Poetry / Carolyn Guinzio
:: from The Field ::
we took a drive south to escape game traffic to put distance between ourselves and other people from where we stood together in the field that morning we could see through the trees which were losing their leaves on the hills all the way to the new highway though by then we had stopped calling it new it was covered with lines of cars heading north so we got on the old highway and went south into the mountains where the future is concealed there was a heavy fog we could not make out the fire tower the shapes that were on the shoulders or the trees somehow we did not feel that we had saved ourselves from anything we were driving into an abyss the children were in the back holding stuffed animals they would later bury under the field we talked quietly in the front about what someone had told us the day before about being on his way home from work when he saw an ambulance speeding toward his house he feared for its inhabitants he began to imagine terrifying possibilities then his partner chimed in to say it could not have been their house because everyone who lived there was strong the ambulance must have been called to a weaker address history had clearly taught us different lessons is any given house the only right one we looked out the windows at deserted tourist spots clusters of densely shrouded roadside cabins with views of the river deep in the valley below the eroded and opaque hills the cafes and cabins were lively before the highway became the old highway a treacherous road against which strength had little value it swallowed the distraught distracted exhausted intoxicated the deserters and loyal local wanderers alike we are all equals in the eyes of the angels and demons who pounce from the margins of the old highway springing to stand on the double yellow leaning on the sign that says right lane ends whoever holds the sign that says do not pass gets to decide what it means in the fog on the old highway the inanimate seem to be alive a yellow dollar store sign glowed out of the mist we stopped in the boy working there had taped a note next to the register that said I am sorry I lost my voice he was worried the customers would perceive his silence as rudeness how many noticed the note or the lack of speech I am not sure if I would be sorry I lost my voice is any given voice the only right one history has taught me I might find another voice we were not yet then counting numbers how many days until we could begin another chapter we were present we were happy with the chapter we were living at the time we were happy to have the field behind the house we went back north down the mountain and the fog burned into light
From the writer
:: Account ::
The Field, excerpted here, is a ten-thousand word peripatetic hybrid sequence of twenty sections of five hundred words: blocks of continuous text, fully justified. I wanted to be accountable for every word. I thought of them as paving stones, places for a reader to step as they follow the path through the field. I wrote the sections out by hand, revising as I went. I recorded them, revising as I listened back. Every small change had a cascading effect on the rest of the section. The fear of interruption is reflected in the lack of punctuation. Weaving between language that is by turns anecdotal, philosophical and poetic, I wanted to convey a sense of walking while daydreaming.
Carolyn Guinzio is the author of eight books, most recently Cameo Blue (Carnegie Mellon, 2026), A Vertigo Book (Tenth Gate Prize, The Word Works, 2021), and Meanwhile in Arkansas, (2025) winner of the Quarterly West Chapbook Contest. She was the 2025 recipient of the Porter Literary Prize given to an Arkansas writer. A Chicago native, she has lived in the Ozark Mountains just outside Fayetteville, Arkansas since 2002. Her website is carolynguinzio.my.canva.site.
