Issue 38
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Three Essays on Ants While I Hover Overhead, Poisoning Them
by Dennis James Sweeney
How Regret Falls Like Rain, Seasonal but Never Promising
The ants waltz in droves to their dying : sweet
syrup at the brittle edge of hunger . I do
not want to kill a being . I do not want
to be death . But the ants are driven mad
by my small war . Their faces glow with
ghoulish hairs I can feel in my teeth . -
Letter From the Editors, LIT 38
How do we describe the indescribable: the start of most apocalyptical election is but a week away, there is war, there is war, there is war, and there is Nostradamus. It is spooky season and there is no costume for this. To walk in the graveyard is all the ground beneath our feet. The veil is thin my friends, have a peek.
For this issue, our themes rise up through the fog to walk the earth, undead and “Gucci, green snake skin, off-season, on sale” – from The Allegorical Doctor
Horror comes in as many forms as the imagination will allow,
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In the Old Capital
Art by Matt Bollinger
by Yuko Iida Frost
One night after work in December, I decided to hop on the express train to visit Masa unannounced. The restaurant where he worked was tucked behind a quiet street, off the Imperial Palace. The oldest in Kyoto, it used to serve the emperor until the capital moved to Tokyo, formerly called Edo, in the late nineteenth century. The street was dark. Their unassuming façade disguised its legendary reputation and looked more like an entrance to an old merchant’s house trying to hide his wealth. The sliding door was almost invisible with only two dimly lit paper lanterns hanging on both sides.
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My Father’s Iris
Art by Andy Mister
by Marilyn Martin
Nine years after my father died, my mother dug up a clump of wild irises from behind the New York suburban house where she still lived and where I’d grown up. At the time, my two young children and I were visiting, and the evening before we were to leave, my mother tenderly swaddled one iris in damp paper towels and placed it in a shopping bag. On the plane, the iris balanced between Sara and John who put their arms around it as we cruised 30,000 feet above the earth.
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Boxed
image curtesy of the Public Domain Review
by Margaret Ries
Make the pieces small. Easier to explain a hand or a foot. A whole body’s something else.
But what to do about the blood? What if the ground sheet of plastic is not enough? I had imagined the job would be as easy as sawing logs for a fire. But when I start in, the blood begins oozing thick and gloppy onto the basement floor. It’s hard to keep a grip. She’s already gone stiff and she shoots down the plastic like she’s on one of those waterslides I used to make for Danny out in the backyard.
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Motel for Sale
Art by Matt Bollinger
by Katie McDonough
The day before the motel sells I’m on a train headed upstate, trying—and failing—to focus on work. This is an ill-timed trip: It’s mid-week during the busy season at my job, and I have a young son at home. But as dutiful as I am, I am equally sentimental, and I don’t want to miss my chance to see the place one more time.
When I arrive at the train station my mom is waiting in the parking lot. “Is it really going to happen?” she whispers goofily,
