Category: Print Archives

Fiction: Jane Liddle’s “The Last List”

When she was born, her mom was on her back, in the hospital, confused and in a hazy pain, twilit spots scattered across her eyes. Her dad, in a different room in the same hospital, fiddled thumbs, paced to and fro, rocked back and forth, checked his watch and then checked the clock, and watched…
Fiction: Anne Valente’s “Like the Light of Blue Water”

The voices came again, drifting through brick walls, and Simon stopped typing once more, listened through the apartment’s silence. The third time today—at least the seventh time this week—and though he distinguished the steady undulations of two voices, one male, the other female, he could not tell where they were. Sometimes they seemed to be…
Three Poems by Jared Joseph

As She Added the Dirt to Her Beauty She added the alphabet to her Fabulous muscles I died there. Before that I was a ghost Now I am a ghost. The wounds don’t heal Does the skin break As she adds the dirt to her beauty She adds the eyes her body. As I died…
Poetry: Al Ortolani’s “Buddhists Call It Monkey Mind”

Take toothpaste for instance―white foam splatteredon the mirror, on the vanity,on the chrome faucet.Each time you spit,lather drips down your chin,runs the brush onto your hands;you can smell mintthe rest of the day on your fingertipsWhen you wokethat morning, you were justanother sap with halitosis;by noon, you’re a reformer.Purpose evokes response.You begin to petition.A man,…
Two Poems by Hugh Behm-Steinberg

Monster Dolls Baby monsters with their stuffed teddy bear monster dolls, like regular dolls, only horrific, wounded, dangerous; which baby monsters see as something to teethe and love, to protect and be protected by. Dozens of them, in the secret nursery hidden out back of the house. Lining the bottom of the bed to keep…
Poetry: “say something” by Ananda Lima

for your safety ifyou see somethingsay a package apurse say somethingthat should not bethere unattended saysomething laughingas they say somethingyou don’t understandsay somethingscribbling somethingyou don’t understandsay something youdon’t understand saysomething thatshould not besomething for yoursafety say somethingceasing to besomething for yoursafety if you seesomething thatshould not be Ananda Lima’s work has appeared in The American Poetry…
Poetry: Ace Boggess’ “Has the Music Faded at All?”

—Lawrence Watt-Evans, Night of Madness The walls have learned a low hum—basso, staccato—like a tuba stuck in a wind tunnelor so many elephants endlessly marchingaround the perimeter.The opposite of a canine whistle,it marks its moansin sensible waves setting cinderblocks atremblein aftershocks.A little of the shake, rattle & roll,rockin’ in the unfree world,more twisting, less shoutingexcept…
Three Fictions from First Presidents: Joseph Scapellato

James Madison James Madison stood on a log shaped like the limb of a great man. He was as short as the tallest American mushroom, yet more withered. For several days he had ridden from camp to town to camp in the woods outside Washington City, to assess the state of the British invasion. Every…
Three Poems by Dan Chelotti

Depth of Field There are four triangular slotsto hold the pictures downand some have been there so longthey’re stuck. They could take usanywhere. Back, back beforethe sand in the hourglasswas replaced with ash:a playpen in the middle of a field.The fly in the room buzzes.It won’t come back. The standof birches on the edge of…