Monique Quintana/Fiction
That room was by far the worst we had ever been in. It was like a big fucking sad face — the same kind that I would doodle over and over on my twenty minutes timed math test.
Charles Edward Brooks/Fiction
“Good morning, Doctor,” a familiar voice said as the jogger reached the platform. Roland Landolt, bundled up thickly against the freezing air, stepped quickly behind the man he had greeted, blocking the stairs. High over his head, he held a long-handled ax with a shiny blade.
Ann Cefola/Cindy Hochman-Editor Interview
How to Save Your Manuscript Before It Leaves Your Laptop: An Interview with Cindy Hochman by Ann Cefola indy Hochman peers over a manuscript. On the first page, she has already discovered...
Donovan Borger/Poetry
It takes only a moment to think the Tiber was blond when we
rode in on it this morning or I have never seen my mother
punch someone before or I hope these men kill each other
so neither takes me or I don’t want him inside me, don’t
want to shut my eyes just to keep that sneer out of my head.
Book Reviews V12N4/July-August 2016
This Amazing Cage of Light by Martine Bellen ISBN-13: 978-1941550328 – Paper/$18.00 Spuyten Duyvil: 2015 www.spuytenduyvil.net This Amazing Cage of Light Review by Tom DeBeauchamp n "Cuccina,"...
Rosalia Scalia/Fiction
MOTHER’S DRESSER by Rosalia Scalia In the evening, after dinner, the grownups drink espresso laced with Sambuca or anisette, the aromas of licorice, of anise, of coffee rising up like extended fingers and mingling with whiffs of garlic, tomato, and basil,...
Three Poems by Trina Gaynon
Why Does the New Moon Hide? Dogs barking at a skateboard rasping across the dark. The mother scolding her children to bed. A house where the wife is beaten. Tonight it is silent. May God keep her safe. The daughter leaving home, the door closed on her soft...
Interview with “Rosebud” co-founder Rod Clark
We started out with Eastern News in ’93. John Lehman flew to New York, walked into the offices at Eastern, threw down a copy and said, “You folks need to distribute us!” They agreed, and they did carry us for a number of years. Then Eastern got bought by Hearst Publications, which was bad news for us — because of course, Randolph Hearst hated the movie Citizen Kane, in part, rumor has it, because “Rosebud” was not the name of his childhood sled — it was allegedly his nickname for his favorite part of his mistress’s anatomy, which is supposedly why he sued Orson Wells to prevent the release of the picture!
Michelle Terry/Creative Nonfiction
Valerie Brown Photo Pickin' Wildflowers by Michelle Terry y Grandma Leona was not a classic Depression-era beauty. Her harvest-browned skin and murder of jet-black hair were an arrant...
Macaulay G. Glynn/Four Poems
I’ve always
been good at hurting
my mouth, the warmth and wetness and shrill taste
of red. Even now, I nibble
at the pink flesh of my cheeks.
Three Poems by Jean C. Howard
HANDING OF THE FLAG (Services of William Reese) At the grave site, as each star is swallowed by a fold or white-glove tuck, the flag moves, slowly, precisely, each tug calculated and rehearsed. The gatherers are silent, hearing each move, though...
William Wolak/Words and Images
I write poems, translate poetry, make collages, and take photographs. The creative energy and drive for self expression is the same in all of the above; for me, it’s simply a question of what materials are at hand and where my attention is focused at any particular time. My first love is poetry, so that’s where I expend most of my time and creative energy.
Three Poems by Ara Alexandre Shishmanian
A cheek glued to the void, I weigh the impalpable
Full of nothingness the rusty gate of my heart unlocks
The beast falls asleep under the light
like a page in the clutches of signs
Patrice Kanozsai/INTERVIEW
A) Poetry is the kind of literature I appreciate the most. To have a feeling just with a few words is unbelievable. Poetry is the only way to express the untold human condition.
By Zoltán Böszörményi/Poetry in Translation
The Poem Didn’t Join the Class Struggle (A vers nem lett osztalyharcos) By Zoltán Böszörményi translated from the Hungarian by Paul Sohar (the poem dropped out didn’t join the class struggle toured Paris saw Endre Ady and went to Moscow to trace the way...
The Interview, by Allan Shapiro
There are no windows in his office. There is no fireplace. A dim light on his desk. A lamp in the corner. A necklace of shrunken heads atop a humidor beneath it. Add a mounted boar’s head on the wall and it’d be the perfect setting for formal introspection. A safe, sterile place to see and feel everything, to unwrap each emotion I’ve ever felt as if they were gifts to be opened on the most sunny and beautiful day of the year, which also happens to be Christmas.
From the Edge/Column
Things started to come apart: we blamed each other for things little and large: cracks opened. Staying in the same house got progressively harder for us. I have to take responsibility for doing nothing to change the direction things were going. It really was my fault, and I’d declined a wonderful opportunity and wrecked almost twenty years of our very excellent relationship. Being pig-headed is an expensive behavior form, but I fit the definition, nicely. By mutual decision, I “temporarily” moved into a small campus area rental property we owned. I strayed. I strayed a lot.
Club Royale/Fiction
My destination was yet another church – Lawton had its saints as well as its sinners – a few blocks away. The church basement space was run-down, with a cracked linoleum floor and a water fountain so dry that not even Moses could coax liquid out of it. Members of the Peace Committee, some of them old enough to have changed Moses’ diaper, milled around with cups of coffee.
Michael T. Young/Poetry
Michael T. Young: Three Poems
Then and Now/Steve Poleskie
The photo above is of me talking on a telephone when telephones were for talking on, not typing out messages to one’s friends with your thumb, or playing games, or getting directions that get you lost anyway. We still use a land line in our house, although my wife and I both have cell phones; or mobiles as they are called in the rest of the world…
Book Reviews
Allen Ginsberg is known as one of the United States’ most significant poets, in particular thanks to his 1956 epic, “Howl,” which was the subject of a subsequent obscenity trial. Later, Ginsberg was known throughout America and the rest of the world for his role as a countercultural leader…
Clarence Brimley/Spoken Word
An artist friend, Karen Gunderson, introduced me to Clarence Brimley, a 35-year-old spoken-word poet from NYC. Clarence sent along a few of his poems, but without the voice. I wondered how they would sound/feel when he speaks them, when they’re heard. Clarence was glad to oblige, and sent along a few smart phone videos that appear here, accompanied by the written word. Hope you enjoy − another one of millions of emerging poets…
Daniel Harris/Poetry
Micro aggressions rise blank to ascension: ur-cut,
savage, to omit the dupe—(re)emerges to femme
a skin of guts an oblique attraction. Earl Shoepeg
sucks Eddy’s soul. Earl’s an Eddy rumpologist (‘st):
burned as impurity, agent of rapture in alchemy’s
concrete trellis: McEddy coins Earl.
Andrew Morris/Poetry
Andrew Morris lives in the Catskill Mountains of New York State where he teaches high school English and history. His work has appeared in Redivider, Ruminate Magazine, Otis Nebula, and is forthcoming in Rufous City Review. He’s also a member of the Poetry Workshop at Bright Hill Press in Treadwell, NY.
Heather M. Dorn/Poetry
Heather Dorn, Poetry