Issue 1

Contents

    Fiction

    We Should Have Named Him

    We wanted less geometry. Less corn. We wanted the chaotic remnants of ancient flooding. Carved gorges and mountains and rivers that ran through breweries. We wanted burgers with layers of poached eggs and truffles and smoked tomato coulis and cocktails with hibiscus and four different types of ginger. They could keep their Packers and tater tot casseroles. We wanted bookstores that took up city blocks. Burgeoning IT companies and well-maintained bridges and bike lanes and busses that ran on time.

    Non-Fiction

    Reading Aloud To My Cat

    Reading my writing aloudand I write primarily fiction and personal essayshas always been part of the drill for me. Its the penultimate or even ultimate stage in my obligatory revision/rewriting sequence: from the initial handwritten drafts; through revisions on screen, with their multiple font and type-size permutations; to several printed versions at the end.I once read somewhere about a writer who hung his manuscripts up on a clothes line, like drying laundry, and then reviewed the pages sequentially through a pair of binoculars. Ive never gone quite that far to gain distance, but I have been known to print out my hard copies in different colorsred, green, purpleto view each with a fresh eye.

    Poetry

    Applied Science

    To explain, to chart, to graph what has lasted this long and what hasnt.

    Ought

    Each afternoon heavy clouds form in the north, and each evening when I take the dogs out, it snows.

    Prayer

    Shes meeting a friend for a walk through the museum of fine arts and lunch –errands to run on the way…

    Kafka’s Wound

    Toward sunset it bleeds orange, plums, and wine. The father always at table with his mug in hand.

    What To Give

    I could give my horizon, the one I see on cheekbones…

    Elegy at Lake Murray

    And what of the pines branching over the lake? Am I to take them as a sign, these few drops of rain as mercy?

    A Prayer for Marriage

    Let there be woman deranged made of words: gardeners and snow-ghosts, moving lips and butterfly-knots. Let there be.

    Every Anonymous City

    I knew a girl who closed her eyes every time she heard a car horn…

    Stage/Screen Writing

    Reservations

    Mid-morning. LIGHTS UP on EDGAR and MAE. MAE stands at a kitchen sink washing and drying morning dishes. EDGAR sits at a kitchen table, reading a newspaper. EDGAR Good breakfast, Mae. (MAE turns to him.) MAE Thank you, Edgar.

    Highway 16

    SETTING: A one-room house: a bed, a table, a fireplace. A red neon sign flashes Grannys from a distance, its reflection appearing as if through a wet window. At rise. The sounds of rain and vultures. In the bed: GRANNY lies snoring. On the table: a book of matches and a mason jar. The sound of a door slamming shut. GRANNY sits up as RED enters, dripping wet. RED holds an empty basket.