Last Rights

by Julia Slavin

Originally published on February 1, 2001

     ‘Last Rights’ – by Julia Slavin

Hammy came home.
Late that afternoon, I watched our handsome brother step out of the Mt. Shasta blue Merkur he rented at the airport. I ran down the steps of the porch. “You look beautiful.” I threw my arms around his neck. Hammy and I looked exactly alike. [...]

Morning in Chinatown

by Suzanne Burns

Originally published on February 1, 2001

Vendors slice the skin of brown boxes,
Releasing the vegetable blood
Of green beans strung like beads,
Closed fists of cauliflower,
Sleepy leaves of bok choy.
Pastries gilled like fishes
Swim in metal bins heavy
With plums and brown mushrooms
Curved like noses and toes.
Movement ensues
As tourists photograph
The lions at the gate,
Regal in their burnished skins.
Bodies press in
Close rows to the windows
Of blue [...]

Long Night at the Parsippany Hotel

by Peter Murphy

Originally published on February 1, 2001

In this room where the toilet is wrapped
with a ribbon, where the refrigerator
clears its throat and hums,
where the television clarifies
the wallpaper, the song of maids
making beds lingers
into the evening, its refrain all linen
and vacuums.
I move a chair to the window
and watch stars turn over their engines,
blast on their lights,
drive into the weep hours
when I will [...]

Posted Land

by Ernest O'Brien

Originally published on February 1, 2001

On days as slick as this, holstered on my hip,
I need a sign. The deer are lying low in the hazel thickets,
eyes as bright as oiled bolts, lying low on folded legs
on a mucilage of leaves, lying close to the earth they resemble,
beings long evolved who know what’s good for them,
unlike you and me, who [...]

Noah’s Blessing for the Third Dove

by Holly Frances Pettit

Originally published on February 1, 2001

All of the first day and second, most of the third
I, crippled with cold, froth water and rot
hardly kept Japheth in the gray light of this upper
world. Once the spirit took him and I, drowsing,
barely caught his sash and after many
hard minutes wrenched him back, writhing
from empty air and noxious sea. To this
moment he clings [...]

Between Storms

by R.G. Evans

Originally published on February 1, 2001

All stills in the crush of swollen air.
Tendrils and leaves pull green secrets
into themselves. Things have found
the lowest places and rest there waiting still.
The storm drain knows, thatch-choked
by clipped brown grass.
All along this baked tar road
heat-blown tires lie in strips
as colorful and layered
as the plumes of carstruck pheasants.
Odors of fish meal hang close to the [...]

sy’mbolon

by Ted Warnell

Originally published on February 1, 2001

sy’mbolon is panel two
from The Pi Process

by Ted Warnell – © 2001

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The Determined Days

reviewed by Rachel Barenblat

Originally published on February 1, 2001

Any book praised by Anthony Hecht and John Hollander is likely to be two things: fine tuned and formal. Philip Stephens’ The Determined Days is both.
By “formal,” I mean that Stephens’ verse takes shape in specific and rule-bound ways, not that it is fussy or fancy. I’m not sure I can think of a less-fancy [...]

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reviewed by Emily Banner

Originally published on February 1, 2001

Not long after the publication of her novel The Years, Virginia Woolf attempted to explain the book to a friend. “[W]hat I meant,” she wrote, “was to give a picture of society as a whole; give characters from every side; turn them towards society, not private life; exhibit the effect of ceremonies; keep one toe [...]

Still Life With Oysters and Lemon

reviewed by Rachel Barenblat

Originally published on February 1, 2001

A sharp cracking cold day, the air of the Upper East Side full of rising plumes of smoke from furnaces and steaming laundries, exhaust from the tailpipes of idling taxis, flapping banners, gangs of pigeons. Here on the museum steps a flock suddenly chooses to take flight. I have a backache, I’m weary, and it [...]