Browse: Issues:

Vol. 6, No. 3 Contents

The Dream of Little Tuk  by HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSON

Yes, they called him Little Tuk, but it was not his real name; he had called himself so before he could speak plainly, and he meant it for Charles. It was all very well for those who knew him, but not for strangers.

The Red Shoes  by HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSON

23 November 2006
fiction, short story, classic, translation

Once upon a time there was little girl, pretty and dainty. But in summer time she was obliged to go barefooted because she was poor, and in winter she had to wear large wooden shoes, so that her little instep grew quite red.

The Steadfast Tin Soldier  by HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSON

2 September 2006
fiction, short story, classic, translation

Each man shouldered his gun, kept his eyes well to the front, and wore the smartest red and blue uniform imaginable. The first thing they heard in their new world, when the lid was taken off the box, was a little boy clapping his hands and crying, "Soldiers, soldiers!"

Carmilla  by SHERIDAN LE FANU

31 October 2006
fiction, novella, classic, horror

But I was not comforted, for I knew the visit of the strange woman was not a dream; and I was awfully frightened.

A Review of Victor Pelevin's The Helmet of Horror: The Myth of Theseus and the Minotaur  by SPENCER DEW

25 November 2006
nonfiction, review, review of fiction

Reading this novel renders one a fly on a digital wall, listening in as half-baked undergraduates urgently chat about everything from the role of repressed postwar frustration as a motivating factor for tentacle-rape manga porn to whether the word "beige" can signify the same thing to two people in two places. All of which, in less skilled treatment, could be unbearable, but Pelevin's secret is pacing.

A Review of Wilhelm Genazino's The Shoe Tester of Frankfurt  by SPENCER DEW

28 October 2006
nonfiction, review, review of fiction

This is the gift of the book, in the end, a balance between philosophy and poetry, helter-skelter wit and calm sensual pauses.

A Review of Kathleen Flenniken's Famous  by JEREMY HATCH

29 November 2006
nonfiction, review, review of poetry

The third volume to emerge from the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry and the first collection of its author's work, Famous is an assured and refreshingly self-possessed volume of poems, a rich offering of plain but musical language and understated irony

A Word for Autumn  by A. A. MILNE

30 September 2006
nonfiction, classic

I knew all along that it would not last. Even in April I was saying that winter would soon be here. Yet somehow it had begun to seem possible lately that a miracle might happen, that summer might drift on and on through the months – a final upheaval to crown a wonderful year.

carved the lark  by ERICA W. ADAMS

18 September 2006
poetry, prose poem

i guess i'm poor at the whittling, longish fingers make oak into sparrow, i tend to rub elm smooth & pretend forests & birdsongs when i should dig the knife in…

panegyrize  by ERICA W. ADAMS

21 September 2006
poetry

she is good as dog is good,

winter making its small fist &

rattle. made complicit


with the cracked lamp…

A Setting Sun  by ARLENE ANG

12 October 2006
poetry

like the restless

rearrangement of radio static,

precludes twilight:

it leans shadows across the room…

It Could've Been a Centerfold  by ARLENE ANG

15 October 2006
poetry

I remember the story: it was a hot day.

The hero disappeared behind enemy lines.

A Memory  by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

25 September 2006
poetry, elegy, classic, translation, rhyme

All this was long ago, but I do not forget

Our small white house, between the city and the farms;

Lethe  by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

14 September 2006
poetry, classic, translation, rhyme

Rest on my heart, deaf, cruel soul, adored

Tigress, and monster with the lazy air.

I long, in the black jungles of your hair,

To force each finger thrilling like a sword…

Song of Autumn  by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

18 October 2006
poetry, elegy, classic, translation, rhyme

Soon into frozen shades, like leaves, we'll tumble.

Adieu, short summer's blaze, that shone to mock.

The Fountain of Blood  by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

27 November 2006
poetry, classic, translation, rhyme

It seems to me sometimes my blood is bubbling out

As fountains do, in rhythmic sobs; I feel it spout

And lapse; I hear it plainly; it makes a murmuring sound;

But from what wound it wells, so far I have not found.

The Joyous Dead  by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

28 November 2006
poetry, classic, translation, rhyme

In a fat, greasy soil, that's full of snails,

I'll dig a grave deep down, where I may sleep

Spreading my bones at ease, to drowse in deep

Oblivion, as a shark within the wave.

To the Reader  by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

13 September 2006
poetry, classic, translation, rhyme

Among the vermin, jackals, panthers, lice,

gorillas and tarantulas that suck

and snatch and scratch and defecate and fuck

in the disorderly circus of our vice,


there's one more ugly and abortive birth.

Broken Sonnet to the Building Super  by ASH BOWEN

2 November 2006
poetry, sonnet, love poem, light verse, rhyme

Mr. Fix-It, you're no passkey Schneider,

eager to put your key in my Julie.

Oh, but say the word, my big star lucky —

I'll curtsey like a love-hungry spider.

fret  by KRISTY BOWEN

6 September 2006
poetry

Lets say a woman's heart

is like a windup bird.

The conservatory filled

with oranges and the cellar

disordered, unstable…

our lady of anemia  by KRISTY BOWEN

9 September 2006
poetry, prose poem

She begins with tiny spoons and screws. Swallows safety pins and penny nails by the dozen. Paperclips, thumbtacks, saltshaker tops. The doctors say it's dire, prescribe lithium and fresh air. Her mother cries and brings cake.

Buffy Rerun Poem  by MICHAEL BRODER

15 September 2006
poetry

And I remember all these details, but only one by one,


as you recount them to me;

and I recognize the scenes, but only one by one,

as they appear before me.

During the Ice Age  by CLAUDIA BURBANK

2 October 2006
poetry

Even when the slapping northerlies subsided

Everything leaned away in visible pain.

Just Keep Moving, in Latin, across our coat of arms…

In the Year of the Etruscans  by CLAUDIA BURBANK

5 October 2006
poetry

My water-self opened our water-door

With a water-key, stepped across

The rippled threshold.


I loved him like salt.

An Oracle Concerning the Melancholic Concubine  by JILL ALEXANDER ESSBAUM

14 November 2006
poetry, editors' select

Sometimes you feel you've a touch of the broken heart,

when the orchid of evening wilts into nighttime,

when the darkness is not yet deep.


When you are tipsy with the grief of his leaving…

And This Is What Happened  by JILL ALEXANDER ESSBAUM

20 November 2006
poetry

That was the year I thought

I was going insane. Help, I said plainly.


I am having a mild case of the heartbreak.

When I looked at the fissure, all was glass and mistaken.

Despair Is the Only Unforgivable Sin  by JILL ALEXANDER ESSBAUM

17 November 2006
poetry

O holy terror of a night, this mad,

  malicious night, a supine night, bright

as bile, but anyway, inauspicious.

  Bedraggled night, delicious as doom.

A night over which no angel will swoon.

  O moon, O eye of God, unblinking.

And, yes, I have been drinking.

A Bit of Marriage  by ARUN GAUR

19 October 2006
poetry

He thought with some precision

that marriages may be made elsewhere

but done here

sometimes

in some unsolicited places.

At the Ticket Window  by ARUN GAUR

22 October 2006
poetry

Two matrons at the railway ticket windows

reassured us very kindly

it is birth everywhere and no demise

and since everything comes in…

Eulogy  by PAUL GUEST

8 November 2006
poetry, elegy, editors' select

So that this will seem like words between

old friends, I'll say it was painless.

And quick. I'll say it was mercy

and behind my face where I put

things like The Truth and dreams…

Garden  by PAUL GUEST

5 November 2006
poetry, love poem

The language of the daisy isn't dead

but one hundred seeds in a pack

are dormant in their dry dark, some

dirt and water all you'll need…

How It Won't Be  by PAUL GUEST

11 November 2006
poetry

In glorious black and white with the surge

of salt foam racing around the isle

of our twining bodies. Punctuated

by fireworks, by rain, by snow…

I Saw You  by KAREN MACKINTOSH

26 September 2006
poetry, prose poem

You were drinking water from the tap. As you spit into the basin, a woman came out of the stall. She pushed your head down, held it under the tap…

Realization  by ALLAN PETERSON

25 October 2006
poetry

It was not the beach pea that moved

but the bee that moved the flower,

they proved that.

Another, though slower was the vetch…

42opus is an online magazine of the literary arts.

copyright © 2001-2011
XHTML // CSS // 508