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Fiction Literature
Excerpt: Mary Asher always hated fraternities and sororities. They stood for 48 beer busts and racism and sexism. They were full of business students who always wanted to make money and who did not respect the real academic world she lived in. 'The business school,' she often snorted, 'should be in a trade school, not in a university.?
Poetry
Excerpt: Before I sat down to write this statement of introduction, I had a lot to say. But it comes down to just one thing: being the best. TPR is a literary e-zine dedicated to publishing and promoting the best in contemporary art and literature.
Excerpt: In a minute I'll tell you Virginia Conn I've worked this chip into a full blown crack, trying to blend it into the pattern. There's so much I can't afford to replace, starting a list, becoming anxious as the losses mount. I realize I've included your stereo. Before you, there was my clock radio, so static with abuse I was forced to move it out of my sleepy rough reach.
Classic Literature
Excerpt: New Orleans Poem Brenda Bell afterwards, lying in the dark, with the ashtray on her stomach, she watched him fumble to put out the cigarette with only the ember for light and thought how too casual a touch can lead to burning...
Excerpt: Dad bought us all a peanut patty - five times a nickel's a quarter Joe gave me half; said he didn't like peanuts. Times aren't the same anymore.
Excerpt: You sketched me at the coffee house, we absently spoke of drawing and literature. I took exception to the manner in which you drew hands, I said - you make them look like machines. Citing Ingres, I plotted a continuous line.
Excerpt: When Cats Are Sheep, C. E. Chaffin - The brown finch on my balcony rail sings for his wife, who ducks through the broken corner of the overhead lamp cover?s rounded square of milky glass. With her bag-lady bits of twig and string she constructs safety inside the hollow, then lays her bottled children down. My cats bleat like miniature sheep around these birds because my balcony is twenty floors up so they can stalk but never leap except to their deaths. That is ...
Excerpt: Bolton Landing Michael Armstrong, for David Smith - Your cigarette smoldering down A burning scroll wedged tight Between those weathered fingers Wounded and dark The anvil warm, its ring Forever in your ears A constant reminder of why You live, it sings Your love is a reflection of light Across the face of a hard mistress Born of the earth, furnace formed Made divine Prometheus in work clothes firing a Baptism at the blacksmith?s forge Illumination of the snow, ...
Excerpt: Window on the Navesinkm, Charles Albano - Can?t say which is more appealing, that open sky with its herd of white bison, lumbering over the sunny Highlands, or the green hills, and the river they enfold with their colors. From here, my field of vision is split, and so is my preference. Both the field of blue and the field of green commend themselves to the palette. Yet I am told those colors are aesthetic misfits when joined. What ever could have possessed God t...
Excerpt: In The Lake of the Moon, Salvatore Amico M. Buttaci - from a porcelain face ripples a mouth laden with secrets but nothing is told in the lake of the moon lunar eyes wet, murky, watch treetops poke bottoms of dream-sodden skies from which birds fly away this mover of tides, this body of craters, rests its reflection on waterbed evenings in the lake of the moon...
Excerpt: When Aunt Lou strolled out 16th Avenue Barefoot past the blooming guavas, through their gardens imagining herself invisible in her house coat , as in a magic cloak the neighbors...
Excerpt: How can you explain poetry to Midwest town folk whose climax is steak and shrimp at the Elk?s on Friday night where you leave reeking of chain smoke and floorboards rotting from the tipped king of beer? And how do you analyze data transformed to how many last month and by whom on whom and how many ended up bypass triple quadruple and how many died and some of them you knew from the 4th of July parade sweating 300 pounds full military dress down Main Street next ...
Excerpt: Mansour Alajali, Little Razan - The beautiful baby?s gone! Some doctors would say brain trauma Others would say encephalitis. Whatsoever doctors would like to say About the cause of breathlessness, I, her father, would like To cry my heart out. Ours is our words which are but bloody pointed hooves Digging out remote rocks In an absent horizon!
Excerpt: Wendy Carlisle - In His Lecture on Resonance, the Poet Instructs Us The poet tells me I will be redeemed, if I embrace dying. Mortality, fondled like a lover?s balls will give my words the dirt blessing, fill my mouth with salt and sweet as if my tongue licked up a man?s thigh to the dark earth scent alive at the edge of language. Knowing I?m on my way out, he says, should be the fruit of every day. But such short days - and what if they include the drop and ris...
Excerpt: The Milk Blood Landscape // A million sighs subside // and ingots of silence lie stacked miles high // in an island warehouse, // while the proud sea wanes and heaves // on all sides, its pale vitreous waves poignant with the brine // of dissolved ideas and delirium. // And a million bridal smiles are dyed // the icy shade of nuclei which have died, wilted, dried // to tiny ring-like husks inside amoeba cadavers, // because brides die easily and eventually, // o...
Excerpt: The Fairest // Below skin-deep in the steadiness of organs, // in the upright bones, where all solid, perfect cells tick on, // the widow?s heart, that little zip lock of gore, fills and empties, // regular as a metronome, only a wisp of memory stirs. // Nothing moves her but her chestnut hair, her own pale // cheeks. // She hums; she ignores the darkness somewhere east // of the lace that disappears between her thighs, attends only // to the mirror // that flat...
Excerpt: Wendy Carlisle, Dorothy, After - North, South, East, West who could ever keep them straight? I, for one, barely remember to pick up the dry cleaning. Why did I think it would be a good thing to click my heels? Football and baseball, soccer and swimming - dates as hard to remember as witches? names. These days, I?m a whirlpool carpool, strong enough to lift a house, spin it around with someone in it drinking Margaritas and set it down in some other county, not a ...
Excerpt: Walter Bargen, Dissolving - Below sparrow, starling, stork - nothing that gloriously soars. Species that skirt treetops in search of the next near perch: backyard snag, old chimney, spilled grain or shapeless carrion, whatever view is closest. Not these swallows rifling over the peak, careening, missing this hard ragged edge, bottom of a crumbling stone sea at ten thousand feet. Wings whistle in and out of a mountain?s cold shadow. Blurs stretched down to desert...
Excerpt: Reclamation, I held fire and ice in one hand and witnessed neither sleeping; walked to the swollen river, after the rain ended, and painted myself with mud. Gored by the horn of the bull, I bled on wet moss, offered my breath to the stones. You should have seen me, mother, on those red hills, singing as I tore down fences. Wisdom, like the wind, came in gusts.
Excerpt: For the birds the birds the birds // Yumiko Awae // our wings are made // of polyester, topped // with real bird-feather // icings. we don?t hurt them; // some of them spare their fluff // when they die // (says ?donor? right on their // flier?s license). our wings have // plasticine hinges, not weak // like those of Icarus. they come // with insurance - they come // with parachutes instead of // airbags. our wings are shrinkable, // in case we want to pose as /...