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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
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      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
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      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
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      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
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Denise Duhamel & Julie Marie Wade

50 States

Delaware

Picture

The state bird is the blue hen chicken.  The state flower is the peach blossom.  The state beverage is milk, which builds strong teeth and bones.  When I learned Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution, it all made sense.  “If I were a state, Miss Campbell, I’d be Delaware,” I declared.  My first-grade teacher was very literal, no fan of the subjunctive at all.  “But you’re a little girl,” she said, “and little girls cannot be states.”  Still, I wrote a valentine to Delaware, with a scraggly chicken and a frilly flower.  I drew a milk carton with my own face sketched on the side.  What was missing from Delaware was me—a fellow eager beaver, wholesome and colorful and always first in line!  One spring when I was grown, my beloved and I drove due east to Rehoboth Beach.  We read on a sign: This sandy hamlet has one of the most bustling gay beach communities in all the United States.  “Another reason to like Delaware,” I smiled. A few years later, we went back again to roam the grounds of St. Andrews School in Middletown where they filmed Dead Poets Society.  That’s when the email came, so serendipitous I feared no one would believe: Congratulations!  Red Hen Press will be publishing your collection of poems!  (And what was a red hen but a blue hen chicken dressed up for Valentine’s Day?)  For my bio, I submitted this: Poet lives and writes on the Delaware seashore. 
 


Montana

Picture

My father was born in Butte and moved with his parents to Billings soon after.  He was a cheerful blond boy with cowlicks and overalls, bright white teeth and an impish grin.  An uncanny look-alike to TV’s “Dennis the Menace,” he answered to “Billy from Billings,” the son of John, a good-natured traveling salesman and his devoted wife June, brother to a tow-headed sister named Linda. Idyllic as a sitcom family themselves, the Wades lived in Montana till Bill was eleven years old.  Once, I had to interview my father for a class project about origins.  He explained that while he came to love the West Coast, he never forgot his beginnings in Big Sky Country.  “We played Cowboys and Indians all day in the summertime, climbing in the cottonwood trees.  In winter, it snowed and snowed, but we were always warm.  We had heavy coats lined with goose down.  Even when temperatures dropped below zero, we never wanted to come inside.”  I asked if he ever went back to the Treasure State, even for a visit, and my father shook his head.  “Someday,” he said.  “We’ll go together, you and me and Mom.”  Then, I watched a shadow fall across his face.  “But the thing about going back—it’s harder than you think.”  Why is that, Dad?  “All the cottonwoods will be smaller.  Memory makes everything so grand.”


Nevada

Picture

On the paper was written the name of the state about which we would do our oral presentations.  I plucked out Nevada, which I pronounced with the stress on the wrong syllable.  Coupled with my Rhode Island accent, my propensity to add extra R’s, I said “Never-da” until my teacher corrected me.  I went to the library where I learned about the desert and cactus, the Hoover dam.  I learned about legalized gambling and a neon cowboy who tipped his neon hat on the Las Vegas strip.  Nevada was the only state at the time where gambling was legal.  Gamblers often got free steaks at casinos.  I told the class about my exciting findings, about roulette wheels and crap tables and slot machines.  And there’s one other thing that’s only legal in Nevada, I said, something called “prostitution.”  I pronounced the first syllable with a long “o,” like prose.  Still, my teacher knew what I meant and told me to wrap it up.  “What’s prose-it-too-shun?“ Linda asked.  “That’s when a man pays a lady to kiss her!” Brian said.  “It is not!” I protested, though I had neglected to look up the meaning of the word.  Everyone started to laugh, except my teacher and me.  Linda left high school her senior year and moved out to Nevada to study nursing.  She married a compulsive gambler in a drive-through wedding chapel in Las Vegas.  She lived in a subdivision right outside Sin City and patched up prostitutes who often found themselves in the ER. 






--
Denise Duhamel’s most recent book of poetry is Scald (Pittsburgh, 2017). She is a is a Distinguished University Professor at Florida International University in Miami.

Julie Marie Wade is an associate professor of creative writing at Florida International University. Her most recent collections are Same-Sexy Marriage: A Novella in Poems and The Unrhymables: Collaborations in Prose, co-authored with Denise Duhamel.

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  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
    • Masthead
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    • Submit Here
  • Features
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  • Previous Issues
  • Blog
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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022