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Vol. 7, No. 1 Contents

One Thousand Years  by DAVID BULLEY

The cold had come in a calm so complete not a molecule of water had moved, and not a leaf had fallen from a tree, not a bug nor animal nor drop of snow or rain had moved the water. Water needs movement in order to change. The same way you can microwave water far beyond boiling and it will sit unboiled until you touch it with a spoon and it explodes, that same way water can sometimes freeze unfrozen, and stay that way, on the edge of ice until something touches it.

Lennon and McCartney  by PAUL DICKEY

Sixty-two year old Paul McCartney, a bankrupt businessman of Liverpool, strolled down Penny Lane watching children laugh behind the back of a banker with a motorcar. He worried how he was going to pay the rent due next week on his flat across the hall from Father McKenzie. He carried an old transistor radio that he had pilfered from the junkshop down by Strawberry Fields.

The Open Window  by  SAKI

22 March 2007
fiction, short story, classic

"Her great tragedy happened just three years ago," said the child; "that would be since your sister's time."

"Her tragedy?" asked Framton; somehow in this restful country spot tragedies seemed out of place.

"You may wonder why we keep that window wide open on an October afternoon," said the niece, indicating a large French window that opened on to a lawn.

The Toys of Peace  by  SAKI

8 April 2007
fiction, short story, classic

"A model of the Manchester branch of the Young Women's Christian Association," said Harvey.

"Are there any lions?" asked Eric hopefully. He had been reading Roman history and thought that where you found Christians you might reasonably expect to find a few lions.

Streetsmart Loca and the Pomegranate Theory  by SASHA VIVELO

That's when Wallace will come out of the backroom, the paint hangar, I call it. He'll wipe his hands on a turpentine rag and he'll smell like noxious chemicals. He'll give you a big grin and a waggle of his rug-like brown eyebrows. You'll like him right away because his face is cleaner than mine and he looks glad to see you. You'll expect him to ask if he can help you. He'll walk right up to you and you'll extend your right hand for him to shake. He'll put the paint rag in your palm.

Missing the Point
Or, At the Edgewood Home for Girls I Learned Many Things, Some Applicable to the World at Large
 by GENANNE WALSH

10 April 2007
fiction, flash fiction

"Don't look down."

The one in charge was the one who said it, though that changed depending on who brought the best toys. We started with rocks. Then bottles, plates, fly-fishing lures, paper airplanes and doll heads. One day we'd fling ourselves.

If Eurydice Is Your Father: Beckian Fritz Goldberg's Lie Awake Lake  by MIGUEL MURPHY

A poet must try and make sense of the enormity of loss that steeps our life with difficult meaning. The great achievement of Fritz Goldberg's text is that grief remains unanswerable and alluring… Where we might expect heavy-handedness and painful confessionalism, Fritz Goldberg's poems are buoyant, and like the title of her collection, filled with linguistic, frolicsome concentration.

Campfire Overthrow  by SARAH BYKER JAMES

25 May 2007
poetry, rhyme

At the campfire, they sang, "Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down."

I drank beer from a can and passed around a bottle of whiskey.

Feathers Ghazal  by SUSAN DENNING

22 May 2007
poetry, ghazal

When I opened the front door the moon erupted.

I called to the crows and was answered by feathers.

My Husband Is Out of Town  by NANCY DEVINE

5 March 2007
poetry, love poem

treasure our mouths

not just for gold under our tongues

but for silly raptures they accidentally exclaim…

Elegy for Robert Creeley  by NORMAN DUBIE

30 March 2007
poetry, elegy

The sun broke through…


I read aloud on the balcony

your poem for the 'two wives'…

His Vipers, He Writes  by CHARLES FREELAND

24 March 2007
poetry, prose poem

We've come to expect disillusion and madness where before there had been simply chiffon.

Daily Madonna  by MARY WALKER GRAHAM

25 April 2007
poetry

You could be sweeping the stairwell, unaware

all this time that discipline was discipline.

You didn't know that using turnips

would win you favor, that saving rainwater

in the barrel would make anyone happy.

When I First See the Dead Deer  by MARY WALKER GRAHAM

22 April 2007
poetry

When I first see the dead deer, I think

Hope and Remembrance.

It's not the cluster of pinks I'd wanted,

not the first sight of the first crocus…

Answering the Whistle, the Glare  by JENNIFER MERRIFIELD

16 March 2007
poetry

The body: a series of sanctuaries, an archipelago


of temples clung to the rock facade of hill or bone.

Dusk Approaching the Bridge Between  by JENNIFER MERRIFIELD

13 March 2007
poetry

We work in a winter of soon & make do

while we wait for your wife to bring fruit & deli sandwiches

to prove connections best, maintained.

Postscript  by JENNIFER MERRIFIELD

19 March 2007
poetry, editors' select

Barefoot under a borrowed poncho, we touch

(misused synapse to misused synapse)


but wonder where are the fucking marshmallows?

Fish-Holes  by MITCHELL METZ

16 April 2007
poetry

But there becomes a point in space,

he sighs, where I stop and all that is not me

begins. What physics, what magic

happens here, at the seam?

Remembering Food  by CHRISTINA MISITE

27 March 2007
poetry

I have no recipes

that remind me of home,

only the memory of my mother


cooking, cutting up fruit…

Please Lord, Do Not Hunt Me!  by ROBERT OSTROM

8 May 2007
poetry, prose poem

For hope, we blended myths with our known truths. We knew the hair of the dead continued to grow, but did buried babies learn to talk? We grew confused. Am I a horse or a crow? My grandfather was a grave so I am a grave.

To His Nephew  by ROBERT OSTROM

5 May 2007
poetry, prose poem

In my bureau is a matchbox. I am not going to make this easy for you. In the box there are two cloves, a snip of lavender, and a piece of ribbon. Inside the ribbon, a girl walks tiptoe with outstretched arms past the living room. She is my grandmother. In her pocket…

Way Over There  by MARTHA SILANO

5 April 2007
poetry

& the little cardinal stuck


to the bottom of a baby food jar

never comes unglued

mommy in fact


never comes unglued & the daddy

(part Mr. Brady part Clark Kent…

Your Laundry on the Line Like a Giant, Breathing Beast  by MARTHA SILANO

2 April 2007
poetry, editors' select

Your laundry on the line like a giant, breathing beast,

like the billowing sheets above the alleys in Trastevere,


where mothers yell after their children Vieni qua! Vieni qua!

while underwear sways like language itself. Rippling and tossing…

After a Wedding.  by KEVIN STOY

14 May 2007
poetry

Dusk and a group of balloons deflating

onto a packed runway. It's defeating.


Plane after plane noses by them in time

before leaving.

In Another Country.  by KEVIN STOY

17 May 2007
poetry

Right now, a relative you never knew

rides across a desert in the bull's eye

of a gun. His and your language is no longer

for everyone.

There Will Come Soft Rains  by SARA TEASDALE

13 April 2007
poetry, classic, rhyme

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound…

Water Lilies  by SARA TEASDALE

1 May 2007
poetry, classic, rhyme

If you have forgotten water lilies floating

On a dark lake among mountains in the afternoon shade,

If you have forgotten their wet, sleepy fragrance…

Winter Dusk  by SARA TEASDALE

15 April 2007
poetry, classic, rhyme

One star is lighted in the west,

      Two in the zenith glow.


For a moment I have forgotten

      Wars and women who mourn—

Some Promise  by JEN TYNES

11 May 2007
poetry

We only run

ragged, milky animals too late


at night or first thing

in the morning, when the paper

doesn't come. In the green room

and yellow field of warning…

Freight Train Blues  by MARTIN WALLS

19 April 2007
poetry

I'm stopped by the slow guillotine of the grade

Crossing—three diesels dragging gear north to Fort Drum


Not just tanks, & Fighting Bradleys, & armored cars

But oil transports, hospital trucks, even grain hoppers:


Everything we need to fight the long war in a foreign land.

Medusa Ghazal  by JAMES R. WHITLEY

2 March 2007
poetry, ghazal, editors' select

And what hope does an average girl have when the gossip's

already turned her into a cold-blooded pariah, a bitch deluxe?


A spurned lover here, a few premenstrual days there and I'm

gorgonizing men in their tracks like some monster from the lochs.

Act Six  by JOHN WYLAM

30 May 2007
poetry

The town goes on meanwhile,

its hundred thousand


languages opening like

flowers on another continent.

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