August 27, 2015
Jamestown Rediscovery
by Kristina Marie Darling and John Gallaher
About Kristina Marie Darling
Kristina Marie Darling is the author of over twenty collections of poetry and hybrid prose. Her awards include fellowships from Yaddo, the Ucross Foundation, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the American Academy in Rome, as well as grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Kittredge Fund, the Ora Lerman Trust, and the Rockefeller Foundation Archive Center. She is currently working toward both a Ph.D. in English Literature at S.U.N.Y.-Buffalo and an M.F.A. in Poetry at New York University.
About John Gallaher
John Gallaher is the author of five books of poetry, including Your Father on the Train of Ghosts (with G.C. Waldrep, 2011), and In a Landscape (2014), as well as two chapbooks, and two edited collections, The Monkey and the Wrench (with Mary Biddinger) and Time Is a Toy: the Selected Poems of Michael Benedikt (with Laura Boss). His poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, Poetry, Boston Review, Chicago Review, and elsewhere.
It wasn't until after we signed the agreement that I realized my role was entirely unclear. I didn't panic, though, until you started needing me to do things. For instance, the seemingly endless paperwork you refused to fill out yourself. And the uniform I had to buy. I have no business in a pinstriped skirt. More importantly, why am I the one who has to carry the revolver?
I felt as though I'd walked into the wrong house, and fallen asleep in a strange bed. Now when the phone rings, there's no one on the other end, only snow and that faint music. The same police car circles the cul-de-sac, always at midnight, pausing for a moment outside the iron gates.
You should know by now that I wouldn't take any of it back. But what did you mean by "actuarial"? What did you mean by "legally bound"?