AGNI 67
Contents
Editor's Note
In the Commissaries of Hell
Essays
Stitches
On Not Being Proust: An Essay in Literary Failure
Alberto de Lacerda: A Remembrance
Visions of Gerard
Crucibles: The Orchestration of Surprise
A Note on Steven Berg’s Rimbaud: “. . . still unilluminated I . . .”
By David Rivard
Fiction
Professor Arecibo
By Ken Kalfus
Drill and Song Day
Translated from the Russian by Andrea Gregovich and Mikhail Iossel
Connected
Poetry
Epiphany
His Knowledge of Having Done So
Against the Neighbors, Bury Bottles
By Amy Beeder
Silverfish
By Amy Beeder
The Charges Are Stalking & Arson
By Amy Beeder
Skin Trade
By Nicky Beer
Dark Harbor
The Last Days of Jaco Pastorius
By Bruce Bond
Tedium
Litany of Resistance
Tigers
In Maryland
By Stephen Burt
A Walk in the Morning Sun
By Stephen Burt
Ancestor
By René Char
Lichens
By René Char
The Thinker
À la Turka
By Joanne Diaz
How Graceland’s Decorator Landed the Gig
By Matt Donovan
Bullied Into Thoughts About the Body & Desire at the Colorado State Fair
By Matt Donovan
Two Songs About the Work of Hands
By Matt Donovan
Bessie Smith’s Last Recorded Song
By Matt Donovan
Andante con Variazioni
By Rita Dove
Seduction Against Exterior Pilaster, Waning Gibbous
By Rita Dove
Staffordshire Figurine, 1825
By Rita Dove
Nihilism: Eugene O’Neill at Sea
By Steve Gehrke
Morphine: Eugene O’Neill Remembering
By Steve Gehrke
Prayers for a Giant
By David Havird
Song for the Returns
By Todd Hearon
Tell Me
By Mark Irwin
Table of Contents
By Mark Irwin
The Right to Slap Butts, If He Wants
By Lance Larsen
The Procession
On the Milkman
from Sonnets to Orpheus: Part 1, Sonnets 5 and 6
Translated from the German by Lorne Mook
The Sweet Crime of a Waltz
Circular Drives
Huang’s Tao Te Ching
A Promise
By Tom Sleigh
Kafka Variations
By Tom Sleigh
Claw
By Tom Sleigh
Devotion: Fly
By Bruce Smith
Devotion: Dub
By Bruce Smith
Kinzua
A Sea-Change
“Afternoon. Durrant’s…”
“Perhaps it exists . . .”
Bébert
Event Horizon
Just These Miracles
Voice and transformation. This issue features a deep reckoning of friendship by Roland Merullo, a recollection of a mentor by Jhumpa Lahiri, and sharp, smart idiosyncracies by Sarah Gorham and David Rivard. Playing against these are antic and bittersweet stories by Perle Besserman, Ken Kalfus, and Vladimir Makanin, among others. Here are writers marking how the self broods—broods, and then flips loss onto its turtle back; how it damns the damnable and laughs out at all that is tangled and absurd. Pilar Coover’s hallucinatory visual textures aptly counterpoint the voices, which also include those of poets Matt Donovan, Amy Beeder, Paula Closson Buck, Bruce Smith, and Derek Walcott.