Coffee, Black
by Samuel Jeremiah Snoek
I sat in the front room of the diner where all the after-work farmers, smoking, and the few scattered truckers, also smoking, ate their midnight eggs and drank their day-old coffee. This front room was a faded country yellow, sad alongside the aged ivory of the Formica table tops and the smoke from the fry pits and greasy burger grills and burnt coffee and cigarettes. I, like the farmers and truckers, ate eggs and bacon. My grandfather ate nothing. Neither of us knew why we were here. We'd just stopped. Neither of us knew why we sat in the front room of the diner, where people smoke. Neither of us smoked.

Snipe Hunting
by Melvin Sterne
I stand with this rifle in my hands, ankle-deep in this swampy water, waiting for my good friend Luther to arrive. We are snipe hunting. I have spent most of the day waiting for him. He is somewhere, just out of sight perhaps, driving the snipe towards me, into the trap we have laid. I find it exciting, in a juvenile way, to hold this rifle and play pretend. I hide behind the trees and suddenly I am no longer a small little man from India but a great hunter, stalking the mighty tiger through the jungles of my homeland. My father, who was a strict Hindu, would never have allowed a weapon in his house, not even a toy. Kind Luther, however, has loaned me this shotgun, and taken time to instruct me in the details of its operation: how to pump its action until a shell has been inserted into the chamber, how to sight down the barrel, like this, and squeeze the trigger slowly. I dare not pull it, of course, because I am not altogether certain whether I have loaded it accidentally while playing with it.

Creative Nonfiction

A New Beginning: Jews Return to Germany,
by William Hathaway
BONN--Most of the other children in the film stand up straight, almost militarily erect, and look right into the camera. They state their names and hometowns in clear voices. The announcer explains how they became lost from their families.
One thin boy of about 12, though, stands hunched. He is darker complexioned than the others and glances away, as if the camera crew frightens him. In a muted voice he murmurs, "Karl Weisswein," then adds his hometown: "Auschwitz."

Poetry

Dishwater Madonna
by Terrence Flynn
Rosario Vasquez was eating a toaster pastry
when the Holy Virgin rose from the dishwater.

Wasted Modern Romantic Lyric
by Pat Hise
We took the car, some beer,
My hope and your worry
Over and uneven but
Well worn gravel trail
To the edge of the night
And the shore of a man made lake.
There we backed the car
So the hatch opened to the water,
Hoping to close our minds
To the world you brought with us.

Nonetheless
by Marianne Poloskey
Spring's voice was so soothing,
I dismissed its lapses in grammar
as it covered up traces of cold.
Nor was I alarmed when the wind,
injured on the corners
of the house, changed
from humming to moaning.

Rain
by Marianne Poloskey
All day
slow rain has been washing
Sunday plans and wishes.
Colors drain.
Nothing sparkles in my mind.

Hawk in Early Spring
by Royce Sykes
From weathered fence post, slightly askew,
young hawk stretches wings, then launches

Wings
by Doug Tourney
Touching her in darkness
My hands fly
Across her skin like winged things

Things Like Light
by Martine Stephens
Your obituary said you loved the stars
but it did not say why
or how we stood when we were young
clutching silver flashlights
in the backyard long past bedtime
shining the narrow beams upward
hoping some child on some distant world
would signal back.