Issue 6

FICTION

THE MODEL by Amira Pierce

When Mustafa first had seen a drawing of the girl done by one of Steven’s students, the hesitant lines that depicted her form managed to set off an odd shock inside him, something he knew was true, though he had no idea what it meant.

COMFORT FOOD by Holly Day

apocalyptic dreams comfort us / show an end to credit card debt, to war, / the confusion with our day-to-day ordinary lives

SICK TIME by Mark DeCarteret

Yes, they’ve kept to most of their promises, erecting the swing set in somebody’s memory, replacing one river with another, so I guess we’ll go on cashing their checks in silence, our lives lived in past tense and swung from our necks.

A DAY AT THE OFFICE by Angie Mazakis

I spend a lot of the day rearranging / sharp objects so they’re not pointing / at me or someone else. Incidentally, one / other person at the office also has this phobia.

THREE POEMS (1, 2, 3) by Keith Montesano

Because the snow is falling, because I am here & falling, / & listening, I see them, early, too early, before the man / takes the plunge from the mountain’s edge.

ANNIVERSARY PREMONITION by Trent Nutting

What the young will remember, huddled / like toadstools in this leaning grove of adults, / is the great uncle’s whistled s, his mouth / translated to flute and eyes rheumy / with the overflowing tears of the old.

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF NOT LOSING ONE’S HEAD by Adam Krause

He had no head. That’s what was really bothering him that morning. He had gone to bed with his head in its usual place, but now it was gone.

ST. FRANCIS I & THOU by Henry Walters

He was easing his hand out to a blushing finch, which hopped away. “How long might it take,” he asked, “for birds to think of me as one of their saints?”