Article

  • Hard Sell

    In the mornings I get to the mall before anyone else, even the other shop owners. They haven't got the music on yet, and all I can hear as I set up is the plish-plosh of the fountain. Without any flowers covering my cart, you can notice the builder's skill-wooden pegs at the joints, not…

  • Small Spaces

    —And the earth was still baffled by the small spaces, especially in spring when people admired its growth from great heights. The earth was baffled by the tiny gaps such as those between minutes. In those places of yearning, as in the emptiness between a child's back teeth, it was trying to decide if there…

  • The Fight

    It was another round. The cloud's puffed eye. A thumb torn out of the pie. The pie thrown into her face. Not bat a lash. Not lash the fields of whining grass. Not bash the sun into a simpleton. She who made the trumpet gleam and blaze made the smoky cricket weep. He who put…

  • from Louisiana Pile Driving

    As an Asian In 1965, when I was nine, my father moved us from Japan to Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He had been an exchange student at Louisiana State University years ago, and now LSU had invited him to be a visiting professor in the agriculture department. We rented an apartment near campus, across the street…

  • School Lunch Work Program

    As soon as she cleans her tray, she stops By the office, picks up a grocery bag Marked with her name in red crayon And spends the rest of her lunch cleaning Candy wrappers, twigs, leaves, and other trash From the school's scrubby patch Of front lawn. She does this diligently, No complaints, as if…

  • Contributors’ Notes

    MASTHEAD Coordinating Editors for This Issue James Alan McPherson DeWitt Henry Executive Director DeWitt Henry Managing Editor / Associate Fiction Editor Don Lee Associate Poetry Editor Joyce Peseroff Assistant Editor David Daniel Office Manager Jessica Dineen Founding Publisher Peter O'Malley Thanks this issue to: Colleen Westbrook; our editorial interns Janet Choi and Lev Grossman; and…

  • Fox Glacier

    The Pilgrim: Blue plough bones High eye socket Soot rock gristle Be with me Be with me Be with me Never be not with us Fox The Glacier: My gentle coming: fall I am with you my Gold-pan My sieved and sieving brow Most wanted: Favorite: Wanted and needed and loved: Diaspora.

  • The Fly-Cage

    The cage is the only creature alive singing in the yard singing its giant heart out singing its giant heart out for us. We who have been the other's hour, we who have made the minutes accountable, and the seconds lively and saw the big tree lovely, we and our hands slowly fall apart, a…