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  • 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…

  • Contributors’ Notes

    MASTHEAD Directors DeWitt Henry Peter O'Malley Coordinating Editor for This Issue Donald Hall Managing Editor Joyce Peseroff CONTRIBUTORS Ellery Akers is a free-lance writer and naturalist living in California. Her work has been published in the Harvard Magazine, the Northwest Review, the Aspen Anthology, and Intro 6. Bob Arnold is a Vermont stonemason. His most…

  • Veterans Day, 1981

    In last week’s New York Times I read the First Lady’s announcement from the White House: a joke writer was hired until it all blew over, the enemy’s cheap shots about expensive gowns and china. Appease your critics with a laugh, she said. Disarm them. Meanwhile the paper’s full of arms deals. “Capability” is spread…