2014 (Volume 26)
In this 2014 issue we go global. We have art, stories, poems and essays with connections to Thailand, Peru, Dubai, Ehtiopia, Paraguay, Syria, France, Italy, Japan and Pakistan. Yet these works still have themes that we see in our own native soil.
In Leslie Kirk Campbell's prize-winning story, "Thunder in Illinois," Mr. Evans has for years had a mistress, Vilai, in Bangkok who has a sewing shop "he pays for." Mrs. Evans knows about Vilai and in a strange way understands that all things are connected. "'The flap of a moth in Bangkok,'" says Mrs. Evans. 'Makes for thunder in Illinois,' says Mr. Evans." And their marriage goes on with love, anger, competition and little resolution until the end.
Our prize-winning essay is "Call Me Tio," by JLSchneider. He recalls his days of sifting through soil on the site of a dig in the Andes. "As I make the 1,400-vertical-foot commute to the 'office' every morning, I am as close to this land of ashes and dust as a body of fluid can be." He feels the gulf narrow between his culture and the Inca culture. He ends with "I'm behind their eyes."
"Our contest poem brings us back to the U.S., but the theme of coming to terms with death is univeral. In "Apogee," Rosa Lane shows us her father who after the fourth chemo sells his lobster boat, mows the lawns and rescues three fallen baby birds by putting them back in their nest. "But the fourth one, a small flit, no more / than a knuckle of life lay limp in the crease of our father's double palms. Broken / weeps slip high pitched from the taut tube / of our father's throat." This bird is "pecking his path" for her father.
In this issue there are many wonderful art works, poems, essays and stories that make us feel connected to others globally and locally. Welcome to the 26th issue.
C0VER: "Covered Jar" / Michael Hill / thrown raku-fired ceramic
with slip trail & post-firing reduction
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Contest Winners
Campbell is a native of San Francisco. She published Journey into Motherhood (Riverhead) in 1997, and her essays have appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle and Literary Mama. She recently won the Mary C. Mohr Editors' Fiction Award at Southern Indiana Review.
JLSchneider, from Ellenville, New York, is a carpenter and an adjunct professor of English at a small community college in upstate New York. His essays have appeared in The Southeast Review and New Millennium Writings. His short story collection, Objects of Desire, won the 2012 Sol Books Prose Prize.
Lane, a native of Maine, is the author of Roots and Reckonings, a chapbook sponsored by the Maine Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Her work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review, Passages North and Ploughshares.