Issue 18

You limp the way a stream will soothe a single rock and along the bottom remembers this path as darkness and dry leaves though you don’t look down —you hear it’s raining: the hush not right now [...]

For some they are probably handsome young men smiling widely, as in some bright photographed moment once long ago; for others, tough, demanding women uncompromising in the rigor of their wishes; [...]

So, Zweig, the famous Buchenwald boy really was protected, hidden from the guards, saved by the Communist inmates—the four year old finally carried out on their shoulders, compassion’s proof [...]

Age or accident defeats us all, and the Bring-Down is the same. When is it not a tragedy, that call back to extinction, life’s game fizzled? My friend’s just born son, born too soon to beat back [...]

Eliza Park, New Orleans, 1838 I unlace my shift, stand at the basin, breasts cold against the porcelain bowl. My hands are numb, my breath makes ghosts in the room. I loosen my braids, lift a [...]

Eliza Park, New Orleans, 1838 He dresses me, buries his face in my hair. I grab his arm, reach for my shawl, pull him out to the courtyard. In the oil lamp’s flickering rim, I watch the [...]

I admit it beckons me, that storied place of harps and hymns and haloed seraphim. I confess I lift eyes skyward; that I raise my hands toward the stars, and that I dream of wings. But the [...]

Doves flute in peeling eucalyptus trees. Rain pit-pit-pits off lance-point leaves, and pings into expanding bullseyes on Descano Pond. Red-wings ride bucking tules at the water’s edge. Beside [...]

from Virgil's Aeneid, VII, 803–817 The best for last: Camilla at the head Of her cavalry, a warrior queen not bred For girlish tasks and weaving at the loom, She strides before her squadrons all [...]

I’ve nothing to glorify! What image or substance must be more mine than this wonderful, stereo tide? It seems like shadow from the wrong side. It doesn’t mirror me in the fern, but casts light, [...]