Building Fires in the Snow Read online

  Praise for Building Fires in the Snow

  Not so long ago an anthology of LGBTQ writing by Alaskans and speaking to the Alaska experience might have seemed beyond imagining. But in Building Fires in the Snow, Lucian Childs and Martha Amore have built a collection both extraordinary and ordinary. Extraordinary for its breadth and quality of the poetry and prose. Ordinary in the aesthetic that pervades the collection, people living their lives in emotionally honest and complex ways. There’s something for every reader in Building Fires in the Snow, a book to keep near at hand and to digest slowly and enjoy.

  Frank Soos, professor Emeritus of English at University of Alaska Fairbanks

  The first story of this fine anthology, “Luke,” is as local and Alaskan as a story can be. Here’s what it feels like to be a fisherman, and what it feels like to miss another man. Geology, another story, is a beautiful meditation on a woman’s desire and obligation, remorse and momentum and long love, against a backdrop of longer time. These are subtle, artful reflections that will place you, for a moment, in Alaska and deeper wildernesses as well. Essential reading if you want to know Alaska.

  David Vann, winner of 2010 Prix Medicis Etranger and author of Legend of a Suicide, Goat Mountain, and Caribou Island

  A compelling anthology dwells in possibility. And this first effort to yoke together voices—of those that may or may not be Alaskan, LGBTQ, or even writers—offer solidarity of a kind. A possibility for this book may be that the voices that are not included in this collection—the voices, for instance, of Alaska’s many indigenous LGBTQ poets, storytellers, and thinkers raised in the context of our identities as Native people marginalized and made invisible in our homelands—may find the courage in times to come to have their word similarly collected and championed.

  Joan Naviyuk Kane, winner of the 2009 Whiting Award, the 2014 American Book Award, and author of Hyperboreal and The Cormorant Hunter’s Wife

  Richly diverse and honest, there’s much to like in this rewarding collection of poems and stories of lived experience.

  Ronald Spatz, editor, Alaska Quarterly Review

  The Alaska writing cliché of the rugged white hetero male battling the wilderness is dead, and as it turns out its corpse makes a fine hummus, and good fertilizer, for what comes next. What comes next, I think, is Building Fires in the Snow, a book that, like nature itself, prizes diversity, and is full of stories of the urban and the rural, the domestic and the wild, the human—in its many flavors—and the animal, and all of it told on the vast, varied and glorious stage that is Alaska. This is just the kind of vision we need to start a new conversation about wilderness, what it means to be human, and how we can lead authentic lives in an increasingly inauthentic world.

  David Gessner, author of All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner and the American West

  Like Alaska itself, Building Fires in the Snow defies easy pigeonholing. Whatever you might expect, this collection of LGBTQ short fiction and poetry will surprise, which is reason enough to add it to your library. Eclectic, original, and thought-provoking, it makes a unique and important contribution to Alaska’s literary landscape.

  Deb Vanasse, author of Cold Spell and Wealth Woman

  The poetry and fiction of Building Fires in the Snow stakes a queer claim, not necessarily to the untamable terrain of Alaska itself, but certainly to its unfolding story. These writers bear witness to long winters, frozen country, hard hearts, a rugged history, deep passion, quiet moments, a past brought to light, and a future not allowed to be exclusionary. Building Fires in the Snow is a beautiful, diverse, and much-needed map of uncharted territory: LGBTQ life in our wildest of states.

  Bryan Borland, author of DIG & founding editor of Assaracus: A Journal of Gay Poetry

  BUILDING FIRES IN THE SNOW

  a collection of alaska LGBTQ short fiction and poetry

  martha amore

  lucian childs

  editors

  University of Alaska Press

  Fairbanks

  © 2016 Univeristy of Alaska Press

  All rights reserved

  University of Alaska Press

  P.O. Box 756240

  Fairbanks, AK 99775-6240

  Cover and interior design by UA Press

  Cover art © Indra Arriaga. Duque y el Anturio

  Oil and Organics on Linen (in color)

  24” x 18” www.artbyindra.com

  Indra Arriaga is a Mexican artist, writer, and researcher. She actively exhibits and collaborates on art projects internationally and throughout the U.S. In addition to her work in the visual arts, Arriaga is a research analyst working on social, cultural and economic sectors statewide and internationally. Her freelance writing work includes critiques of film and other cultural aspects and events.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Amore, Martha, editor. | Childs, Lucian, editor.

  Title: Building fires in the snow : a collection of Alaska LGBTQ short fiction and poetry / edited by Martha Amore, Lucian Childs.

  Description: Fairbanks, Alaska : University of Alaska Press, 2016. | Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016019881 (print) | LCCN 2016006533 (ebook) | ISBN 9781602233027 () | ISBN 9781602233010 (paperback)

  Subjects: LCSH: Sexual minorities’ writings, American. | Sexual minorities--Alaska--Literary collections. | American literature--Alaska. | Alaska--Literary collections. | BISAC: LITERARY CRITICISM / General. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gay Studies.

  Classification: LCC PS508.S49 (print) | LCC PS508.S49 B85 2016 (ebook) | DDC 811/.6058092066--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019881

  This publication was printed on acid-free paper that meets the minimum requirements for ANSI / NISO Z39.48–1992 (R2002) (Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials)

  Winter Country

  We resist each other with words, or wordlessly

  avert our eyes when tenderness

  is too much to bear the wanting

  heart to be only muscle. As if

  this were a question of strength,

  the answer of your eyes, and language,

  one wing flying into itself, some bird we drive up

  that feigns to draw us away from its nest.

  Better the argument of axe and wood,

  the rush of the stove, your face

  barbarous in firelight. Always

  the same stranger struggling from

  your clothes, your eyes no longer

  fists but hands. So many nights of gauge

  and grapple, this hesitance to go

  beyond our bodies. Outside the wind

  bearing what it can’t contain, erasure,

  the rain shifting to snow. Better the white

  at the windows, the space we enter

  between words, this winter

  country we’ve come to, settling

  for the closeness we can.

  —Jerah Chadwick

  Table of Contents

  JERAH CHADWICK

  Winter Country

  Introduction

  ROSEMARY MCGUIRE

  Luke

  ELIZABETH BRADFIELD

  Eight Years

  Legacy

  Roughnecks and Rakes One and All, the Poet Speaks to Her Subjects, Polar Explorers

  Correcting the Landscape

  Creation Myth: Periosteum and Self

  Remodeling

  Concerning the Proper Term for a Whale Exha
ling

  We All Want to See a Mammal

  August, McCarthy, Alaska

  MARTHA AMORE

  Geology

  SUSANNA J. MISHLER

  Anniversary at the Evening Cafe

  Poem That Begins in Address to Nikola Tesla and Ends Up Offshore

  Hemispheres

  Tired, I Lie Down in the Parking Garage

  Eve of the Apocalypse

  LUCIAN CHILDS

  The Go-Between

  Black Spruce

  AMBER FLORA THOMAS

  Marlboros at Dusk

  Aubade

  A Woman’s Jewelry

  Hotel Reverie

  Lake Shore Deer

  Come in from the Sky

  In the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

  Era of a Happy Heart

  Here

  ALYSE KNORR

  Fact-Checking

  Anchorage Epithalamium

  Moose are over-running the park and this makes me think of love

  The Object Towards Which the Action of the Sea Is Directed

  The Sleeping Lady

  Conservation & Rehabilitation

  TERESA SUNDMARK

  Worse Disasters

  Trespass

  INDRA ARRIAGA

  Fragments

  Pedazos

  In the Bay

  En la Bahía

  There was a time, she said

  Hubo un tiempo, ella dijo

  19 Crescent

  19 Crescent

  EGAN MILLARD

  Mondegreen

  Agni

  Koimesis

  Vacation

  ZACK ROGOW

  The Voice of Art Nouveau

  M.C. MOHAGANI MAGNETEK

  Creep

  Shhhh-Be-Quiet

  SHELBY WILSON

  Misread Signs

  Fireweed

  LESLIE KIMIKO WARD

  Nest

  AMY GROSHEK

  What Goes Around Comes Over

  The capacity for true love expires at age 25

  Rubia Writes a Poem About Light for a Contest

  Dinner at Her Place

  Pearly Everlasting

  GABRIELLE BARNETT

  Mountain Man

  TEEKA A. BALLAS

  Carrots, Peas: in D minor

  Cupid’s Arrow

  SANDY GILLESPIE

  The Trees Tell the Story

  MORGAN GREY

  Breakers

  LAURA CARPENTER

  Mirror, Mirror

  KATE PARTRIDGE

  Model

  Earthquake Park

  M 4.0, 21 km S of Knik-Fairview

  DAWNELL SMITH

  What Would Derby Do?

  VIVIAN FAITH PRESCOTT

  The Minister’s Wife

  Tales in Fairyland

  Can I touch your Chinese Hair?

  Before the World of Men and Boys, There Was the Land of Girls

  JERAH CHADWICK

  Cold Comforts

  Legacy

  Returnings

  Lesson of Bread

  A Sense of Direction

  Stove

  The Life to Come

  MEI MEI EVANS

  Going Too Far

  Works Consulted

  Introduction

  Modern Alaska life exists in the tension between what we call the Great Land—majestic beauty and vast wilderness teeming with wildlife where people still live off the land—and the everyday goings-on of its mostly urban people: trips to the supermarket, dinners with friends, and children’s play dates. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, Queer, and Questioning Alaskans are just as affected by this dichotomy as our heterosexual neighbors. As harried as we all frequently are, we live surrounded by wilderness, which exerts a mighty influence on our lives. We dipnet for Kenai River reds late on a sun-filled summer night; we eat moose burgers and wild blueberry cobbler after a long hike; we argue with a lover out on the deck, Denali’s enormous, calming presence looming in the distance.

  What marks the particular concerns of Alaska LGBTQ fiction writers and poets—and which ties them to earlier generations of gay writers—is the quest for an authentic identity. For gay writers of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, this quest often came in the form of the first-person, coming-out story, gay literature’s spin on the coming-of-age tale. As Edmund White noted in his introduction to The Faber Book of Gay Short Fiction, “Since no one is brought up to be gay, the moment he recognizes the difference he must account for it. . . . Every gay man has polished his story through repetition, and much of gay fiction is a version of this first tale.”

  Queer identity, and the burgeoning gay culture it engendered, was inextricably tied then to the fast-paced urban centers, like New York and San Francisco, where LGBTQ people congregated. Gay literature of that era followed that trend, chronicling the travails of queer urban people as they sought the freedoms so long denied them.

  However, another literary trend had begun in the ’70s: Political and theory-based writing by women flourished. There were lesbian feminists, such as Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich, critiquing the dominant white male heteronormative paradigm, and also eco-feminists, such as Mary Daly and Susan Griffin, who paralleled women and nature, arguing that the exploitation of the earth by Western patriarchal society was inherently connected to the repression and exploitation of women.

  Likewise, among some gay men of the ’70s, there took root a “back to nature” philosophy. Harry Hay and his followers, the Radical Fairies, popularized this theory, seeking to rid themselves of internalized homophobia and to transform gay consciousness through a spirituality grounded in hedonistic environmentalism. Gay rural journals and anthologies circulated, as writers began to venture outside the traditional queer space: the urban center. The gay and lesbian literary communities, though distinct then from one another, both contained elements of protest against heterosexist repression and the exploitation of the earth.

  The stories and poems in this book span this radical ecoqueer tradition with the more mainstream identity concerns of earlier gay fiction. As such, the works in the collection are mostly urban: there are gay bars, garden parties, and roller derby. But the characters and poetic voices here are just as likely to be found hiking the back-country, or biking along the inlet in one of Anchorage’s immense urban parks.

  And, while many of those earlier gay narratives are expressed through the coming-out theme, the stories and poems here reflect a more varied, less polemical, understanding of what it means to be queer. People still fall in lust or love, but they do so less as sexual identity warriors, than as frequently befuddled individuals confronted by a multiplicity of concerns: childrearing, aging, putting food on the table or a roof over one’s head. As such, LGBTQ literature is in a time of transition, and writers are more free than before to express any facet of the human condition.

  Other LGBTQ anthologies have offered a historical literary perspective on the struggles of the community, such as Manguel and Stephenson’s In Another Part of the Forest and Kleinberg’s The Other Persuasion. Still others have highlighted particular gay communities, such as Ruff’s Go the Way Your Blood Beats, which focuses on queer African American lives, or Williams’s G.R.I.T.S., where queer womyn’s voices from the American South take center stage. Building Fires in the Snow is the first regional collection in which wilderness is the lens through which gay, primarily urban, identity is perceived.

  Rugged nature has long been thought to be the domain of white heterosexual men who pit themselves against it, and each other, in order to prove their (hetero) manhood. The stories and poems in Building Fires in the Snow tell a different narrative—not of conquering, but of finding one’s true identity through intimacy with nature.

  The men in Jerah Chadwick’s poems are not conquerors, nor are they proving their masculinity by living in rural Alaska. Rather, they struggle to find themselves by stoking a potbellied stove or packing provisions through the snow, by grappling with themselves and
the body of a beloved.

  A similar dynamic flows through Teeka Ballas’s “Carrots, Peas: in D Minor,” in which the narrator watches her lover cook ptarmigan while musing on their lifestyle of hunting, fishing, and harvesting vegetables. Sandy Gillespie’s “The Trees Tell the Story” depicts friends converging to log the woods around their home, not to dominate the landscape, but to build a lovers’ cabin. In “Mountain Man,” Gabrielle Barnett writes of a “fading southern queen” who, in true Radical Fairy fashion, strives to keep the dream of homesteading alive. In the anthology’s concluding novella, “Going Too Far,” Mei Mei Evans depicts the wilderness, not as harsh and menacing, but rather as a sort of Shangri-la, where women are free to be independent and where the young protagonist can discover herself.

  In the collection’s stories and poems, the characters look to the Alaska wilderness for inspiration, comfort, and even models of harmonious action. In Martha Amore’s “Geology,” a woman struggling with her sexuality finds solace in her deep understanding of the long Alaska winter. Laura Carpenter’s protagonist escapes the responsibilities of motherhood by speeding through the forest on her skis while recalling her former self: the unencumbered young athlete who got all the girls. Even as urban a character as Lucian Childs’s protagonist in “The Go-Between” finds meaning in the invasion of wild arctic plants in a friend’s city garden.

  Alaska LGBTQ lives exist in the context of communities of shared interests and values, which are for some shaped by nature. In Elizabeth Bradfield’s “Remodeling,” a lesbian couple braves the opprobrium of their neighbors for the openness the spruce-shaded light brings through a new window. In Leslie Kimiko Ward’s “Nest,” two roommates, one gay, one straight, come to an accommodation through the trials of Northern domestic life. Dawnell Smith’s “What Would Derby Do?” tracks a troubled relationship marked by one partner “walking the lower slopes of the Chugach Range alone.”

  History, too, is foundational in the building of community. And while most of the work in this anthology is set in the current day, a few, like Mei Mei Evans’s “Going Too Far” and Lucian Childs’s “The Go-Between,” chart the anything-goes oil boom of the 1970s when Alaska’s population exploded.