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Vol. 4, No. 1 Contents

Tits  by ANNA HAVENS

2 March 2004
fiction, short fiction

It's 6:30 Sunday morning, and I'm sitting on the couch Laura bought, listening to some televangelist while I look at a girlie magazine.

Cameo  by KATE KOSTELNIK

"Pat, you should start doing the wangs now so that the sass is nice and tacky," Tom says to me as he pumps the keg. Tom is wiry and handsome. I'm neither of these things.

Humboldt Haven  by TOM SHEEHAN

2 March 2004
fiction, short story

The problems with the house project and a good stiff drink seem to go together.

The Thunder and the Sunshine  by SCOTT YARBROUGH

2 March 2004
fiction, flash fiction

Club meeting, convened. Fluorescent lights shine candescent where once our faces were lit dimly red and blue by beer-sign neon glow. Captain up front, popping his gavel made from the antique walnut stocks of a Colt Peacemaker.

A Quiet Life  by LEONARD KAMERLING

In the dark early morning of a heavy snow there is the sound of metal against rock, a scraping, low at first but relentless, insinuating. It worms itself into my dream, insisting that I awake. Outside it is dark but I can make out the figure of a man with a shovel.

My Sex Life  by RANE ARROYO

2 March 2004
poetry

I resist you and take a walk on

a long pier on a shrinking lake.


Women in rowboats whistle down…

from Severance Songs  by JOSHUA COREY

2 March 2004
poetry, editors' select

I will wander afield as you shall pace a plot

made similar by the action of our actual soles,

treading the salted soil or goodly ice

in the sun's track…

from Severance Songs  by JOSHUA COREY

2 March 2004
poetry

Stand back! Back to the potter's field,

dark hillocks signifying darkly

what glares in the redrawn screen.

Cyclops Mary  by ARACELIS GIRMAY

2 March 2004
poetry, editors' select

If Cyclops Mary heard it.

If that sentence flew clean into the ear.

If the whole thing traveled pure,

unrustled by the pigeons.

Cyclops Mary Down the Avenue, A Monologue  by ARACELIS GIRMAY

2 March 2004
poetry

Yeah, I heard it.

Saw the whole thought form

from out the back of his head,

then take shape into one lust-musty sentence.

Teeth  by ARACELIS GIRMAY

2 March 2004
poetry

Two sisters ride down with us

to Massawa's liberation celebration.


One sister is the color of injera; her teeth are big and stuck-out.

One sister is a cinnamon stick.

Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer  by CHARLES JENSEN

2 March 2004
poetry

At first there was nothing:

just audiences whacked mouth-dumb

at talking pictures, Jolson singing.

The Killing of Frank O'Hara  by CHARLES JENSEN

2 March 2004
poetry

In other countries, he's a martyr

drawn heavy over the shoulders of sobbing women

on a long silver plate. The rebel forces…

Love Glazes Streets and Makes the Trees Glisten  by DAMON MCLAUGHLIN

2 March 2004
poetry

What breaks is threatening.

Even the cat with its small growl

backs away…

Visiting Hours  by JON PINEDA

2 March 2004
poetry

Days we spend in shifts,

gaze out the window

onto drifts of snow.

Meditation for Everything We Have Loved  by JOSHUA POTEAT

2 March 2004
poetry, editors' select

What do you love the most?

      Say the reddish work of death

as it strolls through the fields…

Meditation on the Sorting that Evens Things Out  by JOSHUA POTEAT

2 March 2004
poetry

You see? If you're picking apples,

              it is pointless to watch the sky,

to sort each starry feather

                            that falls from its transparent perch.

Meditations in Desert Snow  by JOSHUA POTEAT

2 March 2004
poetry

Snow, Snow, I'm in love with the dead,

              with this white and broken air—


Without stars there is nothing to keep you

              from slowing the sky.

Meditations in the Garden of the Blind (with Whitman's Specimen Days)  by JOSHUA POTEAT

2 March 2004
poetry

The rain subtracts

                             from the landscape

              the light it needs to become whole.

Spring Ranch, Nebraska  by SARAH VAP

2 March 2004
poetry, prose poem

We find his hair in dried paint, then plant cattails to hide the corn. Inhaling and spitting out gnats she says that by the end he couldn't swallow, choked on spit.

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