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The Raptors

I’ve seen them all over the city. After midnight near the consulate, closer to the streetlight than you might expect: a parked car, windows misted, wings for a trademark. And the muffled urgencies from the back seat—someone about to die, perhaps, or be delivered—the sleek silhouette of a woman’s legs lifted and spread behind the…

Aftermath

The outer Cape in mid-October. A new tilt to the earth and its altered angle to the sun make for a suffusing clarity. Hopper’s light. With the tourists gone, the beaches have been reclaimed by gulls, and the road that traverses the peninsula is bare. At this time of year, delays occur behind school buses….

The Orders

One spring night, at the end of my street God was lying in wait. A friend and I were sitting in his new sedan like a couple of cops on surveillance, shooting the breeze to pass the time, chatting up the daydreams, the raw deals, all the woulda-coulda-shoulda’s, the latest “Can you believe that?” As…

Some Other Angel

Daniel was already home. “Hi,” he yelled from the kitchen as Em wrestled her overcoat onto a hanger in the overfull front closet. What the hell was he doing? Breaking rocks on the counter? “Hi,” she yelled back, unwinding her scarf. “Annie call?” Wham. Wham. Wham. “No,” Daniel called back. Wham. “What are you doing?”…

Little Girl in Blue, 1918

The girl in a blue dress is standing on pink tile and gazing back at the artist as if looking through him for a place to rest. The day is brilliant with Mediterranean light Modigliani fled for the gravity of dark hotels, human throats elongated like sunflowers on the back streets of Paris, barefoot girls—this…

Tim Seibles, Contributor Spotlight

Contributor Spotlight Tim Seibles is a commanding, dynamic presence, particularly when he reads his poetry. Tall, charismatic, he stands behind the podium and gives animated voice to poems that are, at turns, grave, inventive, and hilarious. His primary subjects from the start have been sexuality and race, and somehow, Seibles has always been able to…

The Excitement Begins

On the day before his fiftieth birthday, Bill Lander received a letter from a woman he had never heard of-Amber Harding-saying she’d be pleased to come to Wallace to meet him and be his birthday date. She noted the time she’d arrive on the train and said she’d have no trouble recognizing him. “I’ll just…