{"id":15696,"date":"2024-02-03T13:09:31","date_gmt":"2024-02-03T19:09:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/?p=15696"},"modified":"2024-02-07T03:15:10","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T09:15:10","slug":"voices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/2024\/02\/03\/voices\/","title":{"rendered":"Voice(s)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Voice(s)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sam Rasnake<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

__________<\/p>\n\n\n\n

     \u2013 after \u201cPaprika Plains,\u201d Joni Mitchell<\/em>\n\nThere\u2019s been a murder in this town. There\u2019s always a murder in this \ntown.\nThere are mushrooms, a piano, and the highway \u2013 always a\nhighway \u2013 and\na storm \u2013 What about the storm?\n\n     Dreams would be nothing, I\u2019m saying, without a storm\n     drifting\n     through it. Gives it balance \u2013 whatever \u201cit\u201d is.\n\nSo\u2026you\u2019re not worried about these killers?\n\n     Who are you talking to? Have you thought about that at all?\n\nKind of scary.\n\n     Yes, kind of scary.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
     Next day<\/em>\n\nStorms here again, all night. Tiny breaks between deafening\nstillness, an\nall-out war on the ears. Everything. Then, nothing.\n\n     But maybe that\u2019s how it\u2019s always been \u2013 a sudden fall, a hard\n     grab.\n     No floating off, no slinking away into a supposed oblivion.\n\nWe are who we are.\n\n     Yeah, I know. It is what it is.\n\nWhat happens \u2013\n\n     What do you mean what happens?\n\nWhat happens when we lose our link with nature?\n\n     We\u2019ll have no place to stand.\n     My lips are sealed.\n\nWhat will happen when we lose our link with the self?\n\n     Ah, now you believe in the self? Isn\u2019t that awkward.\n\nI\u2019ll just say \u2013 I\u2019m not myself today.\n\n     Next night<\/em>\n\nWhen I was a kid, I kept a radio beneath my pillow. Waves from\n1000\nmiles away \u2013 Judy in disguise \u2026 The day destroys the night \u2026\nHello\ndarkness, my old friend\u2026 All the leaves are brown \u2026 Goo goo\ng\u2019joob \u2026<\/em>\nAnd my world was shaped.\n\n     Wouldn\u2019t it have been great to have one of those mirrored\n     balls in\n     your room when you were young? Turning. To go with the\n     music.\n\nI would\u2019ve never slept.\n\n     But you didn\u2019t sleep then anyway.\n\nThat\u2019s true. I close my eyelids, but I don\u2019t sleep. I look at the\nuniverse.\n\n     Then or now?\n\nAlways. I\u2019m on an island, floating. I float. Sometimes I land.\n\n     Outside, the rain is pelting the window. I don\u2019t mean to add\n     to whatever this is, but it is raining.\n\nOf course it is. And I\u2019m floating. Floating. Everything is smaller.\nAnd smaller. And\u2026\n\n     And?\n\nAnd.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
__________<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sam Rasnake\u2019s works have appeared in Wigleaf<\/em>, Drunken Boat<\/em>, UCity Review,MiPOesias<\/em>, Best of the Net<\/em>, Southern Poetry Anthology<\/em>, A Cluster of Lights<\/em>, and Bending Genres Anthology<\/em>. He\u2019s the author of Cin\u00e9ma V\u00e9rit\u00e9<\/em> (A-Minor Press), World within the World<\/em> (Cyberwit), and Like a Thread to Follow<\/em> (forthcoming, Cyberwit). Follow Sam on Bluesky @samrasnake.bsky.social or Twitter @SamRasnake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
__________<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n
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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
To learn more about submitting your work to Boudin<\/a><\/em> or applying to McNeese State University’s Creative Writing MFA program<\/a>, please visit Submissions for details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Next<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Voice(s) Sam Rasnake __________ \u2013 after \u201cPaprika Plains,\u201d Joni Mitchell There\u2019s been a murder in this town. There\u2019s always a murder in this town. There are mushrooms, a piano, and the highway \u2013 always a highway \u2013 and a storm \u2013 What about the storm? Dreams would be nothing, I\u2019m saying, without a storm drifting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[196],"tags":[75,145,42,18],"class_list":["post-15696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-hybrid-this-is-it","tag-boudin","tag-poetry-2","tag-hybrid","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15696"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15828,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15696\/revisions\/15828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}