Orion March / April 2017

THERE IS, of late, much talk of walls in America. Sometimes the talk is literally about concrete, while other times it hews closer to metaphor. But whatever form this talk takes, the job of a wall is always the same: to divide people, places, and ideas into two. Those that are welcome and those that are not; those that belong and those that don’t; those that are good and those that are bad The problems with this line of thinking are numerous. Take, for example, the 654 miles of fencing that already exist along the US-Mexico border, a place that is home to some of the most amazing ecosystems in North America, including the sky islands of New Mexico and Arizona and the El Pinacatey Gran Desierto de Altar of…

Jesse Chehak is an American photographer, artist, and educator. His photographs are inquisitive encounters with places, communities, and circumstances. Laura Didyk is Orion’s production manager. She has been a writing fellow at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, and is a newly established illustrator. Patrick Dougherty is an artist who uses tree saplings as construction material. He has received numerous awards, including the 2011 Factor Prize for Southern Art. Sierra Golden has her MFA in poetry from NCSU. Winner of the 2015 Rane Arroyo Chapbook Prize, Golden calls Washington State home and has also worked as a commercial fisherman in Alaska. Kimiko Hahn’s most recent poetry collections are Brain Fever and Toxic Flora. She teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation Program, Queens College/CUNY. Simen Johan is a…

Sometimes, like this time, I start reading Orion from the back of the magazine forward. Brian Doyle’s Coda piece “Their Irrepressible Innocence” (November/December 2016) reminded me immediately why I cannot do without Orion magazine, especially now. Thank you. KATHLEEN WEBB Chardon, Ohio As an educator and birder, I deeply appreciate the message in Christopher Norment’s article “A Case for Wonder” (November/December 2016). I agree with Norment that mother birds will not likely abandon their young if touched by a human. However, there are other potential dangers to drawing too much attention to a nest. While attending a workshop one spring, a wren’s nest that was found on the side of a shed drew the attention of many attendees. Nearby a crow became curious about the human focus on the shed.…

45° The angle at which the heads of commuters on the 8:16 morning train are locked while swiping their phones to make fragments of text and digital candy disappear, lest the things on their screens grow long and nourishing like daydreams of fresh baguettes and weekend meanders outside the city, up to the mountain headwaters, that central source. 65° The angle at which other heads of commuters on the 8:16 morning train are positioned in their search for other eyes — watery and reddened perhaps from fussy babies or a hard night out, or restless and darting from imagining worst-case scenarios in some future job interview. The eyes tack into the storm of faces, seeking stories and solace in this gorgeous, desperate city, even if only for an instant —…

ON A BRIGHT EVENING in Crested Butte, Colorado, its namesake landform towering three thousand feet overhead, two dudes — and dudes is without a doubt the correct appellation — parked their trucks between the local baseball field and a flat green meadow, which they referred to as “the LZ,” or landing zone. Bo Thompson, a plumber in flip-flops and board shorts, ate a hotdog, then smoked a cigarette. Ben Eaton, a blacksmith with a greasy foam cap and gray-flecked sideburns, turned lazy circles, inspecting distant cumulus clouds. The duo possessed a combined thirty-eight years of paragliding experience. Over the last couple of months they had flown fifty times together, most recently that very morning. “Twice in a day is good,” Bo said. “Keeps me from drinking at night.” “It only…

AFTER WE FINISH building the stone wall, Ray says, after rain washes off dust and dirt, he’ll pour buttermilk over the rocks. I look up from the toaster-oven-size rock I’m about to lift (or that I think I’m about to lift). Ray explains that buttermilk will encourage the growth of moss. I blink sweat from my eyes. The wall, flanking his gravel driveway, will eventually stretch forty-two feet, rise three, and bulk out four. That’s a supertanker of buttermilk. But I say nothing I’m a summertime resident lending a hand to my New Hampshire neighbor. All I know about stone walls is that they are as much a part of New England’s expressiveness as maple syrup and small-town Fourth of July parades. I learn that if you linked all the…