The winner of the 2007 Carter V. Cooper Memorial Prize, Stellar Kim's "Afterglow," as well as the runners-up, Edith Pearlman's "The Little Wife" and Andrea Marcusa's "Donors," will be featured in the Spring 2008 issue of Ontario Review. Also included will be an excerpt, "Secrets," from Wally Lamb's as yet untitled novel-in-progress, and Sheila Kohler's new short story "Night at the Grand Hotel." Poets featured include John Kinsella, Albert Goldbarth, Elizabeth Murawski, and Robert Cording. Reproductions of Pennsylvania Artist Matthew Daub's work will complete the issue.

From Afterglow
by Stellar Kim

Wasn't it cruel, asking a blind man to look at the stars? The question came back to Deb as she watched her husband sitting under his reading lamp that distributed light in soft, even rays across their living room. That's what he was now. Good as blind. Two surgeries had failed to stop the progression of his disease and Carl's eyes, once thrillingly deep set, were now two giant balls of pale blue all but lost behind the thick lenses of his glasses. In the turquoise glow of the lamp, Carl seemed a mere gray shadow occupying the armchair. He stared ahead at nothing in particular, his head thrust forward, the meaning of his face undecipherable. These days he complained that even the fall New England dusk sent painful glares off the windows, kitchen counter, and floors. A full year out of daylight had drained the color from his face and body.

Deb read aloud the headlines in The Worcester Telegram & Gazette. There was a lengthy feature on the budget deadlock between the House and the Senate, an announcement about that afternoon's Columbus Day celebrations, and an op-ed piece about Islam and violence. She waited for Carl to say he wanted her to read him a particular story. She lingered over the small headline that announced "Meteor Storm of the Century." Again, she felt the same sensation she'd had coming across the article earlier in the day. Her cheeks grew warm, and after bringing the paper up to her face, she reminded herself that her husband could barely distinguish the chicken from the pasta on his dinner plate, much less see her become flushed.

Deb could only imagine what the world was like for Carl now. What did he see when he looked at her? In a selfish way, she was glad his image of her would forever be sealed in her mid-fifties. Certainly not at her prime, but before her body became morphed by deep wrinkles, the accumulation of fat in surprising places, and the expansion of hips. Lately, she avoided prolonged self scrutiny. In front of the hallway mirror, she paused only for the brief moment it took to deposit her keys and loose change into the ceramic bowl and then to hang her coat on the hook. And when she brushed her teeth at night, she found herself keeping her eyes on the sink basin, the shower, the toilet - anything but the fogged up vanity mirror. What she did see in her reflection was a woman much older than she should be, than she felt herself to be. Her face had become fully rounded out by the hormones that dipped and peaked, and for the first time, she could see she would look precisely as her mother had late in life. Her lips, permanently dry, were circled by a soft down of hair that darkened even as the hair around her temples grayed. By some cruel turn of the universe, her breasts, which in her younger days always filled her shirts no matter how hard she tried to hide them, had become deflated, it seemed, almost overnight. She hadn't questioned their buoyancy, had simply considered them as a permanent fixture of her body, but now they rested like two useless weights on her chest - pointless, burdensome things. She looked at Carl. He sat with his hands gripping the armrest as if he were guarding himself against a fall from a moving chair. His unfocused eyes blinked to a regular beat. A slight but now constant frown made him appear slightly bull-dog faced and equally irritated and confused. No, it'd hardly matter anymore were she to sit across her husband at the dining table dressed in nothing but hairpins and underwear.

"We should get up for this," she said. "Starting at about 4 am, the East Coast will have a clear view of the best meteor shower likely to be seen this century," she read in the dry tone she imagined a scientist might use.

It was cruel, asking a man who saw the world in a haze to try to find particles no bigger than grains fleeting across the vastness of the sky. Still, she made her case.

"We can get up early, make eggs, and have a nice morning for ourselves." She smiled at him, thinking he might at least sense her smile, if not actually see it.

"Whatever you want." He didn't give anything away in his assent.

Deb would expect nothing less of her husband. With her, he was always accommodating. But nowadays, he sat on that thin line separating patience and indifference. She would've understood any other reaction: anger, self-pity, languishing in gloom. Instead, he became simply silent and resigned. It might've been easier if her husband were man she could come to hate.

"Canto of the Dry River Empyrean (30)"
by John Kinsella

We cross river after river,
dry deep into their beds, riparian
fragility, cauterizing winds

whipping sand and dust
into an effluvium of white rose
we imagine, brought in

from elsewhere. I clarify.
I see lightning in cloudless
skies. I see luscious fruits

burgeoning out of riverbanks.
I taste and see synonyms
for beauty plash against

the windscreen. All I see
is perfectly out of kilter.
All levels are levelled out.
We cross river after river.

"Minghun"
By Elisabeth Murawski

A family has lost a daughter.
She will be our dead son's
bride. We pay 10,000 yuan
to the fixer. It doesn't matter

she is plain, if she died
by drowning or with fever.
Was she stupid? Clever?
Single, she qualified.

Now our son can't complain
he has no wife. And she
will climb our family tree
in the afterlife. A crane

files overhead, the sign
of longevity. Whose?
Not our son's. Maybe those
Who loved him? The line

of mourners winds uphill
to the burial ground.
Yellow soil's heaping in a mound,
waiting and final.

We've killed a pig, chickens,
for the feast. Side
by side, the dead lie wed
in their coffins.