Article

  • Prenuptial

    Words, together we’ll have the wedding feast, I’ll spread the canopy, bring the glass for you to crush. You’ll arrive early, time and light in your pocket, dark boxes in the car, each with the name of an object. Alone this way, no guests expected—jars, bottles, vials with things like knife, cloud, and blood. Leave…

  • Planet Daphne

    for Eleanor Wilner          Sometimes there is even too much of what we don’t want. This dancing                            planet, its many communiqués hurtling across us. My lover types endearments into space, swears he can only see my back.                   Something in it that is diluted and dark,          something in the distance that is lunar,…

  • About Gish Jen: A Profile

    Gish Jen lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, eight-year-old son, and one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and the hectic pace of her life is reflected in her rapid-fire speech. The celebrated author of two novels and a collection, Jen is known for her humor and brimming intelligence, her ready opinions and easy laugh, her charm, and, not…

  • Dark Yellow Poem

    Slice of yellow wind in yellow curtains I sewed although the house was never mine except where the rod went through. Breeze does it.                          Or snow on pines. Faint click of yellowing spoons. Or crow-call piercing snow-pine reflected in the spoon-shaped past, its wing its crescent moon. Seeking any equally black thing.                     There,…

  • Introduction

    A certain college professor used to say that one sits down to write ABC, but in the process discovers — ah! — DEF! He was talking about writing nonfiction, but there is DEF in fiction, too. We discover through writing that we know more than we know — hopefully, if we’re writing with honesty and…

  • Razorback

    Son of a felon, his father was famous for eating through the wall of a Wisconsin prison. Seven hours later his conception in a Villanova railcar. It was a year of locusts. All he knows is clothing: days with the flat iron and dry cleaning fluids. Starch. I tape my hems straight, and nothing gets…

  • Unmet Thursday

    Like following a woodland path again and again    Used to We made love like nobody’s business    Things so far Have been good for me only the first time around The deeper the day, the lonelier the blue Thank the Lord the window’s open Baby’s got gas    Like smoke in humid air We’re graceful, our hair…