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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…