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Valentines

The shining door down the hall opens to admit to these corridors the familiar monsters of my dreams. They are branches that flower in winter, pools that can never freeze for they have swallowed arrows, live hearts cut out of paper. They carry warmth to headstones but suck my breath, just as overcoats smother bodies.

I Am An American

It was not the kind of service one would expect, considering the quality of the hotel. Around eight o'clock both Eunice and I were awakened by a heavy pounding on the door to our room that sounded once, loud and authoritatively, then decreased into what seemed a series of pulsing echoes. I staggered across the…

Victorian Grandmother

In the pinch of time, facing an upright piano under its paisley throw you sport a jet and agate necklace around your freckled throat. You were mad for costume jewelry — and better if it was red, and soon you ran off to marry Handsome Jack. I strain my ears after your songs, you had…

Asking Nothing

The words carry themselves as carefully as a muscular woman tricked out in sequins walking a high wire. I ask nothing of them, I only set them in motion, as gently as feathers. Birds exert themselves more than the words do. Hunger compels them, they cannot choose but fly. Words, who seek no food for…

Contributors’ Notes

EDITORIAL BOARD Director Peter O'Malley Coordinating Editor & Director DeWitt Henry Editorial Staff Henry Bromell David Gullette Ellen Wilbur Contributing Editors Geoffrey Clark James Randall Barry Spacks Art Director David Omar White CONTRIBUTORS ANDRE DUBUS teaches at Bradford College, has a novel, The Lieutenant, has had many distinguished short stories in The New Yorker, North…

Cadillac Mountain

I had been in love with you three years before. . . Driving from Maine to more Maine friendly — chatty we were both relieved to get as far away                 as possible from your neighbors who had                 spoiled our dinner with all sorts of                 insinuating and unstated                 demands that we resolve…

Estivating (journal)

The reason I am keeping a journal this season of the hearings and the horses is to put down those "bits of the mind's string too short to use," as Joan Didion once said. Things tie themselves together with little quote marks and perhaps the string crosshatches itself into a statement in time, who knows?…

Exile in Japan

On the balcony of the tower I play my flute and watch The Spring rain. I wonder If I ever Will go home and see The tide bore In Chekiang River again. Straw sandals, an old Begging bowl, nobody Knows me. On how many Bridges have I trampled The fallen cherry blossoms?      — Su Man…

Prediction

you will go home it will be cold you will warm some- one your sister your cousin a girl you meet in a park in a bar her elbows red with waiting you will clap your mittens on her ears you will sing songs from the frozen territory you will stir her slowly and the…