BRIEF REVIEWS
Eastern Metaphysics, T'ai Chi, Ebola,
Body and Mind, Mexico, and very bad poetry

THE WEEKLY RALPH
"Ten kids with ten cameras, strolling everywhere,
taking pictures of their families, and the local drunks,
and the local iglesia, and the dogs, and the gangs,
and the graffiti-filled walls, and the street clowns."

ARTICLES
The Jewel is in the Forehead of the Toad
"We send him the original Letter Home ---
writings from the Sargasso Sea of the Soul,
the Hebrides of the Heart,
the Celebes of the psyche."

Letter from Uppland #2
"The Swedes have also dropped the ball
on another, characteristic American-style project:
the endless construction/deconstruction of sports stadia."

READINGS
Boy Meets Gull
"Hirschfeld, with the stolidity of the true peasant,
outdid himself in gluttony.
Bread by the bushel basket, whole beeves, firkins of butter,
and hogsheads of jam vanished down his maw"

Secret Government Report
"In short, the proposed operation
will bring necessary government funds
into the city, erase persistent hard-core unemployment,
give a whole community new self-respect"

POETRY
Hurricane Fred
"Well we battened down the hatches
And sure enough they came millions of them
Moving in off the freeway
Eating doorknobs and drinking fuel
Wanting only to be loved..."

Let Us Then You and I Go Now And Return to The Vale of Tears
"I finally figured out this dying stuff
And thought I'd better tell you before it's too late.
The way it happens is this: we are allowed
To vacate the premises at our leisure..."

LETTERS:
On Anorexia and
On Old Age
"It's because of people like you
that sufferers are sometimes ashamed
to tell their stories..."