Fiction

Amanda GershStalk Me Gently 
In a way all I ever wanted was for someone to stalk me—gently of course—but a little stalking is a lovely thing, a thing of love.

Pinckney Benedict Mudman 
"Leave her alone," Snedegar told the mudman. The mudman chortled, a sound like water spattering in hot fat. A wasp crawled from its mouth, and the mudman sucked it soundlessly back in again.

Bill GastonA Forest Path
It is said that Lowry's first shack, containing his only complete draft of Volcano, all his possessions, etc., was accidentally consumed by fire.

Lucia NevaiEnd of Messages 
Maybe it's me, but a funeral seems like the worst occasion to sell anyone a grand piano, let alone the bereaved.

Robert ArellanoThe Two Stevens
Let me tell you about my axe. It has an 11-and-½-inch blade with a paper-thin edge. But I use it not to chop so much as to bludgeon.

Kevin CantyThey Were Expendable 
I could not, without hurting their feelings, tell them that, really, they were making things worse for me, making me feel and think and talk.

Sergei Nosov's "Nabob: A Writer's Tale"
Translated by D. Georgeoliani and Mark Halperin   
Never in my life had I written on a toilet wall. Me, on a toilet wall?  Hard to imagine. Nevertheless, I took the pencil and went. List of obsessions?

Salvador Plascencia New Voice fictionPollinating Insects   
He watched as the bee threaded its way through Cameroon's hair, emerging on her stomach. He lifted the bee by its wings and pressed it into his arm.

Poetry

Frank Bidart
Phenomenology of the Prick    

Erin Belieu
In the Red Dress I Wear to Your Funeral #6
In the Red Dress I Wear to Your Funeral #8           

D. A. Powell
Lipsync                                        

Darcie Dennigan
City of Gods 
The Department of Tenderness                      

Tiffany Noelle FungNew Voice poetry
A Perimeter of Mercury  
The Oddity Problem                              

Features

Andrew Hultkrans Unreliable Homunculi and other Impediments
The little man stalking the author really, really wants the author to finish his long-overdue book proposal.

Montana Wojczuk
The Man Who Couldn't Grow Up
J. M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, and love of children and hatred of war.

Mandy AftelPerfumed Obsession
A professional perfumer's true love: jasmine.

Chris Beha
A Brief Sampling of Obsessive Web Sites              
A List of Manias                                   

Albert Mobilio
Off the Map: The Way of Some Worlds
Maps and destinations;gridded representations of life and death.

Portfolio

Malia Jensen
Bear Story                                    

Lost and Found

Jill Koenigsdorf
on James Thurber's The Last Flower                      

Susan Daitch
on "Night of the Murdered Poets"                  

Nathan Alling Long
Samuel R. Delany's The Motion of Light in Water          

Rachel Cline
on Jessamyn West's Cress Delahanty                       

Readable Feast

Steve Almond
My Soul upon the Grill  
The ultimate grilled chicken—all others are pretenders.

Blithe Spirit

Elissa Schappell
The Green Fairy
A slave to absinthe, the seductive, dangerous muse of Van Gogh, Rimbaud, and Picasso.

The Last Word

Dorothea Tanning
A Letter to the Post Office