#13: Poetry by Justin Runge
WALKING THROUGH DRUID CITY You drift, a replica riverboat, through gray fogs of mosquito abatement into the chamber of commerce, a drunk horse- riding seminar flier flapping to your feet like a toy dog, and then another, an offer, says will cover in bluegrass. Christmas cats Easter-egg in the bushes, find their […]
#12: Nonfiction by Chelsey Clammer
WHEN SHE’S YOUR GMA When your grandma is who you call “G-ma.” When you’re seventeen and going through your first breakup and staying at Gma’s house and you’re sobbing to her about the split with your first love—a girl. When Gma says, “I don’t understand the whole lesbian thing, but I love you anyway.” When […]
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#11: CarlaJean Valluzzi reviews Old New Worlds
OLD NEW WORLDS Review by CarlaJean Valluzzi In Old New Worlds (Green Place Press), Judith Krummeck weaves a seamless narrative that crosses generations, crosses oceans, and crosses cultures to arrive on the shore of a collective experience. Krummeck’s work illustrates a struggle shared not only between members of her own family, but common to many […]
#10: Fiction by Jeff Houlahan
STILL IN VAUDEVILLE The ideas came all the time. It made talking to people hard. The only thing he could control was how much attention he paid, but he liked to pay a lot of attention because sometimes the ideas were very good. He had read somewhere about a retired jockey who opened a bar […]
#9: Poetry by Bill Neumire
SOON A HATCH WILL OPEN & A MAN WITH A GUN WILL ASK WHY YOU’RE NOT A MAN Often on your way home, there’s a woman in a lavender blouse carrying groceries, or a taxi driver learning the streets like his convalescing wife’s ribs, & often school’s letting out its pollen of mouths singing, “I want nothing. I want nothing.” & […]
#8: Fiction by Jane Snyder
HILLSBORO Before the final bell on Ruth’s last day of school, the boys and girls gathered around her desk to sing “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” Miss Cooper, laughing at Ruth’s surprise, handed her a shoebox filled with popcorn balls, told her to serve her classmates. As she placed a popcorn ball wrapped in […]
#7: Poetry by Gary Duehr
WALK / DON’T WALK Poised there at the curb, waiting for the lightTo switch to WALK, it’s fightOr flight, like suspects in a line-up. Fact:There’s something in the actOf queueing that brings out aggression.Just look at them, their faces pinched, standing at attention.One guy is grasping something in his hand—A crumpled sack or rock. Please […]
#6: Non-Fiction by Deborah La Garbanza
DULCINEA My first cousin Sunny had gained weight, but the glamor was still there. “Looks like a little pony,” my mother whispers in my ear. Pony as in fat Shetland was her euphemism for fat. No one in our family was a featherweight and the battle between voracious appetites and the scale was an ongoing […]
#5: Fiction by Sophia Ihlefeld
CRACKED AND POURED The girls wanted to look like their mothers. The housewives prayed with all their might that they would someday grow into the slim bodies of those who’d borne them, those buttery waves of hair. They learned that this was both possible and impossible. As their bodies stretched and grew and decanted into […]