Issue 28: 1998

Fiction/Memoir
Jeanne Dalton | Gayle Jandrey | Joie Kohl | Luna Tarlo | Cheryl Tyler

Poetry
E.D. Aronowitz | Bob Brooks | Carolyn Elkins | Ama Randall | Stephen Matanle | Bryan Smith | Judith Strasser

Cover Art: "The Firebird" by Lynn Barnes

Editors for Issue 28
Mary Azrael
Rebecca Childers
Kendra Kopelke

Graphic Design
Sean Krause

Fractals

On the first cold night of the year
all the cold nights of all the years
return, rising through thin
bare branches of trees

spread against the violet sky
like black fractal lace.
It is then that you know
there is no time.

Or that it twists like a wormy spiral
into and out of your life
piercing your dreams at irregular
intervals. Time is not

a straight line, whatever it is.
It wells up in you; it spreads your life
out like a fan. You feel it in the way
your gaze moves up, unwillingly,

to trace in the branching lines
of winter trees the pattern
of your own arteries and veins.
Perhaps Thoreau was right: Life

assumes the same form,
infinite permuations of one
extending shape: the same star
in a leaf, a flower, your hand.

Carolyn Elkins

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Factory in a Landscape

If only work were a painting
of a factory in a landscape,
chimneys not unlike the trees,
the smoke merely a little
darker than the clouds.
You could imagine workers
returning on Sunday for a picnic,
simple patches of color
on the brightly sunlit ground.

Stephen Matanle

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About the Cover
Lynn Barnes is a surrealist painter living in Baltimore, Maryland. The painting, "The Firebird," takes its inspiration from the Russian fairy tale. In the five golden apples surrounding the bird are scenes from the story. If you'd like to see this beautiful cover in person, you can always order one from us!

continue to Issue 27