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  • Contributors’ Notes

    EDITORIAL BOARD Publisher Peter O'Malley Coordinating Editor George Kimball Editorial Staff William Corbett David Gullette DeWitt Henry Norman Klein Contributing Editors Sam Cornish Aram Saroyan Art Director David Omar White Business Manager Tom Hargadon Advertising Manager Richard H. Brown CONTRIBUTORS DESMOND O'GRADY, born 1935, is a major Irish poet living in Rome; among his many…

  • Alternative Crumb

    a play in two acts (Note: each act should take five minutes to perform, with exaggerated silences between speeches: during that time son and father age from a respective five and thirty to twenty and forty-five. Their activities on stage will therefore change appropriately.) ACT I FATHER (somberly): I am giving you the ball, son,…

  • Boils Down

    Some drunkards drink themselves as sober as this liar lied herself true. I lied to my parents about where I'd been. To my boss about where I was going. To my friends about my past – creating accomplishments, creating failures, denying experiences, admitting fantasties. To strangers I was one of quadruplets, an orphan, a twin,…

  • Because My Love is There

    Doyle's reflection scintillated wetly from the shop windows as he passed along the Boulevard du Montparnasse without pausing, as he frequently did, in front of one of Hemingway's old haunts – the Coupole or, across the street, the Dome. He turned right on the Boulevard Raspail and walked slowly, nearly shuffling, toward L'alliance Francaise and…

  • Franklin Street

    Cambridge Mass Rain falls outside. The bulb’s ablaze in the kitchen Blinds down. Winter. My woman stands upright from our bed. My daughter dreams in another country. It’s only tuesday. Beginning the week, nobody’s of humour. I am wooden. There’s no contact left, somehow, with old friends.

  • Crash Diet

    You starve yourself, your body as essential as the crust off a bread. Not me – I’m the whole loaf. I rise and fall. I tease the clock. A proud machetti tears me open, warm, white, steaming. Stuffed with tuna, devilled egg, curled like an intestine, I am greedy, Every pink pimento is a fleck…

  • Some Comfort

    Two straight days of sun and the idiot magnolia opens Boston, to cleanse it, pull the bullet of winter. I feel better. The bodies in the river thaw to neon fish, and clouds, sculling. There’s no telling when it will snow again. Blossoms are words in the long-winded streets: landed absences, long-distance calls for relief….