Issue #7
Hero by Tom Whalen

Every hero the writer must approach only approximately. The eyes, for example, must resemble Roman candles, like the eyes of the actors in Wilhelm Meister arriving at night in freight wagons before the castle of a count, as noted in Jean Paul’s School for Aesthetics.

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Strip Poker & Dybbuk by Jeff Friedman

My lover shuffles the deck, fanning the cards into a bridge. The cards arc like a rainbow, then fly wildly through the air like fish hurling out of the water into the mouths of bottled-nosed dolphins that leap to catch them in their hungry mouths.

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Kappa by Matthew Minicucci

It’s raining again, you say. Near flow and no-slip. Car on the curvature of space and time and boxed wine. Here: the clear empty well of a disappointed glance.

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Where I Found Him by Meg Pokrass

Way up in Alaska I found the man who loved me. He could no longer move his feet. I found him half-dead, staring upat the sky, looking for a helicopter.

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Holiday Inn by Kathleen Nalley

After the bruised body recovered, after being shoved

into a car, after the knot in the temple subsided after

a platter of fried chicken smashed into her head, her

mamma took her girls to the Holiday Inn and hid.

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Five Prose Poems by Denise Duhamel

Once upon a time there was elaborate plumbing, then people started shitting in
the woods again. Once we worshipped goddesses who bore children—now we
want mothers back to work in twelve weeks.

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Suite X by Amy Breau

I was prepared to answer the first question, have you ever wanted to kill someone?


But it completely threw me off when they asked, have you ever wanted to keep


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Conversation in Hotel Lounge by Lydia Davis

Two women sit together on the sofa in the hotel lounge, bent over and deep in conversation.  I am walking through, on my way to my room.

The Girl In Purple by Bobbie Ann Mason

Near dawn, Dennis Moore saw the iron gate to the courtyard inch open and the wisp of a girl squeeze through, clanging the gate behind her. Two minutes later, on the boardwalk, she halted as if for an invisible dog, then resumed her dog-walker gait. He followed her...

Little Red Riding Hood by Katerina Kishchynska

Grandma gets her episodes at least once a month. She’ll grow out her jaws and if it happens on a rainy day, claws will tear out of her fingers.

Hermit & Bleeding Faucet by Ana María Shua

With the population now well aware of the physical and mental benefits of asceticism (low cholesterol, bradycardia, a delicate sense of happiness, spiritual fulfillment), everyone wants to become a hermit.

Café Mozart Dreamin’ by Tracey Meloni

Judie bangs on my hotel door. “The dressmaker is here! Hurry! You have Christmas lunch with Noah at Café Mozart at 1PM!”