Article

The Couple

“Like a boy,” she said, and opened her robe to show him the plate of bone and its center flower of black thread.                         Only flesh, he thought, the breast cut loose from its net of skin. And if she could not dote on him, he’d answer her bell in the bedroom where she is…

Minnie the Moocher’s Hair

Mother said, "You know? – your father was an only child." The insight was not so much given as discarded. She brushed the sleeve of her housecoat across her brow. "You see," she gasped – and I saw quite vividly, although I was eight years old and still partially invisible; my invisibility enhanced Mother's soliloquies….

Cigarette Lighter

“But it’s only a cigarette lighter . . .” — Offering From the guarded hand of a twelve year old Whose father is unable to start the briquets. Oppressive July, the first of two weeks at the lake. Whosh! The flames leap up as the family scatters. “If you have a cigarette lighter I’ve got…

Piano Night

The phonograph comes on stitched with insect life, breathing the slurred breath of the grasses. I hear the cooling earth send off the random clicks of its shut-down engine as firefly embers tick upwards through the trees and loose in the drowned world of the grass: a rattle, a scuffle, the little ball bearing in…

The Captain

His son wore a moustache. Over and between tan faces and the backs of heads with hair cut high and short, and green-uniformed shoulders and chest and backs, Harry saw him standing with two other second lieutenants at the bar. His black moustache was thick. Only one woman was at happy hour, a blonde captain:…

They Set Out in Fog

They’re determined to have fun. The boy’s 14 today. He’s chosen this trip North to where they lived a life before him. There’s the attic in the gray Victorian where pigeons nested until the cooing wasn’t cute. Where the husband put his fist — why? — through the wall. The owners’ fights rose through forced-air…

Contributors’ Notes

MASTHEAD Directors DeWitt Henry Peter O'Malley Coordinating Editor for This Issue DeWitt Henry Managing Editor Joyce Peseroff CONTRIBUTORS J. Bernlef, one of Holland's most prolific writers, has had 50 books published since 1960, and besides novels, short stories and poems, writes music as well. His latest novel is Ijsbergen (Icebergs). T. Alan Broughton is a…

Accidents

Don’t move I say to your body but it has no plans, not even your lips when I hope Are you all right? Day comes to attention as you sprawl on the landing making your private bargain with publicity and chance while I, no medic or nurse and ignorant of your name stroke your arm…