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  • On Cynthia Schad

    In language both sensitive and terse, "Close to Autumn" explores the feelings of a motherless child. Edie is seven and long accustomed to living alone with her agreeable, devoted young father. She shyly admires his new girlfriend, too, and comes to cherish moments when the three of them can be together. But she is unaccountably…

  • On Dana Gibson

    Dana Gibson has the real gift, an ability to see and to think and to write in a way that is truly unique and original. Her prose makes even the most ordinary of events take on an almost edenic clarity and freshness. Sometimes her language seems Nabokovian to me in its lilt and life, and…

  • The Tuba Lesson

    To vibrate out a tone of lasting woe; To send a foggy message, Brewing a mellow humor in the sharp, Naked unatmosphere of cinder block In the cafeteria; To expel, as though from a great depth, a note. But whose ambitions were these? They weren't mine For more than half an hour. Reflected in the…

  • Four Bones for Late March

    THE MARRIAGE BONE Once broken it tends to give under pressure. Though the knit serves, the gait will always be slightly protective, the limb will remember a fault line, the snap of its failing. It may bear your weight cunningly down the avenues of custom so that no one else notices. Left/right, left/right—walk you will…

  • Gruel

    Your name is Diana Toy. And all you may have for breakfast is rice gruel. You can't spit it back into the cauldron for it would be unfilial. You can't ask for yam gruel for there is none. You can't hide it in the corner for it would surely be found, and then you would…

  • The Radioactive Ball

    I caught it and screamed for water. Someone carried a pail, I plunged my hands in. The water boiled. I wore violet gloves beaded with glass. Now what do I do with this water. How can I pick the pail up, where should I set it. How to turn doorknobs and enter rooms and not…

  • The Mountain

    for CHW (1916-1979) 1. The Mountain A meadow in Vermont, on Bread Loaf Mountain. I watched you walk with a dancer's quick walk along the path on the edge of the meadow. Your shoulders were bent like a scholar's but your legs were the legs of a dancer. Your jacket, thick for a hot summer…