Tim Taranto - Ars Botanica

I have the best family, I am so outrageously unworthy of them. They are hilarious and strange and all of them lovers. My parents and siblings and dogs have sustained me through their love, all of my gratitude goes to them.

I would also like to offer gratitude to my many friends, loved ones, and fellow artists for their support. Thank you Wren Albertson-Rogers, Thomas Agran, Chris Ajello, Alonso Avilla, Pablo Balbotin-Rodriguez, Luther Bangert, Michael Barton-Sweeney, Matilda Bathhurst, Angad Bhai, Justin Boening, Barb Canin, Jesus Castillo, Dan Cesca, Sam Chang, Jed Cohen, Charlie DAmbrosio, Daedalus, Max Davis, Benjamin Dohrmann, Casey Duffy, Barb Feathers, Leah Feygin, Finn, Mitch Moody Marlin Gardner, Andy Gates, Steph Gates, Matt Georges, Mike Gibisser, Hannah Givler, the Gnade Family, Shuja Haider, Rebecca Hanssens-Reed, Josh Haug, Traci Hercher, Cole Highnam, Jeff Holmes, Dr. Boris Igic, Alex Jimenez, Nimo Johnson, Riley Jonson, Betsy Kapp, Will Kapp, Colin Kostelecky, Kyle Haunter Miller, Fatima Mirza, Matthew Moye, Greg Phillips, Andy Pilkington, Kristen Radtke, Nick Richards, Willa Richards, Mary Roach, Miigun Rotary, Ben Shattuck, Jess Smith, Kelly Smith, Marya Spence, Taylor Sperry, Alexa Stark, Lauren Struckmeyer, Stan Taft, Bryce Thornburg, Christine Utz, Dr. Jeffrey Valla, Kelsi Vanada, Stephanie Vaughn, Devon Walker, Liz Weiss, Sarabeth Weszely, Kipp Wettstein, Esther Williams, Liz Willis, Cammy York, Alycia Zieno, Nick Shrimp Zimmermann, Phil & Karen Zimmermann. Thank you Deb West. Thank you Anna Haglin.

I truly appreciate the friendship and generosity of Adam Levin and Camille Bordas. Thank you Adam for supporting this book in the ways you have, it means a great deal.

I am grateful for Pallas Athena Kate Christensen; thank you for your tireless encouragement and support of me as an artist, but really thank you for your tireless encouragement and support of me as a human being.

Ethan Canin has exceeded what it means to be a mentor, he has been a true friend; thank you for everything, E.

Thank you to Sarah Burnes and to the rest of the folks at the Gernert Company; thank you for standing by such a strange little book. And I pray every writer has the opportunity to experience something like the relationship Ive had with my agent Andy Kifer. From the very first white hot and frayed first draft, Andy believed in this project and fought like a dog for it. So long as there are folks in the literature industry with Andys quality of integrity and heart, there is still hope for art.

I want to thank John Knight; all folks who have had the privilege to know him have been better off for it.

Thank God for Curbside Splendor. Thank God for Cat Eves and Naomi Huffman. I cant imagine it is humanly possible for two individuals to work as hard on a book as these two have for this one. Cat has provided such unwavering and intimate care to this project all along the way and Naomi fought, line by line, draft by draft, to make this book the fullest realization of its aesthetic ambitions, what more could one hope for? Alban Fischer has done such beautiful work on this book, I am so proud of his contributions and grateful for his talents. Working together with these folks over the past year plus has been a beautiful dream.

Thanks to my students at Brooklyn Heights Montessori School, Iowa, and Cornell College. Thanks to Critical Hit Games, Little Village, Cornell College, The Iowa Review, Iowa Writers Workshop, RDG Planning & Design, Sun Valley Writers Conference, University of Iowa Campus Recreation and Wellness Center, El Paso Taqueria and Latin Market, Szechuan House, Prairie Lights, Agape Cafe, Columbus Junction, Dairy Queen, and Colonial Lanes.

I wont be the first to tell you that Karen Russell is a special person; she is so truly good, she is such a light. She is a genius of the heart, and she is funny as all hell. And she is humble, as proven by her penchant for gas station wine. A lot of people say things like, if it werent for so-and-so... but I mean it when I say that if it werent for Karen, you wouldnt be holding this book, I wouldnt be holding myself upright in my chair writing this. After youve weathered the maelstrom, you may look back and be surprised to see who was there with you through it all, keeping vigil and holding you in the light; many of the folks in this acknowledgement have been just that, and Karen chiefly among them. Thank you, K.

Each pump of my heart and breath in my lungs is a thank you to Jaime Gowans.

TIM TARANTO is a writer, visual artist, and poet from New York. His work has been featured in Buzzfeed, FSGs Works in Progress, Harpers, The Iowa Review, McSweeneys Internet Tendency, Paris Review Daily, the Rumpus, and The Saint Anns Review. Tim is a graduate of Cornell University and the Iowa Writers Workshop.

In Iowa, in the tall grass, theres a couple...

ARTHUR RUSSELL

A LL I SEE IS DEATH, she said.

She gazed out over row crops, soybeans, and field after field of genetically modified corn. The morning rains were over and the overcast sky was glossed like the inside of an oyster shell. Wet corn stalks shivered in the silver light. The landscape bulged and curled, an earthen sea. A lone barn wore a fresh coat of white paint, skeletal windpumps turned exhaustedly in a nearly imperceptible wind. Herds of soot-colored clouds ebbed, then fled. It was a Marvin Cone painting. The world exhaled a worked and loamy breath.

Iowa is beautiful, I said. I heard someone say once how it possessed a subtle beauty, something about the oceanic skies. I never could see it, but now, my God.

An oriole, orange-breasted and onyx-winged, broke out in a solo from its perch on the powerline. Its song was trill and aqueous, more like a toy bird water whistle than a real bird.

Theres so many birds oriole, osprey, killdeer that from now on, whenever I see them, Ill think of you, she said.

As we biked on she switched into a lower gear and her derailleur made a rickety popping sound. The road bike was new to her, she was still getting the hang of it. We both had Bianchis, which she thought was cute, like our bikes were dating, too. She was an intrepid cyclist, racing down hills and powering up others like a nike. She once biked from the Oregon coast, through Yellowstone, across the continental divide, and back to Iowa on a solo tour. When my buddies back in Brooklyn asked to see a picture, I showed them the one of her triumphant by her bike at Hoosier Pass.

We wound down a series of wet country roads, nearing the raptor rehabilitation center at the lakes edge. The university funded the center for injured birds hawks with talons mangled by traps, eagles full of lead shot pecked from deer carcasses, one-eyed owls and falcons peeled from the grills of pickups. These birds wouldnt make it in the wild. At dusk, Cypress, the old grandmother of a barred owl, answered calls from the free owls of the surrounding woods.

My ex used to volunteer at this raptor center, and Id accompany her on the evening feedings. The freezers were stacked with bagged mice and rats, quail and pig fetuses, leftovers from the school of veterinary medicine. One of the volunteers told me the eagles loved fish when they could get it. That happened to be the summer I fished the Coralville dam daily, angling for walleye, but always incidentally hooking the unlucky carp. Carp are a handsome, muscular, and golden-scaled fish, but invasive, too, and its illegal to throw them back. Some said the old Czech folks baked the carp at Christmastime, or that they were good for smoking, while most said they wouldnt eat carp for money. More often I was told carp made an excellent fertilizer for the pumpkin patch. But the carp I caught were a delicacy for the raptor centers eagles. The morning after Id delivered a particularly hefty carp to Dolly, a thirty-year-old blind golden eagle, the volunteers discovered her preening on her perch, with the carp in one claw, and a decapitated raccoon who had attempted to steal her fish in the other.