ISSUES | summer 1985
8.3 (Summer 1985)
Featuring work by Sandra Scofield, Bharati Mukherjee, Susan Land, Bret Lott, Charles Kuschinski, Margaret Hermes, Ron Carlson, Ninotchka Rosca, Wing Tek Lum, Vern Rutsala, James Camp, Gary Brozio, Greg Pape, Colleen J. McElroy, Mark Jarman, Edward Hirsch, Jeffrey Greene, Michael Pettit, Brenda Hillman, Andrew Hudgins, William Trowbridge, Walter McDonald, Pattiann Rogers, Len Roberts, Patricia Phillippy and John Drury. Also, an interview with Jim Harrison.
CONTENT FROM THIS ISSUE
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
Urban Love Songs
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
Marx in Algiers
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
Poetry Feature: Vern Rutsala
“Slinging Hash”
“Relatives”
Fiction
Jun 01 1985
The Parachutists
It is Abilene’s idea to try an Arab restaurant. She has never had Arabic food , and the idea, in Mecio City has particular appeal. She has heard of a place just off the Zocalo, in a neighborhood where cheap yard good are sold. Isabel’s sister Ceci and her voluble student friends go along, knowing that Isabel, a money-lender, will pay for it.
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
Santa Cruz, the Wharf
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
The Horses of Santo Domingo
Fiction
Jun 01 1985
The Lady from Lucknow
WHEN I WAS FOUR, one of the girls next door fell in love with a Hindu. Her father intercepted a lovenote from the boy, and beat her with his leather… read more
Interviews
Jun 01 1985
An Interview with Jim Harrison
“I want to create a hero who was free from dread.”
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
Green River Prelude for a Serial Murder
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
Human Geography
Fiction
Jun 01 1985
Coda
When Charlie’s brother called and said he was moving to Israel, Charlie thought it was the first line of a joke. But Leon was serious. “We’ve sold the house. The closing was this morning.”
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
The Skokie Theatre
Twelve years old and lovesick, bumbling and terrified for the first time in my life,but strangely hopeful, too, and stunned, definitely stunned—I wanted to cry, I almost started to sob… read more
Fiction
Jun 01 1985
Burglars
We stood in front of the Springers’ house, Gary Erickson with his his four-ten, Henry Forrester with a Luger, and me with a 30.06. We were pointing our guns at two burglars holding Ted and Mary Springers’ television set, ready to load it into the back of their van.
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
The Coat
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
Moving
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
Tom McAfee Discovery Feature: Patricia Phillippy
“Bermuda High”
“Monuments”
“The Garden”
“Jewels (In Three Acts)”
“Astrophel”
Nonfiction
Jun 01 1985
Terra Infirma
Her face was swollen and on one side flushed with injected dye. Stubble surrounded a plastic bubble on the top of her head. Her hair had gown back curly after the radiation treatments, a mild gray like ash. She held her back stiffly, and when she stood, she felt pain in the back of her neck that seemed to emanate from the purple surgical scar.
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
Poetry Feature: Michael Pettit
“Watson at the Railroad Crossing”
“Watson Quits the Track”
“Home Again”
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
Arroyo
A child looks down the ditch that is childhood and wonders how long it goes on: weeds walking out of the loved desolation, mica winking in the killer sun. All… read more
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
Poetry Feature: William Trowbridge
“G.I. Joe from Kokomo”
“Sunday School Lesson from Capt. Daniel Mayhew, USAAF, Ret.”
Fiction
Jun 01 1985
Frying Pan
“COMING HOME TO MY APARTMENT building on a hot Saturday afternoon, I saw my new downstairs neighbor, Sydney, hunched over on the stoop, his head sun between his fists.”
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
from "Saints and Strangers"
Fiction
Jun 01 1985
Frontier Justice
“SHE WAITED IN A LOBBY hardly bigger than a parking space for the trial to resume–with jurors, spectators, plaintiff, defendant all sharing the same thin air, the same thin conversation. That was one difference between this court and most in the lower forty-eight.”
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
Rigging the Windmill
Fiction
Jun 01 1985
At the Hop
“I’M TRYING TO SING the most popular song of the year,”The Hop,” by Danny and the Juniors as I whip the towel around my arms and legs. I’m not much at grooming. It’s hard to sing it for more than a minute without stopping and thinking you’re silly.”
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
How the Whale Forgets the Love of Felicia
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
The Driving
Nonfiction
Jun 01 1985
The Beautician and the One-Legged Man
Weekends the sawmill shut down, and only chuffed an occasional white plume into the blue air to show the boiler was still alive. So Saturday morning, when I got up early to drive Aunt Lucille to the post office, the town was quiet, only a few farm pickups and dogs hanging around the corner store. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but as she got out to the car and stepped onto the board sidewalk, she said quickly over her shoulder, “I want to see if there’s a letter from my honey.”
Poetry
Jun 01 1985
The Biblical Garden
Fiction
Jun 01 1985
Epidemic
It occurred to Lazaro Reyes, M.D., that if he could kill one child, just one child, everything would be all right again. The problem was to find the child. Having found him, Lazaro would know what to do:a quick glide of the scalpel across the throat, the body hung by its feet over the garden faucet drain. He was sure his hands wouldn’t tremble; he would not hesitate. Such was his rage against that face of innocence: black mop of hair, brown-gold eyes, snub nose and full lips, atop a lanky body within filthy, loose clothes.