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Vol. 4, No. 3 Contents

The Kids  by MICHAEL DAVIDSON

2 September 2004
fiction, flash fiction, experimental

Richard is an outcast. He has bony elbows and a face that's all nose.

The Nose  by NIKOLAI GOGOL

On 25 March an unusually strange event occurred in St. Petersburg.

Helium Balloon  by KATE MILLIKEN

2 September 2004
fiction, flash fiction

My boyfriend is a helium balloon, way above me, gently tugging at my hand. His head tosses in the breeze, craning whichever way the wind blows, his neck long and flimsy. I tell my friends how jealous this makes me—that he's looking at other girls—and they say I am being silly.

To Morning  by JOY POLIQUIN

2 September 2004
fiction, short story

Kaya is missing. She is nowhere on the beach and Steve is worried that she's gone swimming, and has slipped drunk into the ocean and drowned.

Arriving in One Piece  by LAURA MADELINE WISEMAN

When I woke up without my little toe, I knew it was going to be the day.

"Tender Hooks" Refuse to Soften: A Review of Beth Ann Fennelly's Tender Hooks  by GENEVIEVE BETTS

2 September 2004
nonfiction, review, review of poetry

History's typecast of "the mother" breeds thoughts of the bored housewife, entertaining herself with embroidery, pastel aprons, and flip hairdos. Herstory relates a more honest and complex definition of the mother, much like the work of Beth Ann Fennelly's poems in Tender Hooks.

I Believe in Miracles  by SCOTT BAILEY

2 September 2004
poetry, light verse

since regaining all my faith

in aerosols,


sweet whipped cream for instance.

Attempted Adjective: Aloof  by JENNA CARDINALE

2 September 2004
poetry, sonnet, rhyme

She learned later she'd lunched with a movie

star from Mexico. They'd almost exchanged

Ah! He didn't offer his S.U.V.,

didn't apologize for the deranged…

I Am  by JOHN CLARE

2 September 2004
poetry, classic, rhyme

I am! yet what I am none cares or knows…

Mouse's Nest  by JOHN CLARE

2 September 2004
poetry, classic, sonnet, rhyme

I found a ball of grass among the hay

And progged it as I passed and went away;

And when I looked I fancied something stirred,

And turned again and hoped to catch the bird…

And Blushed  by JEN CURRIN

2 September 2004
poetry, editors' select

I had a laughter & for that

you had fir trees.

Finally, who is here with us?  by JEN CURRIN

2 September 2004
poetry

So the wire bird abandons writing.

I give up

my plastic mouse.

The apartment lobby choked with incense.

Glistening  by JEN CURRIN

2 September 2004
poetry

Tiger said why are you

so pretty. I have seen you in pearls

and laces. At night

kissing each part of your nothing.

Tuesday  by JEN CURRIN

2 September 2004
poetry

Always I send what can only be called love.


Eating goat cheese & our friend's salad

we are frivolous as pronouns.

Departure for Cause  by PAUL DICKEY

2 September 2004
poetry

Snowflakes here fall like all the others.

They may as well be microscopic,

crushed bones. They cannot melt

even if the ground somehow forgives.

Tulku  by NORMAN DUBIE

2 September 2004
poetry, editors' select

It is both the depth of field and snow

that have shortened the telephone poles

by half or more.

8 guppies died  by MICHAEL ESTABROOK

2 September 2004
poetry, prose poem, light verse

in a pale yellow Tupperware bowl on the way into Boston…

from West Pullman  by CAROLYN GUINZIO

2 September 2004
poetry

Father Latta held a quarter

in one of his two closed hands.

Which hand? He was quietly telling

jokes to pictures of dead pastors…

Dark Apartment  by MATTHEW HEIL

2 September 2004
poetry

He could find no better word for life

than flat.

Unschool Me  by CHARLIE HOLLAND

2 September 2004
poetry, prose poem

You spank me with library books about horses and nature and cruelty. I can jump out of clouds and over fences just as you can turn corners in Schlachendale.

Saguaro Opening Over Quartzite, Arizona  by LAURA JOHNSON

2 September 2004
poetry

Yearly returners to the empty desert lots

blossom in this wintering.

For Elizabeth  by ANDREW MACARTHUR

2 September 2004
poetry

The message of this afternoon could be a hollow nest

if fairgrounds in a park can feel this empty.

A Morbid Education  by MIGUEL MURPHY

2 September 2004
poetry, editors' select

In the middle of it, being riven

apart by a finger, by a stiff tongue probing

the blind bone tail of my spine…

Coprophagy  by MIGUEL MURPHY

2 September 2004
poetry

Shit has a history & it's balmy golden


notes off a black clarinet. Damp &…

Thorn  by MIGUEL MURPHY

2 September 2004
poetry, elegy, editors' select

My eye never filled with blood.

I never asked why

was I drugged and held down. Taken away.

Mesmerized. I wasn't a two-headed dog…

Passing Remark  by JULIET PATTERSON

2 September 2004
poetry

I saw your mouth trailing off except one small leaf.

She Said  by JULIET PATTERSON

2 September 2004
poetry

Try a sweeter martini,

flakes of a little dry laugh.

Useless Song  by JULIET PATTERSON

2 September 2004
poetry

Wake up 5 A.M. & the prairie is raining

white birds. The moon appears. The moon

circles the sky. My mouth is a dead lamp

looking for its light. The river is a tape loop…

from The Glass Age  by COLE SWENSEN

2 September 2004
poetry, prose poem

We are standing in a window, looking out at windows. The windows on the other side are blind. They are on the other side. To look out is to see; to look in, to turn slowly white.

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