For a map, we say we used to run fast, /
so fast we had to leave it there.
-John Gallaher, "Everything You Know That Isn't True" in Number 77
Nights on the farm /
eggplants unbutton and sing
-Molly Bashaw, "Every Time I Have Never Been Here Before" in Number 77
Look inward, already the curved / keepsake is growing.
-Ray Amorosi, "About Angels" in Number 77
the HMOs even now closing in, /
the border ever receding.
-Kevin Ducey, "W. Benjamin opens for the Plasmatics" in Number 77
I considered myself lucky to notice /
on my walk a mouse ducking like a culprit . . .
-Billy Collins, "Thieves" in Number 77
Your memory of the dead man is a child's balloon, and where is that off to?
-Marvin Bell, "The Book of the Dead Man (Decomposition)" in Number 77
for some time now it's been / just you / and these goddamn birds.
-Charlie Smith, "Just Now" in Number 77
Finishing all of your sentences /
as if they were questions, he accuses you /
of changing the subject.
-Patrick Moran, "Dopplegangster" in Number 77
Johnny flashes diamonds and gold / Frankie knows only what her mother said
-Robert Bense, "River Town Longueurs" in Number 77
There are worse things / than music, you tell me, / reaching for the knife / I find I'm holding in my hand.
-G. C. Waldrep, "The Dream of Egypt" in Number 77
No one needs to answer to eternity
-Emmanuel Moses, translated by Marilyn Hacker, "from Preludes and Fugues ..."
As if I know what /
I'm doing, he marries /
me.
-Lucy Anderton, "Not Something To Be Captured . . ." in Number 77
Singular we are / stunning. In horde / we are dense differing / dream.
-Emily Rosko, "Timbered" in Number 77
The robberies started during the hottest time of the year ... The first victims were an Indian family, and all around the wealthier suburbs, other Indians looked up at their houses and wondered ...
-Akshay Ahuja, "The Gates" in Number 77
Hello to generations that etcetera as we watch.
-Jennifer Militello, "A Dictionary at the Turn of the Millennium" in Number 77
Max Donaldson was a waxy, whiskey-logged financier who knew his son not to be stupid, and knew himself to be less stupid than his son. He blamed the mother.
-Tess Wheelwright, " Max Donaldson and His Son" in Number 77
Little evening, I walk across the stone bridge, helloing the river, without thinking
-Melissa Kwasny, "Clairvoyance (Little Evening)" in Number 77
The dead man is of the future, but he will not breathe a word of it.
-Marvin Bell, "The Book of the Dead Man (Kiss Kiss)" in Number 77
Now you hunger / no longer, for the green is all fingers, and the fence / of the body sleeps
-Mark Irwin, "About" in Number 77
I live in the laundry room, this half of it. Scott, Paul's dad, he rigged up a wall, a pre-fab from Home Depot, and Paul and I leaned it in place while he tightened the screws. I like to be helpful.
-Chris Gavaler, "The Hole It Would Leave" in Number 77
I know an echo that wants to change its mind.
-Dara Wier, "Are You Happy?" in Number 77
So much is happening in secret, but right before our eyes.
-David Keplinger, "Near the Amphitheater in Gubbio" in Number 77
He was also the one who dispensed sugar cubes / of Salk vaccine when the whole world / lined up single-file up and down the block
-Leonard Kress, "Law of Resemblances" in Number 77
If there were not a nest of pillows then the / Persian flaw would be a sweeter scald.
-Theodore Worozbyt, "Cavalcade of Stars" in Number 77
Greta called acting normal
glossing over the truth. She called it forgetting. I
called it facing reality or moving forward, Greta
said I was living a lie, and so on . . .
-K. F. Enggass, "I Hope To God You Smoke" in Number 77
We grew from large children into adults. Now halfway back to / children again. Boxes full of the litter of our lives are scattered about. Like / on that day we first opened the door.
-David Shumate, "Moving Away from Home" in Number 77
Between radius and tumored ulna, /
crepidis softening bone to sponge . . .
-Laurie Clements Lambeth, "Not to Praise" in Number 77
One dawn /
when I jogged along the towpath by her boat, /
a nightgown waved from splintered ice.
-Henry Hart, "Winter of Discontent, England 1978-79" in Number 77
This is the woman who listened to your report
of every clue Nancy Drew encountered, every
turn in the path of detection. You approached
each retelling as a test. Why?
-Claire Guyton, "The 7 Stages of a Parental Visit" in Number 77
"Thanks for calling, sweetie," says Russell. "Is
it very hot there?" he begins to ask, but she has
already hung up the phone.
-Christine Byl, "Tell Me Something about Arizona" in Number 77
Myra bent down to look into a shell. The
ants each had bits of meat on their backs. They
dropped off the side of the porch into the grass.
Fiction Randy DeVitaGuarding MaryTri-State Security seeks self-help: “04:00: Mobile patrols suspended.”
Marjorie CelonaThis Is When I Love You the MostBobbie sneaks into Mr. Radcliffe’s office.
Essay Kat MeadsWhat Lies in Closets“The night the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped the heiress...” The Patty Hearst tell-all files revisited.
Poetry “Edges pretend that / one thing ends” Gail WronskyKevin DuceyDaneen WardropKevin ClarkEmmanuel Mosestranslated by Marilyn HackerAlbert GoldbarthMarianne BoruchFabio Morábitotranslated by Kathleen SnodgrassDeborah BogenAdrian C. LouisChristopher HowellLeon StokesburyPeter KlineAll this and more.
Cover art by David Ellis. Panel from Flow. 2007. Silver enamel and black gesso on tobacco-stained paper. Courtesy of the artist.
Table of Contents
Fiction
Randy DeVita Guarding Mary
Marjorie Celona This Is When I Love You the Most
Becky Hagenston Midnight, Licorice, Shadow
Miranda Beverly-Whittemore Pertussis
Steven Schwartz Blockage
Essay
Kat Meads What Lies in Closets
Poetry
Gail Wronsky When This Warm Scribe My Hand
Kevin Ducey relativity Cathar Kinks
Daneen Wardrop Tracks, Spread Hare, Saint Rows, Own
Kevin Clark Approaching Days
Seth Abramson Idiot House The Home-field
Michele Glazer Trace
Emmanuel Moses Monsieur Néant en alpiniste miraculé Mr. Nobody As The Last Mountaineer you will not know tu ne connaîtras pas Et je les tuai tous And I Killed Them All translated by Marilyn Hacker
Albert Goldbarth Party 2006
Lance Larsen Owner’s Manual To Jouissance
Hadara Bar-Nadav I Would Have Starved a Gnat The Angle of a Landscape
Marianne Boruch In the hospital parking lot The mosquito brings you blood, it
Michael Robins In This Quiet Shop of Song The Birds of Massachusetts Bay
Rosalynde Vas Dias Silent Defense
Nicolas Hundley The Blood You Let Fathering the Machine
Beth Marzoni After Viewing Cold, Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991) by Cornelia Parker
Fabio Morábito Cuarteto de Pompeya Pompeii Quartet translated by Kathleen Snodgrass
Deborah Bogen What We Know about Ghost Images Using a Blue Willow Pattern, the Anesthesiologist Explains the Procedure
K. A. Hays Psalm against a Rapture Isaac in the Mosaic at San Vitale
Adrian C. Louis Respite
Jeff Walker Itchy Is As Scratchy Does
Alessandra Lynch “Who mothered you? Silence and grass.” “First, air and light suffuse us—daylily, oriole, dust—"
John M. Anderson Line Drawing: Thurber’s Brother Shoots Him in the Eye with an Arrow Church Vault
Christopher Howell Another Letter to the Soul Marsh
Leon Stokesbury Midway
Peter Kline Unfathomer Insomnia
David Petruzelli Lost Hopper
Gail Wronsky Beneath the Ganges Where it is Dark Hatching in the Eucalyptus Tree Go On, Sure, Why Not
