by Allison Cross I was planted on the day you were born. Cerulean blue etched the clouds, contrails slashed it through. A breeze brushed against spring. My roots were a tangled, constricted ball, and it hurt when your father plunged me in the hole. When he piled the soil around…
by Birgit Lennertz Sarrimanolis In January the mercury plummeted well below zero. The frozen world remained in a still, crackling, almost surreal state for some time. Hoarfrost hung thickly on the stark branches of trees, fuzzy and soft-looking in the crisp, clear air. In the living room, beside the crackling…
by Michael McGrath At the start of the 1983 school year, after having failed to land a suitable teaching position following my graduation from university, I approached the high school where I’d been a student teacher about the possibility of volunteering as a coach. Because of my job at a…
by Alice Landrum “Mr. Bloom and Stephen entered the cabman’s shelter, an unpretentious wooden structure, where, prior to then, he had rarely, if ever, been before; the former having previously whispered to the latter a few hints anent the keeper of it, said to be the once famous Skin-the-Goat, Fitzharris,…
by Tayler Tucker From his lips billowed wisps of smoke, curling upwards enshrouding the hollow sockets where eyes should have been, cycling in a perpetual dance. His visage bore a labyrinth of wrinkles etched deep into his blueish foggy skin. God only knew where those ‘eyes’ led. His hair hung…
by Joan Mazza On this cold December morning when the firein the woodstove keeps dying, I think of dragonsand their shape, how one could appear at any time with breath that would astound me. I amble downthe stairs to feed the beast another log, to fusswith embers, twigs, and another…
by Bart Plantenga Art students Suzie Soo and Polly Nisian lived in a Dutch college town near the German border on a pleasant street with shade trees and a small playground at one end of the block where nannies watched the children play and, at the other, a cafe with…
by John Grey As the model posed on an attic divan,the artist’s brush fought tirelesslyagainst the two dimensions of the canvas,to convince the eyethat there were really three. Then he waged war against her surfaces,gave what he saw as her true selfmore attention in the portraitthan the simple bow of…
by Matthew Boxer Dr Wilbur R. Hilliard studied the stars, and Dr Arlen Menlo explored subatomic particles and, in particular, the tiniest of such particles, neutrinos, while Dr Wayne Q. Ellington, an ambitious man, concerned himself with everything else in between. Dr Hilliard investigated red giants, blue giants, New York…
by John Mulligan I am a critic, and as I am a critic I criticise this and criticise that, professional at these things, a true, dedicated critic. Now, I am not a literary critic like that Hazlitt, Bradly, Belinsky, Schlegel; but a critic of the movies and not writing for…