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selected past writing at 42opus
Editor's Note: Previously Unpublished Writers Feature by BRIAN LEARY
The writers included in this month may not have yet been published elsewhere but their writing shows the same promise as any of the other writers we publish. The same attention to craft, to character. To line, and to voice. But I also found in these works a sincerity, an earnestness even, that extended through the brasher, wilder styles of chaotic energy just as into the more conservative voices. This sincerity seemed to me proof that these poems and stories were not so much created to be poems and stories but to be vehicles for emotion and meaning.
1 September 2007 | nonfiction, letter from the editor, unpublished writers
From the Book of Opportune Moments by MARK MELTON
On my way home from work today
I met a man who didn't exist.
He showed me his two front teeth, grinning
as he held them up to my eyes.
2 March 2002 | poetry
Wanting to Open It and Opening It by LAURA MCCULLOUGH
The durian fruit stinks
like you killed your grandmother
and stuffed her under
the living room couch…
23 February 2007 | poetry
Hermann and Dorothea: 3. Thalia by JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Thus did the modest son slip away from the angry upbraiding;
But in the tone he had taken at first, the father continued…
10 June 2005 | poetry, classic, translation
The Wind Blows Coldly and He Turns Up His Collar by RUSTIN LARSON
The ice refreezes
before the feet walk home.
2 September 2003 | poetry
