Volume 44, Issue 3

BEGINNING WITH night-thoughts in Robert Abel's basement, shadows of struggle and memory ripple through this issue. Ravi Howard's star-sided green car moves inexorably through town. Green uniforms drop around ankles in Selena Flowers'"Before the Fall of Saigon." In Marvin Bell's "Watch," "beachcombers return with rakes / and metal detectors to search for the past." A roller-coaster rattles above a lost Revere Beach in Evelyn Shakir's remembrance. In Lynn Margulis' and Ricardo Guerrero's new version of Lorca, "I took off my tie. / She dropped her dress. / I unbuckled my gunbelt."

At the center, Michael Lenson recalls the WPA. But then there is Robert Vivian s "The Fog Sleepers," where oblivion threatens everything. The flesh itself melts in Melissa Fraterrigo's "The Attached Couple." Anne Silver loves fraud. An aunt brings more than memory in an orange Manchurian trunk, as Maxim Shrayer tells it. By turns the fog clears and gathers again.

This issue is dedicated to Mary Heath. Having herself just co edited with Anne Halley MR's monumental gathering for Jules Chametzky (4401/2), she has chosen to step down from her editorial post to become a contributing editor. She has served this magazine in every possible way, even as managing editor, over a great swath of its history. Possessed of enormous charm and rare manners, she turns discreetly venomous at the sight of a sentimental story, or an essay with a broken wheel on its train of thought. The "new" editorial team (now here for a couple of years) will be forever grateful for her support and advice over a period of sometimes difficult change. We'll be sure that she never really escapes.

David Lenson
for the editors

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