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  • Contributors’ Notes

    MASTHEAD Guest Editor Mark Doty Editor Don Lee Poetry Editor David Daniel Assistant Editor Gregg Rosenblum Assistant Fiction Editor Maryanne O'Hara Associate Poetry Editor Susan Conley Founding Editor DeWitt Henry Founding Publisher Peter O'Malley Editorial Assistants: Kris Fikkan and Kathleen Stole. Staff Assistants: Eson Kim and Tom Herd. Fiction Readers: Nicole Hein, Kris Fikkan, Darla…

  • Other People’s Mothers

    While Wanda had an abortion, I had lunch with her mother. “Please,” Wanda had said, swathed in large paper napkins, “just get her away from here.” Then she closed her eyes, and her boyfriend, Ramon, nodded, so I took Wanda’s mother to a Chinese dumpling shop. Once there, she told me the old story about…

  • Poem for the Breasts

    Like other identical twins, they can be better told apart in adulthood. One is fast to wrinkle her brow, her brain, her quick intelligence. The other dreams inside a constellation, freckles of Orion. They were born when I was thirteen, they rose up, half out of my chest, now they’re forty, wise, generous. I am…

  • Carvaggio Moderno

    David with the Head of Goliath, 1609–10? No bronze, paraphernalia, or feathers. No euphoric cheers or parade. Simply The slayer and his prey. The boy’s body Shines horrific as a candle. Without Tenderness, the light cuts his skin Across the arm; around a nipple; his chest And neck; across the wrinkles of his brow, His…

  • Sestina: Bob

    According to her housemate, she is out with Bob tonight, and when she’s out with Bob you never know when she’ll get in. Bob is an English professor. Bob used to be in a motorcycle gang, or something, or maybe Bob rides a motorcycle now. How radical of you, Bob— I wish I could ride…

  • Hunters and Gatherers

    Rick had been searching for the Pillings’ address for over twenty minutes, and the hungrier he became, the harder it was to concentrate on the dimly lit street signs, the six-digit numbers stenciled on curbs. Westgate Village was a planned community an hour away from the downtown loft where Rick lived, and its street names…

  • Social Life

    After the party ends another party begins and the survivors of the first party climb into the second one as if it were a lifeboat to carry them away from their slowly sinking ship. Behind me now my friend Richard is getting a fresh drink, putting on more music, moving from group to group—smiles and…