Elizabeth Murphy

[B]ecause you can make anything into an object by treating it this way.

I haven’t made a study of love.

EMMANUEL MERLE (TRANSLATION BY PETER BROWN) Atomic City A plain amid the Rockies, a valley so large You might forget your name, that being born here Gives you a secret identity you may only reveal In Craters of the Moon, who remember in their blackened Corridors that they are the pores of the volcano Earth.

At the far south end of the boardwalk, one door down from the entrance to the Tropicana, the window of a Hooters franchise advertises its famous buffalo wings.

“Why haven’t I / written more love letters?”  When remembering Rane Arroyo, this the last line of his poem “A Fake Owl,” will probably always come to mind.

1. The photograph reproduced on the front of the current issue, and below, was taken in Manhattan’s Central Park during the early years of the Great Depression.