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  • Crooked Letter

    Mother calls two or three nights a week now, trying to make me come see my father, who is dying of cancer in the hospital in Missouri. “He asks for you,” she says. “Come on.” “Don’t you think he’s sorry for things?” “He’s never said so.” “You were hard to handle.” “I was a kid.”…

  • Gone & Gone

    We meet     as always on the corner of dusk & dark & against that soubrettish tablet we step off in search of the invisible night that lurks inside of darkness like a well-kept secret or a lie. Wherever we are becomes a carnival, a fair of the heart with sidling glances at lust. We knock…

  • Kid Gentle

    When she needed to say something just to hear the sound of her own voice, she said “Sam,” struck to find his name on the tip of her tongue: she would have reasoned she was so angry that his name would have needed some summoning up, but no. The stream rilling past Jenny’s boots ran,…

  • Parking

    I got to know what was soft and where the hard parts were in that upholstered bedroom. Every headlight was a worry. I kept my clothes on as much as I could. It didn’t bother you. Even that time getting caught didn’t. You liked it. You said you loved me, but it was what I…

  • Contributors’ Notes

    MASTHEAD Guest Editor Al Young Executive Director DeWitt Henry Managing Editor & Fiction Editor Don Lee Poetry Editor David Daniel Assistant Editor Barbara Tran Founding Publisher Peter O'Malley Staff Assistant: Barbara Lewis. Assistant Proofreader: Holly LeCraw Howe. Poetry Readers: Barbara Tran, Linda Russo, Tanja Brull, Tom Laughlin, Mary-Margaret Mulligan, and Jason Rogers. Fiction Readers: Billie…

  • Photopia

    My new wife took very few possessions with her when she left Peru, mostly blouses and books and clumps of the hot pepper aji wrapped in cellophane, but she did remember to pack her photograph of her father. It was a cloudy black-and-white shot taken in 1960 on his fifty-fourth birthday, two years before his…

  • Pantyhose

    When you wash them do it gently with a mild soap and lightly swish. Silken, seamed, off-black, mist, dotted, patterned in some way, support, light support, sheer, nude, coal, reinforced toe, taupe, suntan, ivory, smoke, they’re in there now all crossed over through the small accumulation of bubbles which gather at the edges of your…

  • About Al Young: A Profile

    What strikes you first about Al Young is the voice. It’s a deejay’s voice — articulate; engaging; most of all, smooth — so it’s not surprising to find out that for several years, Young hosted jazz shows in Detroit for WDET and in Berkeley for KJAZ, work­ed as a public radio announcer, and performed as…