Article

  • Long Distance

    Here on the phone is Miss Patricia Mitchell Of Nacogdoches, Texas, who is writing her term paper About a poem of mine she wants to ask about. “It's such a privilege, Mr. N,” she says, “Just to pick up the phone and talk to you.” “The others in the class are writing theirs On W…

  • The Evening of the Stillborn Calf

    for Danielle Inseminator, hole-scrubber, midwife, you ache from the scuffle and weight of hauling the troubled cow into stanchions, of thrusting your leek-long arms inside to free the breech that fell against your chest, a steaming new world veined in fading latitudes. Inside the dimly lit birth sac lies the earth-colored calf already weaned from…

  • Rosie

    Something happens in the water: first of all, you are weightless; this is the first thing Rosie noticed, remembers. She learns to swim the ordinary way many of us learn: a small rectangular pool in a day camp in the Indiana dunes, one hour's ride through smelly south Chicago, past the threatening smokestacks of Gary,…

  • The Plot Behind the Church

    Behind Church Ebenezer, moral box,      the steep red washed-out slope           grew scrubby pines. Some pennyroyal stank invitingly,      and vines transgressed the narrow tracks.           It wouldn't be right to go back now— was hardly right to go. . . .                 Ten-year-old Lou      squatting, hesitating, blocked by the grave           spirit of big Dr. Marr, the egg-on-legs…

  • Patience

    They walk into the air at dawn. The man and woman trying to birth the baby. Along the stretch to the lying-in hospital she summons cows she has seen—docile, steadfast in the way sea is always pregnant and ready to give and destroy at the same time. Patience covers her like a shield against women…

  • Bodies We Will Never Know

    White cottonwood tufts fill the air like moths; we rub our eyes in the filmy atmosphere thick with white dreams, while down the road at the Sagebrush Inn, a Seeing Eye dog sleeps beneath the piano where his mistress practices Linda Ronstadt's greatest hits. Afternoon. The room is empty except for the bartender swatting at…

  • Contributors’ Notes

    MASTHEAD Directors DeWitt Henry Peter O'Malley Coordinating Editor for This Issue Maxine Kumin Managing Editor Jennifer Rose Office Manager Don Lee Thanks this issue to: Roland Kelts, Mary Ellen Beveridge, Sharon Bogue, Kathleen Bowden, Catherine Creegan, Kirsten Czupryna, Emilia Dubicki, Beth Elion, Carol Feingold, Anne Friedman, Kahtryn Herold, Doina Iliescu, Jean Kane, Naomi Kent, Tom…