough time to really get into the discussion, so we thought we\\u2019d \\u201creveal\\u201d another issue that comes up when culling through work for PBQ.\\nAdam Day\\u2019s 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!\\nListen to us discuss the \\u201cnotes\\u201d 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\\u2026\\nTell us what you think about simultaneous submissions (and anything else) on our Facebook page event, Episode 5.\\nSign up for our email list if you\\u2019re in the area and even if you\\u2019re not!\\nFollow us on Twitter @PaintedBrideQ and Instagram @paintedbridequarterly.\\nRead on!\\n-KVM\\n\\xa0\\nPresent at the Editorial Table:\\nKathleen Volk Miller\\nMarion Wrenn\\nJason Schneiderman\\nMiriam Haier\\nTim Fitts\\n\\xa0\\nProduction Engineer:\\nJoe Zang\\n\\xa0\\nPBQ Box Score: 3=2\\n------------------------\\n\\xa0\\nMaggie Queeney\\nLast Case on the Murder Task Force\\nA telephone splices the night\\u2014lit nerve ending or lightning strike\\u2014and the child rises all lung, all mouth\\nand howl. The man rises from inside the mother, rises from the casts of his fingers clutched into the sheets\\nand separates the boy\\u2019s head from his chest. He runs, knife in hand, body in arms, floor to floor,\\nbeating on doors as the thin limbs jog at his sides. He palms the boy\\u2019s head, guides the jaw back\\nto the neck, but blood leaks and blacks his bared chest in the stills taken later that night.\\nThe state assigns my father to the defense. He twists the tinny, stripped facts into a cast outlining a life.\\nHe tells the jury the man grew up a thing burnt by his grandfather, his mother, that his thin body smoked\\nand scabbed taut. And then the foster homes and the beatings and the drugs and the howl and the boy and the knife.\\nThe state threads a new heart into the man\\u2019s chest. He is kept living. He is sentenced to death. Nights on trial,\\nmy father walks the floor with my infant brother, crouped up and wailing the mucus out of his lungs, his mouth with a howl.\\nMy mother sleeps, buried tight as a drawered knife, gleaming through what beauty her children had left.\\nNox\\nA child teethes. Through the door, a loop of scream and whimper\\ntraces the length of the porch. Morning, I find the blood\\nleft by the raw gums rubbed like a hand along the rail,\\nthe floor, the frame and lock to the front door. At night,\\nI stay inside, listen to the tap somnolent in the pipes, the house drafts,\\nthe moon pushing to perfect circle. The birds curl into their fists\\nof nest, their small breasts hot hulls above the shriek of owl-torn mice.\\nAnimals take a human voice in dying. Their wet tunnels of throat,\\nslick and holy as the inside of a flute, bottom into the black running under.Cry Wolf \\nWhat difference be'