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On David Wong Louie

The initial encouragement of publication of David Wong Louie's work should be credited to David Hamilton at The Iowa Review, where two of his earlier stories appeared. Louie has also had work in Chicago Review, Kansas Quarterly, Agni Review, Mid-American Review, Fiction International and others, and is now readying a first collection called Displacement. Louie…

On Amanda Pierson

Amanda Pierson has a good eye, a fine ear, and a wanderer's heart. Born and raised in Princeton, New Jersey, Amanda traveled south following her graduation from Dartmouth College, and it is there-in the climate of Porter and Faulkner-that she began to discover her voice as a writer. Much has been made of the verbal…

Isaac Again

Isaac looked like the tortured priest in Open City, and we lost him decades ago. I remember two fat gangster types who had gone to his funeral and were bragging in the tavern later that they had picked up two good-looking girls at the mortuary visitation and had laid them, and I thought Isaac would…

The Owl

The owl called to me from the dark. “Where is my pocketbook?” it quavered. The night before, it played its flute and Sang, “I cannot find my glasses anywhere” With tremolo enough to split a rock. A chuckle at the end of every cry Suggested humor in all this. I had some trouble seeing any,…

Two SLABS (Standard-Length-and-Breadth-Sonnets)

LAST STRAW IHaveNoTimeFor BanterSirIAmAn AncientMariner MyShipWentDown ICausedItsLoss TheyTiedMeToAn AlbatrossItIsA BigPelagicBird QuiteWholesome IfAdministered InternallyLike ChickenSoupNot TopicallyLikeA StupidPoultice UP TO HERE WITH THE PIED PIPERS OF GOTHAM IDontLikeMimeI DontLikeSleaze IDontLikeSteel BandSymphonies Psalterypawing SlobsLikeThese Discountenance Philanthropies NorAmIAvidToBe EyeballedOddly ByAnIdleRibald OboistWhoFlaps APiebaldMotley WhilstHeTweets

Ice Fishing

Today my father crouches above the ice on Black Hill Lake and the bass, spinning in slivers of winter sunlight, swim to the surface with the aura of dreams, in their speckled eyes the slow, ominous stare of memory. Next to the crosshatched hole in the ice, the bucket fills with fish, the water turns…

Traces

Sometimes I have delusions of total recall, tyrannical, crazy. Crazy is what I thought years ago, “You're crazy!” when I built a home over my father's bulldozed house. Nothing's ever lost to me, certainly not the arsonned pieces of that place that erupt like clocks in the rockiness of my yard. Yesterday, yellowed linoleum bloomed…