Issue 31: Fall 1999

Fiction/Memoir
Anjali Banerjee | Bernice Casier | Margaret Haller Penny Perry | Pearl Canick Solomon

Poetry
Carol Atkins | Norma Chapman | Evelyn James | Billie English Lieberman Laura Littleford | Shirley Rida | Steven Sher | Ruth Stone | Allen C. West

Editors for Issue 31
Mary Azrael
Rebecca Childers
Kendra Kopelke
Kathleen Fantom Shemer

Graphic Design
Mary Clark

Absence Proves Nothing

By noon I can't stop writing.
I'm on the back of last night,
a reverse gallop.
Last night I lay turning—asking—
what is the telephone pole good for
if not the woodbine?
Because of men, women translate fear.
Thus, all women present subliminally.
That the killer did not come last night
proves nothing.
At night what is a glass window?
Only a dark space reflecting yourself.
Only a lens for the one outside.

Ruth Stone

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Cigarettes, an American Ghazal

At two o'clock in the morning my father coughs louder than the train that woke him.
I smell the Camel he lights.

The snake dance lady teaches me to inhale.
My mother in a Silver Spring house loses the contents of her womb.

A Chesterfield sticks to my mother's upper lip.
It dances while she talks.

There is a cigarette in this apartment somewhere.
I will find it.

At home, I feed my mother Pablum while her body decomposes.
My father lays down an oak plank for his floor, leaves his perfect ash in a white saucer.

After my last Pall Mall, I scrape viscous slime from the three windows,
present the old smoke to the Potomac River. Drink it.

Norma Chapman

continue to Issue 30: The Immigrant Issue