{"id":21064,"date":"2025-10-27T17:49:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T22:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/?p=21064"},"modified":"2025-10-31T12:28:59","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T17:28:59","slug":"field-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/field-notes\/","title":{"rendered":"Field Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul class=\"wp-block-social-links is-content-justification-right is-layout-flex wp-container-core-social-links-is-layout-765c4724 wp-block-social-links-is-layout-flex\"><li class=\"wp-social-link wp-social-link-facebook  wp-block-social-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/profile.php?id=61556140010887\" class=\"wp-block-social-link-anchor\"><svg width=\"24\" height=\"24\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.1\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" aria-hidden=\"true\" focusable=\"false\"><path d=\"M12 2C6.5 2 2 6.5 2 12c0 5 3.7 9.1 8.4 9.9v-7H7.9V12h2.5V9.8c0-2.5 1.5-3.9 3.8-3.9 1.1 0 2.2.2 2.2.2v2.5h-1.3c-1.2 0-1.6.8-1.6 1.6V12h2.8l-.4 2.9h-2.3v7C18.3 21.1 22 17 22 12c0-5.5-4.5-10-10-10z\"><\/path><\/svg><span class=\"wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n\n<li class=\"wp-social-link wp-social-link-instagram  wp-block-social-link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/boudin_mcneese\/\" class=\"wp-block-social-link-anchor\"><svg width=\"24\" height=\"24\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.1\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" aria-hidden=\"true\" focusable=\"false\"><path d=\"M12,4.622c2.403,0,2.688,0.009,3.637,0.052c0.877,0.04,1.354,0.187,1.671,0.31c0.42,0.163,0.72,0.358,1.035,0.673 c0.315,0.315,0.51,0.615,0.673,1.035c0.123,0.317,0.27,0.794,0.31,1.671c0.043,0.949,0.052,1.234,0.052,3.637 s-0.009,2.688-0.052,3.637c-0.04,0.877-0.187,1.354-0.31,1.671c-0.163,0.42-0.358,0.72-0.673,1.035 c-0.315,0.315-0.615,0.51-1.035,0.673c-0.317,0.123-0.794,0.27-1.671,0.31c-0.949,0.043-1.233,0.052-3.637,0.052 s-2.688-0.009-3.637-0.052c-0.877-0.04-1.354-0.187-1.671-0.31c-0.42-0.163-0.72-0.358-1.035-0.673 c-0.315-0.315-0.51-0.615-0.673-1.035c-0.123-0.317-0.27-0.794-0.31-1.671C4.631,14.688,4.622,14.403,4.622,12 s0.009-2.688,0.052-3.637c0.04-0.877,0.187-1.354,0.31-1.671c0.163-0.42,0.358-0.72,0.673-1.035 c0.315-0.315,0.615-0.51,1.035-0.673c0.317-0.123,0.794-0.27,1.671-0.31C9.312,4.631,9.597,4.622,12,4.622 M12,3 C9.556,3,9.249,3.01,8.289,3.054C7.331,3.098,6.677,3.25,6.105,3.472C5.513,3.702,5.011,4.01,4.511,4.511 c-0.5,0.5-0.808,1.002-1.038,1.594C3.25,6.677,3.098,7.331,3.054,8.289C3.01,9.249,3,9.556,3,12c0,2.444,0.01,2.751,0.054,3.711 c0.044,0.958,0.196,1.612,0.418,2.185c0.23,0.592,0.538,1.094,1.038,1.594c0.5,0.5,1.002,0.808,1.594,1.038 c0.572,0.222,1.227,0.375,2.185,0.418C9.249,20.99,9.556,21,12,21s2.751-0.01,3.711-0.054c0.958-0.044,1.612-0.196,2.185-0.418 c0.592-0.23,1.094-0.538,1.594-1.038c0.5-0.5,0.808-1.002,1.038-1.594c0.222-0.572,0.375-1.227,0.418-2.185 C20.99,14.751,21,14.444,21,12s-0.01-2.751-0.054-3.711c-0.044-0.958-0.196-1.612-0.418-2.185c-0.23-0.592-0.538-1.094-1.038-1.594 c-0.5-0.5-1.002-0.808-1.594-1.038c-0.572-0.222-1.227-0.375-2.185-0.418C14.751,3.01,14.444,3,12,3L12,3z M12,7.378 c-2.552,0-4.622,2.069-4.622,4.622S9.448,16.622,12,16.622s4.622-2.069,4.622-4.622S14.552,7.378,12,7.378z M12,15 c-1.657,0-3-1.343-3-3s1.343-3,3-3s3,1.343,3,3S13.657,15,12,15z M16.804,6.116c-0.596,0-1.08,0.484-1.08,1.08 s0.484,1.08,1.08,1.08c0.596,0,1.08-0.484,1.08-1.08S17.401,6.116,16.804,6.116z\"><\/path><\/svg><span class=\"wp-block-social-link-label screen-reader-text\">Instagram<\/span><\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-large-font-size\"><strong>Field Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Itto &amp; Mekiya Outini<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">__________<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cI don\u2019t think you is who you says you is,\u201d is the first thing Everett says to me, his eyes like shards from broken bottles scattered under streetlamps, only there are no streetlamps here, just a sickly half-moon rising from a knot of trees. Signing up for this night\u2019s watch, I imagined that the church would have a floodlit parking lot, but there\u2019s not a single floodlight: just live oaks, a steeple, and power lines swooping from north to south, somewhere to nowhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cWho do you think I am, then?\u201d I wonder aloud. It\u2019s good for me to know, even if asking only puts more questions in his head: good for me to get a sense of how I come across so that I\u2019ll fine-tune my performance for next time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">He takes the question seriously, giving me the once over, squinting. Along with his Nikes and red cap and overalls, he\u2019s got himself a snakebite piercing, but his mouth is hardly anything at all, the studs so crowded that I can\u2019t imagine what he ever does with spoons. Maybe he subsists on liquids: moonshine through a straw. Everything on his face is too scrunched-up, too close together. Looking at him makes my head feel just like looking at modern art does.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cYou show up out of nowhere,\u201d he sums up with a sniff\u2014the world, for him, evidently consists of two parts: his own town, and nowhere\u2014\u201cand the first thing you want to do is watch our church, huh?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">It\u2019s just the two of us out in the moonlight, propped up like mannequins on our folding chairs, which the pastor kindly provided before returning to his truck and heading home to bed: him with his feet stretched out as far as they\u2019ll go, me with one leg hooked over the other\u2014only it occurs to me that men around here do not cross their legs. They cross their arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">I cross my arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cWhere you from?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cPiedmont.\u201d &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">He frowns, weighing this against his own encyclopedic knowledge. \u201cI never heard of no Piedmont.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cNorth Carolina piedmont,\u201d I tell him. \u201cIt\u2019s a region. Between the mountains and the coast. It comes from French. It means foothills. \u2018Pied\u2019 means foot, and \u2018mont\u2019 means\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cYou been to college?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cNo,\u201d I say, wanting to kick myself. \u201cI just like knowing what words mean, is all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cHow come?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cNo reason. Forget it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Really, it\u2019s not about the words. It\u2019s never been about the words\u2014though, I suppose, it is about what can be done with words: about standing out, elevating the mind, knowing better, even when I\u2019ve known better than to know better, even when the wisest thing would\u2019ve been to know less, and say even less than that, and be the least of all. What the Bible says about pride, I have tested, and while I don\u2019t like to admit it, I have to: the score is scripture one, me nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">But, on a related point, the Bible is mistaken: we\u2019re barely more than chimpanzees. The authors\u2014Moses, Solomon, Isaiah, whoever\u2014would\u2019ve known this for themselves if, back in their day, there\u2019d been high schools, for then they might\u2019ve found themselves, like me, thrown in among the yapping, grunting, clamoring multitudes, snorting crystal meth off toilet tanks and circulating naked selfies snapped in bathroom stalls, and they, too, might\u2019ve felt that rocket-fuel burn: to rise, to shed the stinking animal pelt that is our common nature, to wonder, <em>What more can we be? <\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Reading Chekhov for the first time, reading how hard he had to squeeze the serf out of himself, gave me a glimmer of recognition. If I hadn\u2019t put in that same work, I wouldn\u2019t be a few months away from a Master\u2019s degree\u2014but now, again, between me and my data, there has arisen that familiar obstacle, that pride, which I must wrangle and subjugate if I\u2019m to get anything useful out here in the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cYou said you\u2019re some kind of truck driver?\u201d he wants to know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cPeople move,\u201d I say. \u201cThey don\u2019t want to drive their own cars\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d I shrug. \u201cThey\u2019re rich. They want to fly or something. They hire me to drive their cars from A to B.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cWhat\u2019s the nicest car you ever drove?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cWell.\u201d I think about it. An expanded edition of my backstory springs extemporaneously to mind. \u201cI used to drive armored cars,\u201d I tell him. \u201cYou know. From bank to bank. To get the cash and jewels and stuff from A to B. And before that, I was in the army. I drove all kinds of stuff. Tanks and Humvees. Even helicopters.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">He looks at me with newfound respect, his suspicions temporarily suspended. \u201cNo shit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cNo shit,\u201d I agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cMy old man was in the army.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cOh yeah?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cWas.\u201d He kicks a pebble. His eyes skitter with it off into the shadows. \u201cAn IUD got him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cSay what?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cPipe bomb. Afghanistan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cOh.\u201d My eyes flop around on the ground like two happy dogs, my face down and away so he won\u2019t see how hard I\u2019m working to keep a straight face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cYou on a secret mission or something?\u201d he wants to know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Enigmatic silence seems the best course of action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cWhatever.\u201d He says it like he cares, but not that much. \u201cI get it. You got to keep things classified. I understand.\u201d He chews on his lip for a while. Then, suddenly, as if the question has been brewing in him, and he can\u2019t contain it anymore, \u201cYou\u2019re after whoever\u2019s been taking our churches, aren\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Real slow, in a way that could, if plausible deniability becomes important, be just me getting sleepy, I roll my head up and down in a nod.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cHell yeah!\u201d He slams a fist into his palm. \u201cWe\u2019re going to get the bastards, aren\u2019t we!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">My enigmatic silence does the talking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">He sits forward, elbows on his knees. \u201cSo? What do you all got on them?\u201d When I don\u2019t show any sign of having heard, he mutters, \u201cOkay. Okay. Classified.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Honestly, I\u2019m starting to enjoy myself\u2014though such entertainment is not what I\u2019ve come for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cLook,\u201d he says, \u201cI don\u2019t want to get you in trouble or nothing, but just tell me one thing, would you?\u201d He leans back with folded arms, his body an echo of my own, gazing lazily out at a clump of trees, his lips barely moving, I guess in case someone\u2019s watching. \u201cJust one thing, okay, and I\u2019ll quit asking.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">My silence pulls him like a current.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cHave you seen one disappear?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">That my persona\u2019s uninclined to answer is a mercy. It would sting to have to say out loud that all my efforts\u2014all the tedious drives from empty lot to empty lot, all the hours spent squinting through orange tape and barricades at ragged foundations and basements abruptly and unceremoniously exposed, like cavities from which great molars have been pulled, not to mention all the interviews with former congregants whose houses of worship have mysteriously gone missing, seemingly plucked off the face of the earth in what has all the trappings of a rapture, except that this one takes up only glass and wood and steel, wires, plumbing, air ducts, asbestos, and fluorescent tubing, not souls\u2014has come to nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Of course, it also stings to be reminded of this fact, whether or not it\u2019s said aloud. And it stings still worse to know that even if my fieldwork goes without a hitch, I still won\u2019t have answered the one question pressing on everyone\u2019s mind. As much as I would like to be the first to furnish, if not a reliable eyewitness account of a disappearance, then at least a CCTV recording\u2014in every known instance, the cameras have failed\u2014I am constrained. If I were an aspiring journalist, or particle physicist, or theologian, then I\u2019d have standing to pursue those questions\u2014the who, the what, the how, the why\u2014but the imprimatur of a sociology department, it seems, requires the production of appropriately sociological knowledge. The question I\u2019ve set out to answer in my thesis is straightforward, well within the bounds of the knowable, though not, perhaps, within the bounds of what\u2019s worth knowing, but that\u2019s of little concern to my committee, who are eager, one and all, for me to demonstrate that these peculiar happenings correlate either with a net increase in religiosity across the American South, or with a net decrease, or perhaps with no discernible change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The silver lining, if there is one, is that I\u2019ve been freed to employ my own methods. My advisor\u2014my second advisor, that is: my disputes with the first one could not be resolved\u2014even helped me put together a justification for the ethics committee, riddled with formal assertions of \u201cminimal risk\u201d and allusions to the suspicion and hostility with which smalltown Americans, as a rule, regard outsiders, especially those who come wielding recording devices, so that I might be cleared to run my interviews as I saw fit: that is, from undercover. He grew up on the outskirts of Hendersonville, paddling in a shallow sea of Everetts. He understands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cIt\u2019s the Taliban,\u201d blurts out Everett, ruining my enigmatic silence, which has lapsed into a meditative, vaguely anxious one. \u201cAin\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cHuh?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cI\u2019ve been working on it, too,\u201d he says conspiratorially. \u201cI\u2019ve worked it all out. Just from thinking. It\u2019s kind of fishy, ain\u2019t it, how we go and pull all our troops out of Afghanistan, and then, just like that, everyone up and forgets about it? The Taliban, I mean. They\u2019re still out there.\u201d &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cCome on.\u201d I can\u2019t help myself. I\u2019m grinning now. \u201cYou don\u2019t really think it\u2019s the Taliban.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cWhy not?\u201d He stares back defiantly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cYou don\u2019t really think they\u2019re taking churches.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cMy old man always used to say that was our big problem. How we underestimate them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cHow\u2019s it supposed to work, exactly?\u201d I press him. \u201cHow\u2019s the Taliban going to steal a whole church? From inside America?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cWhy\u2019re you asking me?\u201d he demands. \u201cAin\u2019t that your job? Hell, how should I know? Maybe they\u2019re working with extraterrestrials.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cMaybe,\u201d I agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">He jerks his head up. \u201cYou better quit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cQuit what?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cQuit mocking.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cI\u2019m not mocking,\u201d I say. \u201cI\u2019m just saying, maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cYeah,\u201d he says, his voice a long, coarse rope of resignation, drawn through hands until they burn, \u201cyou\u2019re mocking me, all right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">His indignation raises gooseflesh up and down my arms. There\u2019s real pain between us now, black and deep as oil, and as flammable as oil, too. I want to tell him that I\u2019m not the one who made him stupid. I want to tell him that his old man\u2019s death was just collateral in an endless war his old man\u2019s people voted for. I want to tell him that maybe now, with all their churches disappearing, him and his neighbors will finally have to stand up on their own feet\u2014maybe that\u2019s what all of this is all about\u2014and most of them will not be able, or else they\u2019d be already standing. But those things fall under the heading \u201cunduly influencing the subject,\u201d which I, and my advisor, and the ethics committee unanimously agreed must be avoided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cI was just thinking,\u201d he mumbles, \u201cmaybe I could help you. I got ideas, you know. No one ever wants to listen, but I got ideas. But I guess you don\u2019t need me, do you. I guess you\u2019re just like everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">\u201cYou don\u2019t know a damn thing,\u201d I say. \u201cYou\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Then I guillotine my words. Everett\u2019s hunched forward, drooping, his head in his hands, a pulse in his temples, his fingers in his hair, making it stick up like antennas. He wants to hurt me. I can tell. He wants to leap up from his chair and tackle me. Only his fear of the unknown is stopping him. He wants to spit out something worse than any insult ever said by any man to any other man. He\u2019s just short on imagination, that\u2019s all\u2014and he doesn\u2019t realize he\u2019s already said the worst thing anyone could say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Get it together, I tell myself, looking away, down the road, where a cool breeze is rattling brittle leaves\u2014or maybe it\u2019s guys in turbans creeping around beneath the trees. Shake it off. Let it go. Breathe. Remember why you\u2019re here. This kid is nothing. Just data. Numbers, splotches on a graph, curving lines. Even the data\u2019s nothing. Just raw material. Even the thesis is nothing. Just a steppingstone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Then the sound of Everett sucking in his breath works like a string, tugging my head in his direction, and his gaze works like a second string, whipping me all the way around until I\u2019m facing toward the church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">The church is gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">There\u2019s nothing in this that I haven\u2019t seen before: no flash of light, no rush of sound, no ominous presence preceding the absence, no telltale prickle in the air. Just a big patch of bare dirt, probably rife with acrid acids, lined with cracked foundation stones. The night is still, the moon indifferent, the trees alert but undisturbed\u2014and yet, the immediacy of this happening, the fact that I was there for the before, not just the after, does something ghastly to my lungs, something which Everett, thankfully, is in no condition to notice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">He\u2019s staring at the emptiness, horror crawling up over his face like a raw slice of moon up a treacherous sky\u2014his wretched face, slack-jawed and goggle-eyed, no longer much like modern art, more like something out of Van Eyck or Bosch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">Up from the depths of me rises an impulse: to ask him, then and there, with all of this still fresh and beating like a heart torn from a breast\u2014because it\u2019s what I\u2019m here for, isn\u2019t it, what I\u2019m here to do\u2014\u201cAre you now experiencing a decrease in religious feeling, or an increase, or no change at all?\u201d It\u2019s only the uncanny rattle of my own perverse jargon, tumbling loose inside my skull, that calls me back to reality, reminds me that the chance to know what\u2019s in his heart has come and gone, whereas what\u2019s painted on his face, for any fool to see\u2014not just the existential dread, but more significantly, the specific horror of having blinked, of having let a pettiness rise up and swallow him while something precious slips away\u2014is no different, really, than what\u2019s painted on my own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">__________<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\"><strong>Itto and Mekiya Outini<\/strong> write about America, Morocco, and all those caught in between. They\u2019ve published fiction and nonfiction in <em>The North American Review<\/em>, <em>Modern Literature<\/em>, <em>Fourth Genre<\/em>, <em>The Good River Review<\/em>, <em>MQR<\/em>, <em>Southland Alibi<\/em>, <em>Chautauqua<\/em>, <em>The Stonecoast Review<\/em>, <em>Mount Hope<\/em>, <em>Hidden Peak Review<\/em>,<em> Jewish Life<\/em>, <em>The Brussels Review<\/em>, <em>Eunoia Review<\/em>, <em>New Contrast<\/em>, <em>DarkWinter<\/em>, <em>Lotus-Eater<\/em>, <em>Gargoyle<\/em>, and elsewhere. Their work has received support from the MacDowell Foundation, the Steinbeck Fellowship Program, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, and the Fulbright Program. They\u2019re collaborating on several books and running The DateKeepers, an author support platform. They hold an MA and an MFA, respectively, from the University of Arkansas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>__________<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignleft size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"438\" height=\"211\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/01\/boudin-logo-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-15484\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/01\/boudin-logo-1.jpg 438w, https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2024\/01\/boudin-logo-1-300x145.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 438px) 100vw, 438px\" \/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-large-font-size\">&lt;&lt; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/letter-from-the-guest-editor-17\/\">Back<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/the-box-on-west-129th-street\/\">Next<\/a> &gt;&gt;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size\">To learn more about submitting your work to <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/boudin-submissions\/\">Boudin<\/a><\/em> or applying to McNeese State University&#8217;s Creative Writing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/mfa-application-submissions\/\">MFA program<\/a>, please visit Submissions for details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Field Notes Itto &amp; Mekiya Outini __________ \u201cI don\u2019t think you is who you says you is,\u201d is the first thing Everett says to me, his eyes like shards from broken bottles scattered under streetlamps, only there are no streetlamps here, just a sickly half-moon rising from a knot of trees. Signing up for this&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[241],"tags":[75,146,26],"class_list":["post-21064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boodin-the-ticking-clock-oct-25","tag-boudin","tag-fiction-2","tag-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21064","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=21064"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21223,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21064\/revisions\/21223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcneese.edu\/thereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}