ISSUE 41
November 2008

Chad Prevost


THE CORTLAND REVIEW

INTERVIEW
Ross Gay
 

POETRY
C. Wade Bentley This marks an author's first online publication
Bonnie Bolling
Gabriel DeCrease
Pamela Hart
Roger Jones
Robert Lesman This marks an author's first online publication
James B. Nicola
Chad Prevost
Mark Prudowsky
Cassandra Robison
Michael Shorb
Avery Slater This marks an author's first online publication
Josh Stewart
Elisabeth von Uhl This marks an author's first online publication
Muriel Harris
     Weinstein
This marks an author's first online publication
 

FICTION
Paul Blaney This marks an author's first online publication
Neil Grimmett
 

BOOK REVIEWS
David Rigsbee
reviews All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems by Linda Gregg

David Rigsbee

reviews Heat Lightning: New and Selected Poems 1986—2006 by Judith Skillman

 

Chad Prevost is author of two full-length collection of poems, A Walking Cliche Coins a Phrase (forthcoming, Plain View, 2008), and Snapshots of the Perishing World (WordTech/Cherry Grove, 2006), and a chapbook of prose poems, Chasing the Gods (Puddinghouse Press, 2007). He is Editor and Co-Founder of C&R Press, and has been a contributing editor to Chattahoochee Review since 2004.

The Map Readers of America    


just want to know where they're headed,
and all the fierce and uncommon terrain that spreads  
so unevenly on the page. Map-readers
know things about distance:
like how many exit numbers equals
how many more miles to a state's end,
or which off-roads are dead-ends.
A map-reader knows the short cut
from Telluride to Silverton.
They have their inside jokes about
place names: Intercourse, Pennsylvania,
Climax, Bucksnort or Nameless.
Map-readers just want to be
in the driver's seat. They aren't looking
for ancient worlds. Most just want the latest
satellite photos, the current year's atlas
and GPS coordinates. They're just folks
with a love for seeing symbolic logic,
who want to discover the world on their own.
Their one wish is to be at home
within the blue highways of their own veins;
wishing life could keep on morphing
into more mountains. They know
they won't go to all the places they've charted,
but still you can find them scanning through
the margins of state and county
trivia, staring at red interstates, highlighting
forest roads and jeep trails, wondering
what it would be like to live in any other place.






 

 

Chad Prevost: Poetry
Copyright ©2008 The Cortland Review Issue 41The Cortland Review