Apologies

We apologize that we have been delayed in working on the January issue, but it will be up sometime in January. We cannot guarantee response times, however.

"Sonnet" October 2013 Issue Released!

I am very pleased to announce that our third quarterly issue is officially released!
There are two ways to view the content for this issue:
All of the stories and poems have been published as individual entries on this site. To view all of them, either scroll down through our feed, follow the links on the bottom of this page, or click on the "October 2013" tag.
If you prefer, the magazine has also been uploaded to Google Drive available to view and download. Simply follow this link, or click the tab at the top of the screen that reads "October 2013." The downloadable magazine also includes a short introduction by myself.

There may still be some formatting glitches to be worked out over the next couple days. If you spot a problem, please send an email to LifeAsAn@gmail.com including a link to the page with a problem, if appropriate. Be sure to put "LAA" in the subject line somewhere so our spam filters don't catch you.

 If you would like to view the magazine on an e-reader, you can download it through Google Drive entirely for free. I do not have an e-reader myself, so I'm not sure exactly how to accomplish this. If you have any questions of that nature, please direct them to the manufacturer of your e-reader.

Below is a listing of all the pieces featured in this issue

Poetry:
Love Sonnet by Sara Callor
Anti-Love Sonnet by Sara Callor
"They that have power to hurt and will do none" by Erik Noonan
Smiling Starlet (Marilyn) by James K. Blaylock
Wild Blazing Fires (Forgotten Galaxies) by James K. Blaylock
Shudder to Apocalypse by Brett Stout
The Gypsy Padlock Doctrine by Brett Stout
Liebestod by Robert Wexelblatt
I Am Not a Brick by A.J. Huffman
In the Scent of Dreams by A.J. Huffman

Prose:
Letter to Mark by Carol Smallwood
Weighting Game by Terry Barr
An Autumn Twice Fell by Jarrett Fontaine
The History of the World by Kim Farleigh
Penitent by Kelly Kraus

Penitent

by Kelly Kraus

The desert had nearly consumed him last night. He’d fled almost three days ago. With him he’d only brought a half jug of water and a stale loaf of bread. Both were gone within a day. His mouth was arid and he was becoming increasingly weary. If he didn’t get food and water soon, he could die out here. And no one would know. Or care.

Regardless of his predicament, returning to the city was necessary. Hunger pangs cramped his stomach. As a group of hares darted across his path, he pondered chasing them. They’d make a modest meal. He lacked the strength for a pursuit of the animals. Famished, he trudged on.

The trek back to the city was punishing. Mountainous terrain provided refuge from potential prying eyes. While there were many valleys that made walking easier, the cliffs were steeper than the valleys were shallow. Sharp declines scattered the area. All the ravines he came upon were dry from the scorching heat. Water was a scarcity in this area.

The History of the World

by Kim Farleigh

Suburb A’s inhabitants considered themselves superior to suburb B’s, the A’s mockingly imitating the B’s accents, although their accents were almost identical.

Expletives not employed in suburb A, except to mock the B’s, were used by the B’s, demonstrating the latter’s “unquestionable brutality.” Waggish A’s used these terms to belittle the B’s; better, however, to avoid these expressions whose non-employment indicated an exquisite sensibility beyond the reach of most B’s.

The A’s constantly needed to prove their superiority so that when litter “polluted” suburb A’s clean streets, Suburb A’s leading newspaper, The Erudite Browser, claimed: “Dark-Age Suburb B louts committed litter heresy against decency”, although how they knew this wasn’t explained, research superfluous when poetic conclusions cause collective indignation, the mellifluous cadences of articulate sniping singing with the enrapturing vibrancy of truth.

An Autumn Twice Fell

by Jarrett Fontaine

Rain pattered against my window. Through the stormy darkness I could hear my daughter screaming and crying out for me again.

Daddy, I miss you.

A crack of thunder quickly followed. The midnight air was electric as I rose out of bed, being careful not to wake up my wife.

Help me Dad!

I stumbled blindly through the hallway, down the creaky steps. She screamed again.

No matter how many times I visited her grave and begged her to stop, I could always hear her voice.

Weighting Game

by Terry Barr

“You’ve lost too much weight! You look…GAUNT!”

The anxiety in my mother’s voice shakes my confidence. It’s amazing the power she exerts over me. How can one remark reduce me to that emotionally stunted boy I thought I had shed years ago?

I walk away from her, retreating to my bedroom bath. I shut the door and breathe deeply. Then I face myself in the mirror, seeking the new me, the slimmer me. The me that I like. But what I see instead is a wasted face with hollow cheeks.

Is there more wrong with me than I know? Despite the disease that I have, that she knows I have, is it my weight that my mother is most focused on? I turn away from the mirror, unable to resolve the discrepancy of our perceived images.

Letter to Mark

by Carol Smallwood

Excerpt from Lily's Odyssey (print novel 2010) published with permission by All Things That Matter Press. Its first chapter was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award in Best New Writing. http://www.amazon.com/Lilys-Odyssey-Carol-Smallwood/dp/0984098453  

 

Dear Mark,

I thought today was Friday but M*A*S*H wasn’t on at 6 so it must be Saturday.

I got a call from State asking me if I could come for an interview! Can’t believe it! I took the earliest interview time slot and made reservation for flying out Monday. They are paying for my ticket. They have tuition remission there.

I shouldn’t tell you but I went through a yellow light in a haze of thinking what to pack and got a $50 ticket. Jenny’s taking me to the airport so she can have the car. Return 8:03 a.m. on the 6^th—have layovers both ways unfortunately in Chicago’s O’Hare.

Congratulations on being elected to the Student Government Association! That’s really good news and will look good on your resumes. I was very glad to hear you think your government teacher’s “one cool dude.” Are Ollie North haircuts popular on campus?

I liked your comment about Charlie having a car in the demolition derby “sounded like small town America—fixing something up and paying to smash it.”

Must dye Jenny’s slakes as she must wear them for work but will have to put bleach in the washer to get all the color out first. Sorry to hear you had pink shorts after I did the washing. Jenny’s red shirt must have run. She wanted to see my wedding ring and is wearing it for some reason.

I painted the utility room wall while listening for the mailperson. Maize watched me working with plants and jumped high when I surprised her coming around the corner of the house. It was very humid and it was hard sleeping last night with all the thunder. Maize hide last night and then woke me up by sniffing my nose. She keeps walking in and out or pushing pens off the table like she knows something’s up.

Not that surprised that you’re learning more about Nicolet City than when you were here. I’m glad the police came quickly when you had to call about the patient freaking out.

I’m looking forward to having you come home for Fay’s wedding and will try my new sourdough bread recipe out when you’re home.

Jenny I know misses you. I noticed that she really followed you around when you were home last time. She helped me with my book after prying her out of bed before 10 (after chasing Charlie home 1:30 last night). She does good work and am paying her. She went to see Betsy and probably Charlie will come over tonight. Trying to get another Wisconsin reference book going but is hard because it would mean limited sales so may end up doing a social resources one.

I saw a great big Allied Moving van pull up across the way and it was so long it had a hard time turning the corner. I so wanted it to be mine. The best thing in the mail today was there weren’t any rejects on article or job inquiries.

Be sure and do the best you can because your grades will follow you around no matter where you go.

Love, Mom

In the Scent of Dreams

by A.J. Huffman

I dance on tireless toes, spinning,

a ballerina of wind and ghostly touch.

I am air, light

and [on] point(e).

I am princess of the pink chasm

of inebriated thought. I know nothing

and everything. I see what I feel, what

I inhale. I exhale doubt. I watch it

float to the ceiling dissolve into fog

and shadows. I blink at them with my third

eye, fan them away with invisible butterfly wings.

I Am Not a Brick

by A.J. Huffman

house, but mortar definitely runs

through my veins, much needed

reinforcement against invisible wolves

who blow me down to foundation.

They are confused by my solid

determination to rebuild

myself in a slightly harder shape.

Resigned to this repetition,

I peer through shadowed

fingers of fate, waiting to see

if this time I am enough,

if this time I will hold.

Liebestod

by Robert Wexelblatt

The still bedroom was dimmed by blue drapes.

Though they were outside time it mattered

it should be a November afternoon

when exertion brought its own reward.

He was an expiring salmon expending the

last erg of energy in the sweet water

of his birth; wave on wave buoyed him

then dropped until he plumbed the

matrix of all metaphor, perishing

with limbs of lead into the dusky void—

only to renew the compulsive cycle

of recurrence heralded by Nietzsche,

framed by Klimt, explicated by Freud.

Was it the love of death,

the death of love, or merely one

soul lost in the release of spirit,

the love that feels like death?

Memory shuffles delight up with regret.

When did the Lovedeath turn to the death of

love, the death of love to the love of death?

Was it in the middle of a sentence

or in the silence between breath and breath?

The Gypsy Padlock Doctrine

by Brett Stout

I received a message at 8:43 p.m. Eastern Standard Time,

she says hi

three minutes later she asks me what I’m doing

there is no answer on the other end,

I received a message at 9:12 p.m. Eastern Standard Time,

she asks me why I’m avoiding her

she asks me if we’re still friends

there is no answer on the other end,

I received a message at 9:44 p.m. Eastern Standard Time,

she asks me what’s wrong

she once again asks me why I’m avoiding her

she asks what she did wrong

there is no answer on the other end,

I received a message at 10:17 p.m. Eastern Standard Time,

she calls me a fucking asshole

she says that she regrets ever having sex with me

she says it ruined our friendship

there is no answer on the other end,

I was taking a nap and didn’t wake up until 11:28 Eastern Standard Time,

I took a sip of coffee and scratched my back

I lit a light flavored cigarette

I saw her messages

even though she was acting a little psychotic I say hi

there was no answer on the other end.

Shudder to Apocalypse

by Brett Stout

concrete,

leads the way to a bleak landscape

greed and gluttony oh my capitalist beast,

corporate isolation,

surrounding me

covering me

smothering me

with their trademarked logos

of hate and oppression,

atom bombs,

are released in euphoria

as the suburbs of utopia lay in rubble

once pale men turn to charcoal colored dust,

the lab rats,

are released from their captivity

they sit on my couch and watch cable TV

growing disillusioned and obese

they truly are Americans now

value sized and cheap.

Wild Blazing Fires (Forgotten Galaxies)

by James K. Blaylock

a lightning bolt ferociously bit into the clock-tower;

therefore transforming the whole city, brightly blue

but all the simple folk calmly wandered, as they'd always done,

no panic grasped their lazy throats, nor ripped their easy eyes...

instead they walked aimlessly, and with their blinders strongly in place,

as nothing was to hinder their luxuries of time wasting and pretending

but nevertheless, the stench of wild blazing fires would soon saturate everything -

becoming more than some dimples, upon the smiling faces of forgotten galaxies

Smiling Starlet (Marilyn)

by James K. Blaylock

captured in black and white,

you were, your days, beauty;

being sexy, and silly, and worldly,

you had everyone's total attention

but somehow you needed so much more;

so it's safe to say, madness conquered...

though your legacy is forever churning;

Hollywood framed you, smiling starlet

"They that have power to hurt and will do none"

by Erik Noonan

where “world” means “people” life sometimes feels

like an absurd conceit reified

in brittle trinkets that not only don’t

correlate too objectively with an emotion

one can recognize as real

but also seem designed to flaunt self-love

before all save those few who are in

meantime Thomas Jefferson’s natural aristocracy

(enlightenment wet dream if ever there was one)

carries the burden of defense today

as in Shakespeare’s times nature or God

lent out sums of excellence at interest

on one hand and immolated Cook on the other

coldly pure rank non-artistic lilywhite

Anti-Love Sonnet

by Sara Callor

What is love but that irksome envelope,

enclosing hormones in clandestine ink,

a threnody of lamentation, hope

a hostage to the hoopla and the stink

of pink and purple histrionic act.

Begin with chardonnay and glittered jewels,

end up with writhing white wedding dress pact.

‘Cause even vows become temporal rules

and love becomes a taxidermy pale.

Like Sisyphus, the stone still rolls them back—

tomorrow’s only sweet in fairy tale—

but lachrymose a more likely track.

If love is really what you’re after, then

reality has one less denizen.

Love Sonnet

by Sara Callor

A loving heart transforms; ebullient,

it overflows with succulent delight.

Eventually, it wanes emollient

and satiates an ardent appetite

with tender poems, pleasant song and verse.

Encompassing the fluid rhyme of mind,

the ones in love will happily immerse

themselves in joy until they are entwined.

Transcending all humanity’s vague musk,

they bend precipitously in the lull

between the concentrated crush of dusk

and sunset, where delinquent dreams can mull.

Then, out of protested dim yesterdays,

Adonis, Aphrodite wax, ablaze.

July 2013 Released!

I am very pleased to announce that our second quarterly issue is officially released!
There are two ways to view the content for this issue:
All of the stories and poems have been published as individual entries on this site. To view all of them, either scroll down through our feed, follow the links on the bottom of this page, or click on the "July 2013" tag.
If you prefer, the magazine has also been uploaded to Google Drive available to view and download. Simply follow this link, or click the tab at the top of the screen that reads "July 2013." The downloadable magazine also includes a short introduction by myself.

There may still be some formatting glitches to be worked out over the next couple days. If you spot a problem, please send an email to LifeAsAn@gmail.com including a link to the page with a problem, if appropriate. Be sure to put "LAA" in the subject line somewhere so our spam filters don't catch you.

 If you would like to view the magazine on an e-reader, you can download it through Google Drive entirely for free. I do not have an e-reader myself, so I'm not sure exactly how to accomplish this. If you have any questions of that nature, please direct them to the manufacturer of your e-reader.

Below is a listing of all the pieces featured in this issue

Poetry:
Down and Out by Maggie Grinnell
Telling My Friends of the Storm by John Grey
Whose Ownership? by John Grey
Stasis by Lauren Sukin
* ("It's this thin envelope") by Simon Perchik
* (Except for the new suit") by Simon Perchik
Death of a Mouse by Bruce McRae
Light Flower by Melindy Wynn-Bourne
Stoneworkers by Barry Spacks
Poison by Brittany Nelson

Prose:
Assertiveness Training for Mummies by David Vardeman
Gone by Xanthe Elliott
Strike Not by Scott Archer Jones
Aunt Hester by Carol Smallwood
Trials by Ronald Paxton

*

by Simon Perchik

Except for the new suit

the boy in the photograph

is starting to wave again

though you dust its frame

half sweetened wood, half

no longer exhausted

drawing sap and the rag damp

from brooding –you spray

then wipe, ready this wall

the way each small stone

is rinsed side to side as the river

that carries off one shore

the other each year heavier

holding you from behind

screeching across, wet with saliva

with nothing in writing

or a button you can open

for its scent and mist.

*

by Simon Perchik

It’s this thin envelope, empty, closed

gasping for air though your knuckles

are still flickering –what you hold

was never mailed, lets you rest

read the address over and over

just to move it further off

away from this boiling mountainside

ripping apart, flowing down your arm

with nothing left and cools –these days

you don’t lick the glue –in all directions

your mouth is her name, alone

coming back as ashes and snow.

Death of a Mouse

by Bruce McRae

Which is no great thing,

coming in from the frost-bitten fields,

meeting its mousey maker,

eternity’s agent the simple housecat,

a fat and playful angel of death.

The mouse, its life poured out

on a mat by a door,

the watch of its heart stopped,

the wheel in its head no longer turning.

As must we all lie down,

a little dirt-nap for the fallen just,

an old wind aching in the yellowing glade,

fields of gold calling us home,

the grains of harvest piled high.

Gone

by Xanthe Elliott

They told her to turn him off – let him go –he’s really already gone. Standing over his hospital bed, her denials were fierce, immediate. “He is my husband; I will bring him back.” And she did, though he’d been beaten to the very edge of eternity. Later she would watch him as his brow furrowed in concentration, his fingers twisting and twining until at last a bright smile lit up his face. He tugged excitedly on her sleeve. “Hey lady, look! I tied my shoes…” She cried.

Whose Ownership?

by John Grey

The child is not privately owned

so he can grasp it when the mood takes him.

Some day, it will claim itself for itself

but, for now, it goes along with

being picked up from the floor, pressed to his chest.

The threat of rain goes public also.

Even when the clouds finally burst,

drops down window-panes are available to all.

He spends money on the apples

but there's no extra cost for the taste.

Church bells rings out. Robins whistle.

He hears them all for free.

The house is full of giveaways.

Outdoors is wrapped in ribbons for him no matter the weather.

He plays Mahler on the stereo and no one hands him a bill.

Sure the child starts crying but crisp as a hundred dollar note.

With nothing to owe, he grows wealthier by the minute.

He rocks the child back to sleep. Gratis.

Telling My Friends of the Storm

by John Grey

I should have been explaining the dream.

Instead, I gave them the weather report.

There was that long gray time

when I could almost hear the sky deliberating;

the flash of fireworks in the distance,

thunder's distant rumble, that rehearsal

for the most overhead of claps.

There were short sharp bursts of hard rain,

there were long periods of mellow drizzle.

It was loud and fierce.

It was almost graceful

in the rhythms of its drear.

There was a perfect arrogance to the way

it took over the world,

upset its clear and calm conceits.

I understood the storm more

by observing the trees flapping back and forth

in sudden bursts of wind,

the cat diving for shelter,

my neighbors out in the worst of it,

gathering children's toys from their flooded lawns.

But that's not how dreams are

and that's not how storms are.

I fell asleep at the window

and I was back in my childhood

dancing in the puddles,

cheering on the war gods,

celebrating the cool of the wet on my skin.

You missed a great storm,

I was telling my friends.

You should have known me then,

I longed to say.

Stasis

by Lauren Sukin

This is the domino theory: that we will fall

like small Asian countries (against the Berlin wall)

awestruck at finding solace

in the great democratic fingertips.

With your arms a cradle into evening,

We will crest and wane and linger into the dark,

ever peering around the red corner.

I pray that nothing changes,

pray thanks and hope that at sunrise

the morning will undress me,

and naked I may tumble into stasis. 

Assertiveness Training for Mummies

by David Vardeman

The old lady across the street gave me the finger. She must be like a hundred and five, so what she’s doing giving me the finger is anybody’s guess. I wouldn’t be like a hundred and five and about to meet my Maker and giving the guy across the street the finger like there’s no tomorrow, I can tell you that. There’s a payday for these things, she’s got to know. You can’t live your life just any old way, giving the guy across the street the finger whenever you feel like it. If I’d done something, OK. Picked her flowers or run my car up on her lawn, or even given her the finger first. But here’s the thing. If I were like a hundred and five and even if the guy across the street was a jerk and had given me the finger first, I wouldn’t give it back to him. Heck, no. I would rise above the finger, consider the source or what have you. I would also consider my immortal soul, for the fate of your immortal soul rides on such things as whether you give the finger (first or second, it doesn’t matter which) or whether you turn the other cheek. I’m like seventeen and when this old lady that’s like a hundred and five across the street gave me the finger, I knew enough to turn the other cheek. What’s wrong with her? She gives you the finger first, which makes it pretty certain she’d give it back to you if you gave it to her first. Even at my age, I know enough not to give it second, and definitely not first.

Down and Out

by Maggie Grinnell

A full figured short woman in a black cape stole a bag of chips

from the deli wearing no shoes.
A man who lost his job and wife to drugs now receives welfare
checks that the deli owner holds for him.
A woman spots a lady and her three young children who looked
hungry wandering the streets. She went to buy food and when she returned,
they were gone.
A middle aged man faints everyday at the local hospital just to get a hot
meal.
Homeless people are just us at our lowest point.

Strike Not

by Scott Archer Jones

Las esperanzas engordan pero no maintienen. Hope fattens, but it doesn't keep you alive.

It turned noon as David Alvarez raised the roof of the Crusher. With short little explosive sounds, the Rambler lying in the Crusher’s bed released tension from its new shape, as if it tried to pop its bones back into its joints. The compressor topped up its pressure, and when the gauge showed right for a fast restart, David turned off the diesel.

He removed his earmuffs and hardhat, and the sound in the air flipped from deadness to singing quiet. At that moment, in the time between the crush and the removal of the metal block that had been a car, things felt preternaturally frozen. Then a woman cried out.

Aunt Hester

by Carol Smallwood

(Excerpt from Lily's Odyssey [print novel 2010] published with permission by All Things That Matter Press.)

Having to leave the room of my own in Ithaca was difficult. I wanted to remain for the daffodils, to hear bees among the lilacs: even mosquitoes in Ithaca would’ve been special.

I knew that tightly closed tulips like Aunt Hester’s lips would soon be appearing on both sides of Uncle Walt’s drive. She planted them so precisely that as a child I used to connect them like dot-to-dot puzzles. I saw her life as a series of neatly written signs like: Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness; Prayer Is The Answer. But Uncle Walt had said that Aunt Hester had worn her dresses short when she was younger, and that it was her legs that’d first caught his eye.

Trials

by Ronald Paxton

Sarah Jane Howard felt a trickle of cold sweat break away from the nape of her neck and begin its slow journey down the middle of her back. The jump was coming up fast; too fast.

Stay relaxed. Concentrate on your posture and balance. Let your horse make the jump.

At the last second Sarah Jane felt her hands come up as she tightened her grip on the reins. Little Powell responded to the movement and veered away from the obstacle.

“No!” Huger Monroe shouted from the far side of the ring.

Light Flower

by Melindy Wynn-Bourne


 

At the spot where she once laid

As heartbeat stopped and life did fade
Her fingers, torn from shards of glass
Reached out and grasped a tuft of grass,
Each blade tipped with a crimson drop.
Since then, the green-hued grass did stop
It’s growth to give a streak of red
To mark where she laid her head.
Amid the scarlet fronds, a light
Comes from the blossoms. Glowing, white
Against the night seems pale and stark
And cuts a ray of light into the dark.
Illuminates the narrow lane,
The curve invisible in rain
Marked by this one fragile rose
Opens as another one draws close.