CURRENT ISSUE (#44)
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Poetry Selection – John Anton Piller, RebuildingThe barn burns His wife
Fiction Selection – Diane Nelson, from PaperweightWhen I think of my body, I usually see Martin Heffler trying to pull open the stage curtains for the fifth grade's rendition of How the West Was Won. Martin was only a fourth grader, and maybe that had something to do with it, but really, it was the curtains that wouldn't budge. They were gold brocaded velvet, and they were beautiful to look at, but start working them in across the traverse rod and they became as ponderous as wet laundry. At the far right of the stage, Martin was up there grunting, actually grunting. He was red-faced and the curtains weren't going anywhere. Cruelty, inattention. I don't know what it was, but the teachers just let poor Martin struggle for awhile, which was wrong, because they basically understood the laws of physics. The curtains were a rock and Martin was a pebble |
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