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Winter 2011

The Winter 2011 issue features Creative Nonfiction from Micaela Seidel, Genre X from Sarah Long, and Poetry from Lek Borja, Michelle “Strawberry” Heymann, Wednesday Hobson, and Jessica Kincade

Saturday Nights in Seoul by Alexis Stratton

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” It was one of the first questions my students asked me when I stood in front of their class on the opening day of the school year. Thirty-some heads of dark hair, thirty-some dark eyes, thirty-some blue-and-white uniforms, thirty-some giggling girls. “It's okay,” I said, calming down their laughter. “No, no … Read more

Biography for Mother’s Family Photos by Mishon A. Wooldridge

  I need a camera, to my eye, to my eye, reminding which lies I’ve been hiding                         -Wilco, “Kamera” There is profuse proof of my existence after age 10. My photographic life begins awkward, barely pre-teen.  Band concerts, summer camping, middle-school portraits of me with braces, family pets, all chronologically ordered into albums; a … Read more

Experimental by Susan Johnson

  At the observation station observers tried observing themselves making observations and were impressed by the results. A film loop of a loop of film being filmed in a loop. For scientific purposes, some said. For posterity said others, to preserve in our selves the making of ourselves, as seen in the making. Doesn't everyone … Read more

Blue by Loretta Williams

I still miss those pajamas — my hospital pajamas — white with blue roses and thin stripes.  My mother made the pajamas for me when I was seven. It was my first trip to the hospital to see if doctors could divine the odd sloshing rhythm that had made my heart unreliable since birth.  Whatever … Read more

Out of the Blue by Sharon Berg

A glorious, buttery-warm light lit the summer of 1966. This was the summer that surpassed all remembered summers. They started to call themselves The Quartet as school let out. Mary, Colleen, Helen, and Anne were secretly teasing their brothers, who patterned their vacant lot tournaments after the escapades of Zorro and The Three Musketeers. But … Read more

RITUALS by Lynn Bey

1. Our mother calls me to come and look at her. That is how we begin. “Say something,” she says. She tries to sound petulant, but her image in the full-length mirror makes her smile. “A sheath,” I offer, cross-legged on the floor. I hold a pillow on my lap despite the heat. Our mother … Read more

Avoiding Her Art by Eugenie Theall

We celebrate New Year’s Eve in San Salvador, city of hammocks, where streets are littered with firecrackers, wicks, and ash. Dogs run loose, no collar or tag. Isabel tries to control her hair, twist it into rows, slick with gel, bobby-pinned, but one strand betrays her in every picture, defies her hand. Free to pace … Read more

FAMILY OWNED by R. Neal Bonser

I was right in the middle of a late-night rush in the deli when Jeffers, one of our regulars, came slamming in like a lion late for a feeding. Most of our regulars are a pain to be sure, but Jeffers is in his own category. He’s hairy all over with this crazy-looking, giant beard … Read more

Are They Real? by Virginia Silverman

“Are they real, Mommy?” My daughter was staring at my bare breasts one morning last month as I got dressed for work. The incisions from my double mastectomy were quiet now, having faded to a mildly aggravated pink over the past six years since my surgeries. “Well, baby, in a way,” I answered. “Remember when … Read more

BLOCK by Darby Bailey

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCZ-fX-JDX0 Visit www.darbybailey.com/ for more information about BLOCK. About Darby Bailey: Voluntarily removed from parochial school in the 4th grade over sexual content in a book she was publishing for friends, Darby Bailey eventually went from downtown Salt Lake City to Santa Cruz to L.A., where she is pursing her B.A. degree at Antioch University. … Read more

Forever 18 by Casey Cohen

            July 2nd, 2008. Truth be told, I’ve never been much good at remembering what the date is. Of course this affliction is exacerbated in L.A., where the seasons are vague at best, and I’m hard pressed to know what month it is let alone one of its numbers. In fact, at 78 degrees and … Read more

Without Words by Philip C. Barragan, II

              The sound of our footsteps echoed through the hall. Dozens of faces too ill to smile stared at us as we tried not to look into their rooms. Hushed conversations mingled with the odors of Lysol, bleach and fresh flowers. We arrived at our destination.  My mother asked for my handkerchief to dry … Read more

Between the Bells by Gina Maria DiPonio

It was those charged five minutes between 2nd and 3rd period when the courtyard of my junior high was suddenly thronged with twelve-, thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds of all shapes and sizes, all with backpacks dangling off their shoulders. Small groups began to form, halting traffic on the two narrow cement walkways that crisscrossed between the … Read more

Bugs By Morgan W. Strauss

            Instead of thinking about Sonny, his traveling companion wishes she were in Spain.  How far of a drive is it from Granada to Barcelona?             Twenty miles south of Fresno a sign says Visalia 24 miles. Sonny pilots the car with dirty hands, a torn shirt, an unintentional beard, last … Read more

Absorption by Robert D. Montoya

This is the sound             of losing myself: the drips of continuous rain as it             disperses itself             along the wet ground, *** Where Costa Rican vines, like syringes, suck the water (tender roots like a child *** sucking upon a nipple, absorbing the minerals, the liquid of … Read more

Incurring by Telaina Morse Eriksen

I walk into my dad’s hospice room and I know that rent has come due. I have mortgaged air, and called it hope. There isn’t any home here, for either my dad or I, but we’re both still paying. Mary Doria Russell wrote in Children of God, “And love was a debt, best left unincurred.” … Read more