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Book Review: In Which I Play the Runaway

Madeleine Wattenberg In Which I Play the Runaway Rochelle Hurt Barrow Street Press, 2016 ISBN 978-0-9973184-2-5 Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the differences between establishing voice through the use of “you” or “we” or “I”. Which asks the reader to enter and enact the experience of the poem? Which implicates the reader and…

March Birthday

Cathy Baker   Now, when rain slaughters the snow, when old cats fish at gutters and we have grown above mud, the wind is at our backs. We sail on the kiteback, We follow the child chasing Its forward foot. Below us is the parent who cannot run for watching. White rags circle behind to…

The Pain between Departure and Return

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George Mosby, Jr.   he visits the old oak tree which he left his heart carved in so many years before it is summer when he returns but his tree carries no leaves and his heart has rotted from in the bark only a trace of the arrow he pierced it with still exists: it’s…
Cover by Dorothy Langdon

The Store

Leslie Woolf Hedley   It was an ordinary store and I saw it every day. Especially in the morning. After office hours I noticed nothing but that bus to rescue me from depressing San Francisco streets. But during early morning moments there’s some abstract appearance of cleanliness, the atmosphere less pathological. There’s an illusion of…

Overarching Genre: An Interview with Stuart Dybek on Writing Fiction and Poetry

Ryan Effgen   Lyricism is a trademark of Stuart Dybek’s writing. The music of his prose and the dreamlike shifts throughout his narratives have his readers frequently describing his stories as poetic. He is the author of two short story collections, Childhood and Other Neighborhoods (1980) and The Coast of Chicago (1990), as well as…

The Last Trick

Issue 6.4 May 1977 Antonis Samarakis (translated by Andrew Horton)   The arrests were made last night. After midnight. That’s only natural: arrests which are intended to be “quality,” the most impressive arrests on record around the world, are made late at night or early in the morning because the trick is to get you…

The Knife

Antonis Samarakis (translated by Andrew Horton)   Thank god he had time to shave. Lately he had often shown up unshaven, and although she said nothing about it and had given no sign that it bothered her, he didn’t wish to appear always to her as if he had just escaped from Devil’s Island. “You…

Landscape with Condoms

Mordecai Marcus 1 The park was boats, ducks, people, but more than these always the discarded condom: stretched out, showing its slime, or heaped in a coil. Seen from a distance it slowly took shape and became itself, while a sharp intake of breath twisted my body towards the world of its use, eons away,…

Book Review: The Uneaten Carrots of Atonement

Sherry Chandler   The Uneaten Carrots of Atonement. by Diane Lockward Wind Publications ISBN 978-0-9969871-1-0   Those who come to Diane Lockward’s The Uneaten Carrots of Atonement expecting her usual lush color won’t be disappointed, though they may be surprised—three of the book’s five sections end with a poem addressed to a color. But bright…

Drive/In

Jim Everhard   the screen was bigger than the sky/bigger than dream/ what massive eyeballs/the size of blimps/ hindenbergs aflame with desire/lips as large as loch ness monsters/ bulletholes like flaming hoops in a cyclops’ circus/ the sherriff’s badge/a nova for the good guys/ black hats like milkyways of cruelty/how can I please you in…