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  • Sighting the Whale

    The mother kneels beside her grieving child, grieving because the whale has not come, because the whales are elsewhere, not heaving clear of the water where child and mother can see them. In the brilliant light of a day at sea, the child whimpers. Her own small sea ebbs and rolls until she spews an…

  • Wyn Cooper, All I Wanna Do

    All I Wanna Do  Poet Wyn Cooper, who teaches writing at Marlboro College in Vermont, is listed as one of the co-songwriters of Sheryl Crow’s hit single “All I Wanna Do,” but the collaboration came about in the most unlikely, serendipitous manner possible. For a year, Crow and a group of musicians met every Tuesday…

  • Mayela One Day in 1989

    I’m in a city called El Paso. I could point it out on a map. Right here, here it is. There is longitude, latitude. For most, this is enough, a satisfactory explanation. But say we don’t use all these imaginary concepts. Say there is no west of or east of or north of or south…

  • Dinner in the Fall

    Partially green leaves are falling on Camille’s Italian restaurant where grapes tint our lips, and the linens are more inviting than our bed. Our eyes shine like the blue glaze on our plates. Heat radiates through the shale of my spine now suddenly recalling the black bitter chill of deep sea as if my body…

  • Neglect

    The muscular hollows: eye, lung, heart, stomach, hand. The parts that you enliven: lips, hair, spine. The necessary and cleansing wastes— sweat, blood, urine, stool, and sperm. But certain places of my body are not specified or named until reached by the first unexpected drop of rain, or the careless, accidental touch of your fingernail….

  • Contributors’ Notes

    MASTHEAD Executive Director DeWitt Henry Editor Don Lee Poetry Editor David Daniel Assistant Editor Jessica Dineen Editorial Assistant Jodee Stanley Founding Publisher Peter O'Malley Staff Assistants: Brijit Brown and Matt Jones. Fiction Readers: Billie Lydia Porter, Esther Crain, Michael Rainho, Maranne O'Hara, Lee Harrington, Karen Wise, Elizabeth Rourke, Stephanie Booth, Jodee Stanley, David Rowell, Barbara…

  • Nondestructive Testing

    One day Will arrived at work to find a new receptionist sitting behind the front desk, and all that morning he found himself contemplating his brief glimpse of her. She was a large woman, not just in size but also in the boldness of her features-her eyes were big and blue, her cheeks were daubed…

  • Phoenix

    It was the wrong place to look for resurrection. Memorial Day, one hundred four degrees Fahrenheit. Cloudless sky. Square parking lots surrounding new motels. Always more loss required, always. And after, feeble gestures to shape what remains into a marvelous bird. It would have been fine with me to know only enough of grief to…

  • The Off Season

    Zip’s getting married,” Chase tells Marianne, coming into the bedroom and shutting the door behind him. “Oh. Who’s the woman?” “Her name is Flora Ritchie.” “And when is the baby due?” He narrows his eyes at her. “December.” He pulls his shirt off. “But it was still a bitchy thing to say.” “Sorry.” She watches…