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Vol. 6, No. 2 Contents

The Furnished Room  by O. HENRY

27 July 2006
fiction, short story, classic

Restless, shifting, fugacious as time itself is a certain vast bulk of the population of the red brick district of the lower West Side. Homeless, they have a hundred homes.

The Gift of the Magi  by O. HENRY

14 July 2006
fiction, short story, classic

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents.

The Last Leaf  by O. HENRY

19 June 2006
fiction, short story, classic

In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places." These "places" make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses itself a time or two.

Hand Shaking Jesus  by NOAH MCGEE

She hadn't said anything about the cancer, even though Rayna had talked to her every day.

Requiem for Sammy  by MAAZA MENGISTE

2 July 2006
fiction, flash fiction

The day her husband died, her period stopped. It just shut itself off and left her, left the blood building and boiling inside, fermenting into this rage that she could only release at the piano. It wasn't supposed to happen like that…

42 Reasons to Love the Number 42  by BRIAN LEARY

There are 42 lines on each page of the Gutenberg Bible, sometimes called the 42-line Bible.

Truth of Intercourse  by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

14 August 2006
nonfiction, classic, essay

Among sayings that have a currency in spite of being wholly false upon the face of them for the sake of a half-truth upon another subject which is accidentally combined with error, one of the grossest and broadest conveys the monstrous proposition that it is easy to tell the truth and hard to tell a lie. I wish heartily it were.

Your black hair is a sea on the sheets  by J. REUBEN APPELMAN

17 August 2006
poetry

I would not mind it if your heart were a television

And within it a time capsule


And inside that some secret I never knew

Pants (Red)  by JEN CURRIN

30 August 2006
poetry

It's in the hand—a wandering—

my eyes, the pockets

of your pants.

The Apple and I  by JEN CURRIN

24 August 2006
poetry

Of doors and red-eyed windows,

the senses before sight.


I became specific

in my body.

Vinegar  by JEN CURRIN

27 August 2006
poetry

The imaginary café where I met him

burned down, taking our last glances.

Is he our grandfather,

writing lesbian love poems?

Speak, and I Sit by You  by BRIAN DICKSON

24 July 2006
poetry

You're boiling baby spinach before

that dreaded date, your hands


quake like the leaves on the stewing

water, backbones wilting in heat.

The Paper Weights  by BRIAN DICKSON

21 July 2006
poetry

Mother's breasts flutter to the table,

"They won't hold up," she says.

The rest of her cards fly

on bowed wings.

Left, No Arrow  by REBECCA GIVENS

5 June 2006
poetry

Not always another chance is coming. Not


if you are lit on fire and keep the sad news


to yourself.

Patience  by REBECCA GIVENS

2 June 2006
poetry, editors' select

bliss


comes lightly and leaves


quickly, leaves nothing


much behind.

The Substitute Bridegroom  by SARAH GOLDSTEIN

8 August 2006
poetry

Were we down so better than

to take the dress off


and waste my chance again?

Just Curious  by JAMES C. HENDERSON

11 August 2006
poetry, light verse

…a third-grader with cornrows in her hair

and skin the color of walnut, asks me:

"Is it true that men always want

to know what women are thinking?"

Bright Star! would I were steadfast as thou art—  by JOHN KEATS

13 June 2006
poetry, classic, sonnet, rhyme

Bright Star! would I were steadfast as thou art—

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite…

Ode on Melancholy  by JOHN KEATS

20 July 2006
poetry, classic

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist

  Wolfs-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;

Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd

  By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine…

Ode to Pysche  by JOHN KEATS

19 July 2006
poetry, classic

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung

  By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,

And pardon that thy secrets should be sung

  Even into thine own soft-conched ear…

The Human Seasons  by JOHN KEATS

14 June 2006
poetry, classic, sonnet, rhyme

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;

There are four seasons in the mind of man:—

He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear

Takes in all beauty with an easy span…

When I have fears that I may cease to be  by JOHN KEATS

15 June 2006
poetry, classic, sonnet, rhyme

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,

Before high-pilèd books, in charact'ry

Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain…

A Young Girl  by RUSTIN LARSON

5 July 2006
poetry

measures

the width


of her shoulders,

washes

with a clean sponge…

First Snow  by RUSTIN LARSON

9 July 2006
poetry

The flurries begin

whitening the strip


of grass.

For You  by RUSTIN LARSON

11 July 2006
poetry

I swear, friendship hangs on the hardest wind.

The moon is the friend of the earth


and the earth of the sun.

The Demands of Fading Light  by RUSTIN LARSON

7 July 2006
poetry

We want the gray old


winter to climb down

through the smoking pines

astride his white mule


to forgive us each separately.

Red Bricked  by EVELYN LAUER

16 July 2006
poetry

This is her spot:

a child in an apple tree, eyes falling

into the way things want to be

seen:…

Aeronautics  by RACHEL MALLINO

16 June 2006
poetry, elegy

Here, tourists sift sand between toes, not knowing

salt makes straw of hair. I explore the ocean for one


of Christa McAuliffe's strands.

How I Know  by SHANE MCCRAE

5 August 2006
poetry

Your mother asked if I was certain, and I had to excuse myself

to call you from the bathroom.


Is that why you're here? I'm not

talking about my health anymore…

Elegy for What Survives Inside the Body  by KEITH MONTESANO

2 August 2006
poetry, elegy

Suddenly she's bawling, tells the entire story, like you do


when your world is unfamiliar, the hazy bodies lost in black.

It takes six years for the pieces to make themselves apparent…

Two Halves: Elegy for One Summer's Dawn  by KEITH MONTESANO

30 July 2006
poetry, elegy, editors' select

Bellefontaine: a town on the way to somewhere else, a place

where you run out of gas, stop to make love on a picnic table


somewhere by the wheat field—when, toward magic hour, the boy

already loaded the gun, the smell of bacon wafting outside…

harmonize  by KATHRYN L. PRINGLE

29 June 2006
poetry

the foreigners of the thought of Richard were in the top of each

emitted tree the government gathered…

harmony  by KATHRYN L. PRINGLE

23 June 2006
poetry

richard thought aliens were at the top of every government-issued tree.

harmony  by KATHRYN L. PRINGLE

26 June 2006
poetry

The Richard thought foreigner by each government…

Morning  by THEODORE WOROZBYT

10 June 2006
poetry

Four boys stand

four years old, in the boat.


A fifth floats, face swayed to bottom,

near the prow.

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