Current Issue

We are pleased to present the final issue of our seventh year, published on Monday, 7 November 2005. We hope you enjoy browsing through our extensive collection of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry! (See the Works List to discover the many works in our collection, including the ability to search through the issues.)

Fiction

Shooting Pheasants
by Joshua Allen
Olan raised his shotgun in what would have been seen by an objective observer as a blur of fast motion, a glint of blued steel. The wheat swayed; the bird swayed with it. Heat, noise and light turned into blood, feathers and smoke. Olan, alone in the field, retrieved the bird without comment. He trekked to the far end of the field, reloading a red shotgun shell into the warm barrel of his gun, dropping the spent cartridge into one of the many pockets of his elaborate hunting vest. The bird, stuffed into the large pouch on the back of his vest, kicked without conviction; it was dead. It let out a low squawk when Olan bent to pick a grain of wheat from a low stalk. Continue

Piracy
by Gayla Chaney
As storm clouds gather quickly over the gulf coast of southeast Texas, Barbara McPherson stares into the wide open eyes of the stranger. She has already noted the gaping mouth and still chest, the motionless tattooed arms and the bloody hole in the middle of his forehead. This body, this denim-clad object near her feet, confirms the total impotency of the dead. She shudders, not for what she has just done with the .38 Smith and Wesson that her husband Jay insisted she carry with her to the beach, but for what almost just happened to her, what most assuredly would have happened if she had dismissed Jay's concern as paranoia. Continue

Infantile Paralysis
by Susan Dugan
A soft mewing like that of a newborn calf stirred her.
Rose pushed hard to rouse herself from the depths of sleep, as if toeing against the murky bottom of a lake, lying on a mattress that sagged so in the middle it took all her strength to kick up and away from the deep well of her husband Victor. Continue

At the Set Time
by Miriam N. Kotzin
I should have been worried when I noticed that he smelled like freshly washed sheets, line-dried in the summer sun. Or when I joined his image with mine, reflected in the window glass, thinking that he looked enough like me to be my son. Not until too late did I remember. Continue

Creative Nonfiction

Baby Coos
by Elizabeth Kurecka
It wasn't supposed to be the Bride of Chucky, but a beloved doll from my past. My aunt had written that she was sending me a doll that I'd had when I was little and that it needed some repairs. Since I was computer-savvy, according to her, she instructed me to search the web to find a place that could restore her to her original beauty. "I'll pay whatever it costs," she wrote. "It wasn't an expensive doll back then but it should be worth some money now that it's an antique." Sure, I thought, a nice way to say I'm getting old. "It is a life-size baby doll with the sweetest face. It was your favorite," she added. Continue

Poetry

Science Projects
by Suzanne Roberts
My father is dying, Continue

The Present Tense
by Suzanne Roberts
When the lady at the funeral parlor
hands Daddy over, she says, it isn't ashes,
you know. That's what most people think.
But, really, it's bone fragment. It's so hot
that the rest disappears.
Mother says she's heard quite enough. Continue

Why You Stay
by Suzanne Roberts
Your friend tells you
you're the balloon. Continue

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