ISSUES | winter 1988

11.1 Cover

11.1 (Winter 1988)

Featuring work by Molly Bendall, Christopher Buckley, Peter Cooley, Catherine Dai, Gerald Duff, Robert Farnsworth, Bruce Guernsey, Brooks Haxton, Brenda Hillman, Linda Hogan, Andrew Hudgins, Rodney Jones, Margaret Kaufman, Jane Kenyon, Patrick McGrath, David Mura, Richard Robbins, Pattiann Rogers, Sharman Apt Russell, David R. Schanker, Joseph M. Schuster, Goran Sonnevi, Marcia Southwick, Gerald Stern, and the letters of Sinclair Lewis.

CONTENT FROM THIS ISSUE

11.1 Cover

Fiction

Jan 01 1988

Blood and Water

Imagine first a dignified British butler holding aloft a very large teapot and, followed by a serving maid pushing with some difficulty a tea trolley containing cups and saucers and plates of cucumber sandwiches, advancing the length of a smooth and extensive lawn at the bottom of which flows a river, and on the bank of the river a large weeping willow tree, and in its shade six young people and an elderly dame reclining in arious postures opon tartan horse blankets and swatting idey at the flies. It is August 1936, a cloudless Friday afternoon, and England is at peace.

11.1 Cover

Fiction

Jan 01 1988

The Fox Fairy at the FRA

I waited for him in front of the Fleet Reserve Association’s clubhouse, which towered conspicuously above the one-story shops on either side. When he arrived, it was beginning to rain. He parked his motorbike next to mine under the awning and we hurried to the door. A bunch of Chinese kids stood around, punked-out and looking like they had money to burn, but it was Saturday night and they would have a hard time getting in without a member’s help.

11.1 Cover

Nonfiction

Jan 01 1988

The Mimbres

THREE YEARS BEFORE my husband and I bought land on the Mimbres River, an unusual amount of winter snow and spring rain prompted what locals authoritatively called a “hundred-year flood.” That left us ninety-seven years. We were also reassured by the large dikes built by the Army Corps of Engineers between our agricultural field and the river-bed. These dense gray mounds of gravel, contained improbably with heavy mesh wire, were ten feet high, twelve feet at the base, and ugly. They efficiently blocked our view of the river which, at that time, was not much of a loss. Although things were to change quickly, when we came to southwestern New Mexico the price of copper stood high, unemployment was low, and–on our land–the Mimbres River stretched bone-dry.