Issue 9
Contents
Fiction
It was 3 a.m. on the second day of March and the moon was waxing, gibbous, and full of rainbow. I was walking down the Rue de Esquimalt, tripping on my feet but also on whatever madman’s panacea, whatever twisted elixir was coursing through my veins at the time. I can’t remember what it was […]Sherman Larson has eighty-seven bear traps buried in his front yard. Every few weeks he changes them–different patterns for different moods. Pensive: Neat rows exactly a foot apart. Carefully measured to promote tranquility. Balanced. Zen. Anxious: Haphazard clumps. Only some are set to activate, their mouths held open in silent screams. The rest keep their […]Non-Fiction
Turtle, Senator and I sat at a table at the Beachcomber on Wollaston Beach while the redheaded guitar player, billed as The President of Rock ‘n’ Roll, roared: There’s a riot goin’ on! Down in cellblock number nine. I was in the slammer with Albert DiSalvo, shouted Senator over the music. He nodded his head […]Poetry
Photograph in which children are throwing rice at your wedding dress
Maybe they are paper airplanes, or goosenecks made from linen napkins, clappers taken from every bell within fifty miles. I imagine that, when you gathered your train, to get into the car, streamered with tin cans that rattled newlywed the whole way home, grains fell from the hand-stitched fabric with a hush. I feed you […]Ordinary Psalm With Severe Neglect
I was working day shift at the County Shelter, 102 degrees in the tattered shade of that street and this kid, maybe 5 or 6, had been scrubbed clean, her hair oiled for lice. Her teeth rotted brown from sucking juice bottles to sleep, she was busy climbing over the dirty couch in the […]after Wayne Holloway-Smith Sara without the H (the princess is not Jewish but Arabian), Sara Kookaburra in the old gum tree, Sara who struggled to sharpen B+s into As, Sara who sees double, Sara under wraps, Sara in the brook (her natural habitat), Fire Hen Triple Gemini Sara. Skeleton crew Sara, Sara Solo, Sara […]WHAT BOTTICELLI DID NOT PORTRAY
What if Venus had risen not from the froth of the sea but from a pool on a farm in Iowa or Minnesota with tower silos of grain as her backdrop as visible from the kitchen window as in the camera lens at the very moment wind sweeps her auburn hair to stream like a […] once a woman went to the mountain alone NEVER say its name aloud, or you will wake the from […]I stopped planting annuals—no more petunias or geraniums or zinnias I longed to have come back without my bidding. I planted Lenten roses, daffodils, daylilies whose color I forgot so they would surprise me in summer: orange persimmon, showlight, mystic amulet, wispy morn. To continue reading this selection you can purchase Issue 9 http://www.qulitmag.com/shop/Stage/Screen Writing
INT. BUNKER – LIVING SPACE – ARMCHAIR – DAY A woman’s face. Dry. Brittle. Slack and distorted in death. This was once FAY, 30s. Now it’s just a corpse. ALICE (V.O.) It was two days after my 16th birthday when my mother died. ALICE, 16, scrawny yet hopeful, with all the whimsy of her fairy […]CAST JOHN BERRYMAN (JB): Professor, Pulitzer Prize winning poet, alcoholic MR. BONES: Dream Songs protagonist Henry’s alter ego; a minstrel NURSE BERRYMAN SENIOR (JB’s father) RODERICK MARSH: A counselor to alcoholics; former student of JB SCENE The detox ward of a hospital in Minneapolis, circa. 1970 Bare stage, except for a stool AT […]The Writing Life
Loving Our Work and Letting it Go
One morning many years ago, I phoned a writer friend and asked if she would take a look at a manuscript I’d recently completed, one that I was particularly fond of. I guess you could call it a crush. Yes, I had a crush on my manuscript. (If you’re a writer, you probably know how […]