ISSUES | spring 1991
13.3 (Spring 1991): "The Moment of Liberation"
Featuring the work of E.S. Creamer, E.S. Goldman, C.W. Gusewelle, Michael Glenn and Norman Stone, Jonathan Holden, Margret Kerbaugh, Larry Levis, Ian MacMillan, David Ohle, Pattiann Rogers, Abigail Thomas, and Yevgeny Yevtushenko, an interview with Diana O’Hehir, and the found text of Philip Kolin, and Sir Laurence Olivier.
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CONTENT FROM THIS ISSUE
Poetry
Mar 01 1991
Poetry Feature: Jonathan Holden
“Bank”
“The Parable of the Snow Man”
“The Principle of Duality”
“Late November”
“The Crash”
Nonfiction
Mar 01 1991
The Mortified Man
A rural Lawrence man literally found himself in a mess overnight when he got cuaght in the pit of an outdoor privy at Clinton Lake for nearly eight hours. Douglas County Sheriff Loren Anderson reported that the 26-year-old man entered the restroom shortly before 11 p.m. While he was in the outhouse, more than $200 in cash fell out of his pocket and through the hole in the concrete commode. Anderson said the man took off his shoes and socks and tried to reach the money with his toes, but lost his grip and fell in. Anderson said the man struggled throughout the hot, muggy night to get out of the pit. Dave Rhoades, park manager for the U.S. Corps of Engineers at the lake, said the concrete pit is six to seven feet deep and is designed to hold 1,000 to 2,000 gallons of refuse. Currently, he said, the pit is three-fourths full…
Interviews
Mar 01 1991
An Interview with Diana O'Hehir
“With a novel, you live in that world those people for at least a year, and that is delightful.”
“I had a heavy duty urge to write about northern California–those small hot towns with the bright red earth and the bright blue sky.”
Fiction
Mar 01 1991
Possessions Unbearable to Lose
Being friends with my father, Dave, was easy. He never scolded me. My mother took care of that by the time he came home from the store. After dinner I got in his lap and he read the pages I pointed to in thin books. He brought me surprise presents and showed me how to shoot a marble hard off the end of my index finger. No other girl I knew could do that. They all did thumbies with the finger crooked around the shooter.
Nonfiction
Mar 01 1991
Fatal Half Measures
This essay is not currently available online.
Found Text
Mar 01 1991
Found Text: A Letter to Tennessee Williams
This text is not currently available online.
Fiction
Mar 01 1991
Little Berber Girl
Some couples grow apart instead of together until eventually they separate as naturally as children grow apart and flee their sweet homes. Other couples grow apart together, the rift palpable yet unapparent. So it was with Jonathan and me–except that I saw our ending coming. It seemed our ultimate destiny as surely as Zagora, that arid outpost on the edge of the Sahara, was our immediate one.
Fiction
Mar 01 1991
Pop! Goes the Weasel
Mandy’s Mama didn’t like weather. She didn’t like it hot, cold, wet, or dry, but above all she didn’t like it stormy. Mama was very cool and tranquil, and she expected the weather to follow suit. She did not approve of storms. If the truth were known, she was afraid of them.
Poetry
Mar 01 1991
Poetry Feature: Pattiann Rogers
“Three’s Charm”
“Get on Board”
“Seeing the God-statement”
“More Recollection”
“Fellfield”
“By Death”
Poetry
Mar 01 1991
Poetry Feature: Larry Levis
“To A Wren on Calvary”
“Labyrinth As the Erasure of Cries Heard Within It Or: (Mr. Bones I Succeeded…’Later)”
“The Clearing of the Land”
“As It Begins with a Brush Stroke on a Snare Drum”
Nonfiction
Mar 01 1991
The Year I Was Young
I got stuck for a while at the rooming house at No. 15 Gravina Street in Alicante on the southern coast of Spain. On the table beside the bed I counted thirty-five pesetas remaining–about fifty-eight cents–which even in 1960 was no real money at all. I guess I was abut as broke as you can get anywhere without winding up in jail. But, my God, I was living well!
Fiction
Mar 01 1991
The Parade of Martyrs
I walk behind the whores, who are now too exhausted to complain. Next to me walk two French women who do not talk to me. They are as thin as I am but I am Polish thin and they are French thin, and anyway, we don’t know each other’s lanugages. Perhaps even our lice are now separated this way. Theirs are French fat lice and mine are Polish fat lice. Far ahead I can see SS Hauptsturmfuhrer Kuttner’s half-track swaying in the frozen mud of the snaking country road. For the moment we are safe from Kuttner, whose drunkennesss has wasted him into a kind of sitting corpse whose head wobbles and jerks with the unevenness of the road. It is mid-morning, and we have walked since four a.m. This is our third day marching.
Found Text
Mar 01 1991
Found Text: Olivier to Williams: An Introduction
This text is not currently available online.
Poetry
Mar 01 1991
Poetry Feature: Frankie Paino
“One Who Hears”
“Horse Latitudes”
“Against Darkness”
Fiction
Mar 01 1991
A Tooth for Every Child
Louise, who is pushing down the tall grasses near the land of menopause, accepts an invitation from Mona, who is not that far behind. Mona could use the sight of Louise. “I need a drinking companion,” she says. Louise can hear the twins wailing in the background. “We don’t drink anymore,” Louise reminds her. “But we can talk about it, can’t we? Remember pink gins?” “That wasn’t us, Mona, pink gins. That was our grandmothers.” “Don’t quibble, Just get off the bus at Concord. I’ll pick you up.” “I’ll come Friday. Thursday I’ve got my teeth.”
Nonfiction
Mar 01 1991
Escape in the Ocean: Slava Kurilov
It happened one unforgettable night several years ago in the Pacific Ocean near the Philippines. The deck was no longer under my feet. For several moments I flew through the air, until I felt the waves parting, gently welcoming me into their embrace. Coming up to the surface I looked around–and froze in terror. Beside me, an arm’s length away, was the huge hull of the liner and its gigantic turning propellor. I desperately summoned up my strength to swim out of reach, but I was held in the dense mass of stationary water that was coupled to the screw in a mortal grip. It felt as if the liner had suddenly stopped, yet only a few seconds ago it had been doing eighteen knots. The terrifying vibrations of the hellish noise went through my body; the screw seemed to be alive: it had a maliciously smiling face and held me tight with invisible arms.
Poetry
Mar 01 1991
Poetry Feature: Maureen Seaton
“Involved With This Light”
“All Truth Must Conform to Music”
“The Woman Too Large for the Chair”
“Scandals: Karma, Karma”
“Scandals: Wings”
“Scandals: Stuffed”