Silence and the Word (32 page)

catch me if you can
: Frank Wu kindly
invited me to participate in an Exquisite Corpse, a game of
fragments and partial responses. I was lucky enough to get to
respond to a lovely story by Benjamin Rosenbaum, one of my favorite
new writers. I was also the seventh and last in that particular
chain, so I feel a bit guilty still, for ending on a down note.
Sorry, guys!

Wild Roses
: I wrote this the summer
after Kevin and I broke up (we were broken up for much of a year
before we admitted that wasn’t working). I almost fell apart,
trying to read it at the department opening reading that fall.
People were very kind.

the bones want to fly
: A wish, a
prayer.

Exposure
: Karina and Kevin and I dated
for three years, and for much of that time, she was in Australia.
Almost a decade later, I am still trying to understand all the
complex aspects of that relationship.

how should I protest?
Very rarely do I
venture into the political arena. This was written in response to
the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Mint in Your Throat:
This story almost
caused a knock-down drag-out fight in my Clarion class, the summer
of 1997, and I think it was only another student backing me up with
her own experiences with sexual violence (and the body’s
involuntary responses) that brought us back to a rational
discussion.

Invocation:
What can I say? LDR’s
suck. Though you do get a lot of work done.

The Survey
: In my imagination, this
takes place in Hyde Park, and it’s a University of Chicago student
handing out the survey. After college, I spent a summer working for
NORC, the National Opinion Research Center, and while they never
had
me
hand out a survey like this, I wouldn’t put it past
them to run this kind of thing.

Would You Live For Me?
Vampires and
sex and AIDS, impossibly overdone. But Cecilia Tan asked me for a
vampire story for an anthology, and I started thinking about the
topic, and in the end, realized that I had something I wanted to
say about vampires and love and AIDS after all.

Amanda Means Love
: I admit, I was
hesitant about including this story—no one has wanted to publish
it, and it may push taboos too far. My poor Clarion class had to
deal with this story, and it wasn’t much fun for them. What makes
me more nervous than the people who’ll be outraged, though, are the
people who’ll go to the opposite extreme and support this as a
moralistic indictment of teenage sexuality. But sometimes, you have
to just send your stories out and try not to think about how other
people will read them.

Poem for a University
: Jedediah asked
me for a poem about place, so I wrote about a place I love beyond
all reason. Thanks for the poem, sweetie.

How It Started
: The orange afghan is
my favorite part.

A Jewel of a Woman:
This story grew
out of a discussion on the EROS workshop, sparked, I believe, by
the talented Jordan Shelbourne asking for more terms for female
masturbation. We came up with an outrageously long list, and out of
that, this story. Try reading it out loud. Try not to laugh.

The Poet’s Journey
: I would love to
see a little illustrated book of this some day. Included for
Karen.

Flowers and Branches
: Karen also gets
the credit for rescuing this prose poem / essay from obscurity—I
had mostly forgotten about it until she told me how much she liked
it. I looked at it again, and realized I liked it too.

one of the ways
: I enjoy having long
titles, but it does feel a bit unbalanced. Why we don’t have
end-titles too, with the text sandwiched between them? Someone
should start a new poetic form.

Letter to Kevin
: The perils of
exposing a young woman to critical theory at a tender and
vulnerable age.

Sitting Under a Tree, in the Rain
:
This one’s for my much-abused, infinitely-patient journal readers,
who asked for it, and for this book. Thanks, guys. Thanks for
everything. I would be lost without you.

Mary Anne Mohanraj is a Ph.D. candidate at
the University of Utah, specializing in post-colonial literature
and creative writing. She is the author of several books, including
Torn Shapes of Desire
(a collection),
Kathryn in the
City
and
The Classics Professor
(choose-your-own-adventure-style books for adults), and
A Taste
of Serendib
(a Sri Lankan cookbook). She is also the editor of
Aqua Erotica
and
Wet
(waterproof erotica
anthologies), and
The Best of Strange Horizons
(an anthology
of speculative fiction). Her most recent publications include
“Lakshmi’s Diary” (
Oasis
), "A Gentle Man" (
Harpur
Palate
), "Wild Roses" (
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica,
vol. 3
) and "How It Started" (
Best Lesbian Erotica
2003
).

Mohanraj founded and served as
editor-in-chief from 2000-2003 for
Strange Horizons
, a
Hugo-nominated speculative fiction magazine. She currently serves
as director of the
Speculative Literature Foundation
(www.speculativeliterature.org). Mohanraj has recently received a
Neff fellowship in English, a Steffenson-Canon fellowship in the
Humanities, and the Scowcroft Prize for Fiction. She lives in
Chicago and is currently finishing her dissertation,
Bodies in
Motion
, an exploration of sexuality, marriage, and Sri
Lankan/American immigrant concerns.