ISSUES | spring 1989
12.1 (Spring 1989)
Featuring the works of Chinua Achebe, David Baker, Walter Bargen, Jim Barnes, Kay Bonetti, Sharon Bryan, Michael Burns, Michael Collier, Glover Davis, Deborah Digges, Sascha Feinstein, H. E. Francis, Reginald Gibbons, Linda Hasselstrom, Ellen Herman, Jeffrey Harrison, John Hindelbrand, Andrew Hudgins, Richard Katrovas, William Kloefkorn, Candida Lawrence, Sydney Lea, Ellen Lesser, Stuart Lishan, Leslie Adrien Miller, Christopher Millis, Penelope Moffet, Robert Pope, Umberto Saba, Cathy Song, Gary Soto, Nancy Schoenberger, Marjorie Sinclair, Roberta Spear, Ann Townsend, Eric Tretheway, Robert Vasquez, Michael White, Gary Young… a found text by Sherwood Anderson… and an interview with Chinua Achebe.
CONTENT FROM THIS ISSUE
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
Monk's Mood
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
Poetry Feature: Walter Bargen
“Yet Other Waters”
“Rumors of Your Death”
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
Sun, Rising
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
Poetry Feature: David Baker
“Domestic of Hope”
“Domestic of Terror”
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
Gill Netting the Beaver Pond
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
After the Annual Convention
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
Illuminating Manuscripts
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
Armona
Nonfiction
Mar 01 1989
Change of Circumstance
Eleven o’clock. Olivia sleeps with her head in my lap, Tony asleep in the backseat. I turn on the radio and for the first time I listen for news of a mother with two children, last seen in Berkeley, California, at 9:20 p.m., Thursday evening, August 12.
Nonfiction
Mar 01 1989
Friends of a Stranger
In October of 1962, when I flipped my pale-blue jacket over my shoulder and walked to the bus stop, I was sixteen years old, and a great deal had already occurred to change my life. As I walked, I watched my brothers pedaling their unicycles down the street to the left, their bright scarves flying from their throats, unfurling flags of red and yellow. In a rain of leaves which picked up the colors of my brother’s scarves, I fel extremely peaceful, from the bus stop, I ran into Killer–his eyes nervous, scanning the sidewalk, the grass, the trees for the slightest movement, drawn now to a tumbling leaf, again to the high, flitting tail of a black squirrel which seemed to follow us with a high-strutting jump and jump.
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
On the Origins of Rainbows: Moonlight Gives an Interview
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
Media Years
Fiction
Mar 01 1989
Cottages and Frozen River
For six months, Richard had his own office, windowless and spare. Then management hired a new programmer. Richard had hoped for a quiet man with a need for privacy that matched his own. But the new programmer seemed never to be quiet. His sneakers, gray with age and too large, squeaked when he walked and tapped the floor when he was at his desk. Seated, he muttered to himself, his long fingers strumming the plastic markers that stuck out of his open file drawer. He talked to his computer screen in a low, urgent voice, as if egging on a favorite horse. The walls of Richard’s office became pimpled with notes the programmer wrote to himself on yellow tabs he stuck to the wall, where they accumulated, their edges fluttering under the ceiling ventilator like a new kind of weather.
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
Magnets
Fiction
Mar 01 1989
Eating Air
This story is not currently available online. When the ride got bumpy over the Adirondacks, Rachel’s hand automatically reached for the bakery box, strapped in on the seat next to… read more
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
Pyromania
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
After Reading Several Pages of Panoffsky Over A Cup of Coffee in La Marquise
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
Mekong Restaurant, 1988
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
Poetry Feature: Jeffrey Harrison
“Summer Memory”
“Night Visions”
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
Night Song in Verano
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
The Heavy Light of Shifting Stars
This poem was selected as Poem of the Week (Jan. 21, 2008). The Heavy Light of Shifting Stars Sometimes the nite is the shape of a ear only it… read more
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
What I Know About Music
Interviews
Mar 01 1989
An Interview with Chinua Achebe
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
Raising Steel
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
Birthday
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
Four Poems
Fiction
Mar 01 1989
Touching Bottom
The woman I’ve been seeing lately won’t eat wild meat. Her ex-husband had been a hunter, and perhaps he’d been brutal in other ways or simply a bad cook, but his memory has tainted all wild game for her. This seemed a shame the first time I invited her for a duck dinner and she pushed aside the main course to concentrate on the acorn squash, brussel sprouts, and wild rice. She’s a big-boned woman with a rope of wheat-colored hair down her back and vulnerable blue eyes. She’s thinking, she says, of becoming a vegetarian.
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
The Night Joe Louis Went 21-0 By Dropping Tami Mauriello
I’m babysitting the Garlow boy, who is asleep now, and the fight is over, Louis having disposed of the challenger at 2:09 of the opening round. Beside me on… read more
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
Theory
Fiction
Mar 01 1989
The Price of Bullets
I was fourteen that summer, a typical tangle of teen hormones, growing muscles and deep thoughts. Adulthood seemed so close I could almost taste its fine sweet tang, inhale its musky scents, and run my fingers through its hair.
Fiction
Mar 01 1989
A Flight of Bones
He can almost not sleep now. Nod, yes. Doze. Latch onto an easel or drop his head for minutes on a worktable, then squint, stare at the canvas. The figures, myriad infinitesimal hairs of color, fill a great eye reflecting them. Around the eye is nothing. He will get to that, yes. That’s always what he is to get to. He raises his head. The bright light behind sends his dark shadow before him, raises his head too. Then his hand makes a dark bone moving. He loves motion. He stands and his shadow rises into the painting, a dark blight, and totters, weak. His stomach is alive with sound. But he has even less desire to eat than sleep. His desire now is only to move. He wants to see motion, where it leads.
Nonfiction
Mar 01 1989
Contemporary Poetry: Four Anthologies
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
The Girls with Their Tall Combs
Poetry
Mar 01 1989
The Tom McAfee Discovery Feature
Featuring the following poems: The Story The Narcissus Moored Underway Near Light The Dream Fish Creek Falls
Poetry
Mar 01 1988
Stamp Collecting
This poem is not currently available online.