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The Blue Castrato

i. To His Savior in Christ If I did not, as I do, know well to love you first, I’d love my voice instead, cause you to yield the throne whose impossibly precious batting I could sing all day and never start to know—it is blasphemy or worse even to think it (Domine, me— ut…

The White Star

Inside the White Star it was warm, ironed clothes, and humming revolution of unsteady washer-dryers. It was whirling blur of red black blue yellow that Beatrice watched like a TV, next to her lover.   Last night she’d looked into lighted windows bitterly, as if she’d been evicted, things thrown out on the sidewalk, cracked…

Issues of Appropriation

Penn Station, March 1991     I’ve been homeless down here so long I didn’t give up the worship of Jesus Now I got my own room but it’s not in my apartment And God is a good god And children if you’re on that crack don’t get addicted Because me I waited too long…

Breast/Fever

My new breast is two months old, gel used in bicycle saddles for riders on long-distance runs, stays cold under my skin when the old breast is warm; catalogue price, $276. My serial number, #B-1754, means some sisters under the skin. My new breast my new breast is sterile, will never have cancer.   Once…

Contributors’ Notes

MASTHEAD Guest Editor Marilyn Hacker Editor Don Lee Poetry Editor David Daniel Assistant Editor Jodee Stanley Founding Editor DeWitt Henry Founding Publisher Peter O'Malley Editorial Assistants: Heidi Pitlor, Maryanne O'Hara, and Nathaniel Bellows. Intern: Monique Hamzé. Fiction Readers: Billie Lydia Porter, Anne Kriel, Barbara Lewis, John Rubins, Karen Wise, Loretta Chen, Todd Cooper, Michael Rainho,…

Cotton Rows, Cotton Blankets

Sprawled on the back of a flatbed truck we cradled hoes, our minds parceling rows of cotton to be chopped by noon. Dawn stuck in the air. Blackbirds rang the willows.   Ahead, a horse trailer stretched across the road. Braced by youth and lengths of summer breeze we didn’t give a damn. We’d be…