• Horse Chestnuts

    William Logan

    Summer 2017

    The hard-polish, bank-floor
    sheen of horse chestnuts
    fall after fall showered us

    with naval mines
    fertile in the gloom,
    each erotic as a Madonna

    or the rosary beads of nuns.
    My shrine lay deep in the closet
    as the trees refused their vintage,

    leaves baked in winter’s air.
    In the dawn of March,
    I opened that armory

    to a spring moldy with verdigris.

    William Logan’s new book of poetry, "Rift of Light," will be published by Penguin in October. His book of new readings of canonical poems, "Shelley's Wrinkled Lip, Smith's Gigantic Leg," will be published next spring by Columbia University Press.

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    The Ocean Next Door

    Ben Loory

    One night, the woman has a dream that the ocean moves in next door. She can see it in there rolling around, as she stares out the window across the hedge. Somehow the ocean's all lit up from below—light's sparkling through the clear blue waves—and the white-capped peaks are moving back and forth.

    Letters Home from College: The Making of a Writer

    Merrill Joan Gerber

    My first roommate, blond Betty Lu Butterfield, was desperate to be chosen by a sorority, and she made fun of me as I typed on my typewriter. She said things like: “Writing another poem, Merrill? Writing the great American novel, Merrill?” Betty Lu had six crinolines, all crammed into her side of the closet. Her bras were pink lace and padded, and her girdle was made of some kind of brown rubber.

    #4 - Richard Russo

    Richard Russo

    I want my marching orders. I want to enter the fray, to storm the beach, like my father did. I want a big task, which probably means I’m ignoring a hundred small ones. Maybe that’s the job I’ve been slow to identify: Maybe we all need to make a list of things that we can do.

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