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  • Contributors’ Notes

    MASTHEAD Guest Editors Stuart Dybek & Jane Hirshfield Editor Don Lee Poetry Editor David Daniel Associate Editor Susan Conley Assistant Fiction Editor Maryanne O'Hara Founding Editor DeWitt Henry Founding Publisher Peter O'Malley Editorial Assistants: Gregg Rosenblum, Melissa Cook, and Tom Herd. Poetry Readers: Renee Rooks, Brian Scales, Michael Henry, Paul Berg, Charlotte Pence, Jessica Purdy,…

  • Harry Ginsberg

    from The Feast of Love As a Jew, I am drawn in a suicidal manner toward the maddest of Christians. Kierkegaard, being one of the craziest and most lovable of the lot, and, therefore, dialectically, possibly the most sane of them all, is of compelling interest to me. All my life, I have tracked his…

  • Meat Science

    I’m remembering the time you sat on a roof in Wisconsin to get away for a smoke, and a drunk senior stumbled to the edge of the roof to take a piss then folded his body down next to yours. Below, a faint sound of drums and bass throbbed through the house. “Pigs,” said the…

  • from Falsies: Persian Lamb

    For my mother’s fortieth birthday, my father brought home two coats-a Persian lamb and a karakul-and told her to choose between them. She set the boxes on the dining room table and opened the first. When she lifted the coat from the box, the tissue paper fluttered upward like a wing. She tried it on…

  • Introduction

    Not so long ago, in trying to dislodge a student from some writing that — due to her fear or complacency — was overly safe and conventional, I experimented with a bit of pedagogical brutishness. I looked her in the eye, held up her story, and said, ” I could have written this.” Now I…

  • The Old Woman and Her Thief

    On her deathbed, as she drew what were to be her last breaths on God’s green earth, the old woman made a confession so terrible to her husband that-even under circumstances as solemn and sorrowful as these-he could hardly take the secret as true, let alone forgive her for it. He listened by her side,…

  • from Falsies: The Funeral

    It is men who carry the dead in our religion, but my sister and I are adamant and my mother accedes. Stepping over hillocks of soiled snow, my sister and I walk on opposite sides of the casket, borne also by nephews and uncles. The wood digs into my fingers, cuts grooves in the pillows…

  • Afterbirth

    At first when the captain’s voice came on over the intercom and made the announcement, she felt almost glad. Not gleeful exactly, but a sudden ching! of recognition coursed through her; events fell into place. She was glad she’d had her weekend at the hotel, glad for her swim in the hotel pool, for sleeping…