Winter / Spring 2010 Issue

• Fiction

  • Alien Hand

    Fiction By Grace Talusan

    Before he left the Philippines to move in with his son, the American doctor, Titong made a bargain with himself: He would burn cigarettes on the tip of each finger before going back to his old ways. Yet, here he was, in his granddaughter’s room, beside her bed, in the middle of the night.

    *

  • Decker

    Fiction By James Sprouse

    We peeled off our rain gear at the back door of the Grant’s Pass Hotel, wrung the water out of our gloves, and traded our muddy boots for sneakers and moccasins. It wasn’t dark, but it might as well have been.

    *

  • Street Theatre

    Fiction By Louis Panagotopulos

    When I was in college it was known as guerilla theatre. I saw a lot of it in Harvard Square – activists in mawkish costumes dramatizing social and political issues, small crowds of curious pedestrians stopping to hear diatribes like . . .

    *

  • Pomegranate

    Fiction By Helen Elaine Lee

    (Excerpt from Life Without)   Choosing, it’s like a pomegranate fruit. Maxine talked one up once and when she did, I could almost taste it, almost hold it in my hands, like this.

    *

  • Teggin

    Fiction By Karima Grant

    The yard was noisy, the women’s voices rising in unison, rising in dissension, rising sharply into the gathering night that had long ago chased away the men.

    *

• Poetry

  • Mowing with Cutlasses

    Poetry By Laban Hill

    Twenty right arms, sometimes together, but mostly not,

    arc cutlasses in wide, irregular swings, nearly throwing themselves

    *

  • Coping Strategies at Sasakawa Restaurant

    Poetry By Laban Hill

    When she passes

    our table a third . . .

    *

  • At the Window

    Poetry By Betsy Sholl

    If the doctor’s new machine is right, my eyes

    are turning into old window glass, warped . . .

    *

  • Elegy with Sacred Heart

    Poetry By Betsy Sholl

    It’s always winter when I think of him,

    gray skies, fog seeping up from the harbor . . .

    *

  • Radium City

    Poetry By Dennis Hinrichsen

    It was the watches I wanted, those radium dials

    Glowing like bomb sights

    *

  • Through Birds, Through Fire But Not Through Glass

    Poetry By Dennis Hinrichsen

    The food is cold and so his mind drifts

    a blue fin angling toward deeper water

    *

  • Devotion: Hawk

    Poetry By Dennis Hinrichsen

    What is this thing I must sing to?

    *

  • Vertigo & Adagio

    Poetry By Theodore Deppe

    That particular part of the trip—the journey’s beginning—

    he hadn’t figured out. Large hills terrified him,

    and the train was climbing the north slopes of the Alps.

    *

  • Notes from the Night Shift

    Poetry By Theodore Deppe

    Driving at dusk to the hospital to sit up with my mother,

    I paused at the crossroads where half a century ago . . .

    *

  • Smoke Break

    Poetry By Sandi Johnson

    I take my required smoke break during the hours the sun is most reluctant to wake.
    I relax on the edge of my Buick and extend my feet to the red hood of my mom’s Sunfire . . .

    *

  • On Sex and Insects

    Poetry By Ben Berman

    Whenever Marwizi would put down his beer and start winking at those heavy-set ladies of the night, I’d try to slip him a condom before he slipped to the back of the bar. Who has the time? he’d say. I’m practically on fire. The closest my loins ever came to . . .

    *

  • The Unseasoned

    Poetry By Ben Berman

    When, as guests of honor in Vietnam,

    we were served dog penis and the testicles

    sat on our plates like Venn Diagrams . . .

    *

  • Thinking of the Anhinga

    Poetry By Helena Minton

    Bad habits persist:
    The nail biting, the bickering.

    Beside the sand trap
    like a bull fighter’s cape . . .

    *

  • Playing Games

    Poetry By Helena Minton

    Musical chairs makes feeling left out

    a game.

    *

  • Hard Work

    Poetry By Kathleen Aguero

    Hope springs eternal

    but I couldn’t imagine how hope,

    before it gets to that bubbling place,

    forces itself through miles of dirt packed hard . . .

    *

• Nonfiction

  • Moon Water

    Nonfiction By Damien Echols

    A person can starve to death in prison. By starving I don’t mean death through lack of food.

    *

  • Claiming Kin

    Nonfiction By Gerald Duff

    (Excerpt from Home Truths)   Dreams are a subset of lies, the way the unconscious mind works to make it possible for us to keep living with ourselves.

    *

  • The Most Dangerous Place on Earth

    Nonfiction By Marie Myung-Ok Lee

    The beaming portrait of Kim Il Sung on the roof of the Pyongyang Airport was the first thing that greeted us when we emerged from our plane

    *

  • Breastless

    Nonfiction By Celia Jeffries

    I have a man-made breast. It was created fourteen years ago from a saline implant and a piece of my latissimus dorsi.

    *

Contributors

Dennis Hinrichsen

Laban Hill

Ben Berman

Theodore Deppe

Betsy Sholl

Helena Minton

James Sprouse

Grace Talusan

Louis Panagotopulos

Helen Elaine Lee

Karima Grant

Kathleen Aguero

Celia Jeffries

Gerald Duff

Amie Tannenbaum

Damien Echols

Sandi Johnson

Marie Myung-Ok Lee