Contents

Articles

Ehab’s Wife



For me, Jesus’ home is my husband’s, and it is also the birthplace of my extra-American consciousness. I was never allowed to see it as a tourist. I never listened to a tour guide’s simplistic…



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Embracing the Flesh: In Praise of the Natural Man



Ten years ago I cut to pieces another human being. Using scalpel, electric bone saw and tweezers, and blunt dissection, I slowly removed the flesh from her body over a six-month period. I was never arrested, nor charged with any crime. In fact, I was encouraged by the society around me. It was considered part of the learning process. 



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New York City Rain



WEDNESDAY—ALL MY LUGGAGE IS SOAKED and I tore the sleeve of my brand new overcoat in the subway station. Elder Sessions told me not to look away if I noticed someone staring. “Just stare them…



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Fiction

Maisie Prayed



Did I do the right thing? Maisie Clay is forty-three years old and here she is, sitting on a tombstone in a cemetery in the middle of the night. She is here because she wants…



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The Spirit of ’76



We are nothing but matter, configured into a mass of atoms, configured into molecules, and locked irrefutably into a predetermined arrangement of cells by their genetic codes that link us billions of years to the…



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Letters to the Editor

Poetry

She and He: Alternatives



—Or on summer evenings as the sky 
Draws down its light, prodding the question why 

They sit in cast-off wicker furniture, 
The kids cross-legged as though the lawn made a shore



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Basic Training



We were like filings, lifted straight 
As though a magnet stiffened up 
Our figures like the hair upon 
Our closely cropped skulls. But we, 



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Reviews