It’s special showcase summer! Today, we start off with part one of the ABC showcase.

During this series, my guest editors and I will peruse journals starting with every (or nearly every) letter of the alphabet, and make one selection that we think deserves extra mention. Some will approach this showcase knowing that they want to focus on the work published in a specific journal. Others will read through many journals starting with their chosen, or assigned letter, until they find a piece that strikes them.

In any event, I hope this showcase will introduce you to both journals and writers you’ve never heard of. In fact, I’m making that my personal goal—to give you a selection from a journal I’ve never read, by a writer that’s new to me. For this showcase at least, I’ve managed to. What’s even better, is my guest editor’s have all picked either a journal or a writer (and in most cases both) that are new to me, too. Read on…

A

Selected by Aaron Burch

Aaron Burch edits a small lit journal and, sometimes, writes small fictions. He doesn’t really like, nor is he very good at, talking about himself. If he must be more specific, he edits Hobart, and recent short shorts have appeared in Quick Fiction, elimae, Opium, and SmokeLong Quarterly. If you REALLY want to know more, read his interview for the Writer Profile Project.

Agni: Online
“The Instructions” by Eric D. Anderson

When Kelly asked if I would be interested in taking part in this ABC Showcase, I said “of course” and said she could even assign me my letter. One of the goals of these showcases, at least as I see it, is to spotlight great writing, to bring new readers to something you might not originally see/read, and so I thought, instead of spotlighting one of my favorite writers or journals, of which I would never be able to pick just one anyway, I would try to find something new to myself as well.

Agni is one of the many journals that I’ve read a couple of things in here and there, and liked, and always mean to read more of, but just as often forget about. As soon as I visited the site, “The Instructions” jumped out at me. First, because it is the most recent story posted. But then I clicked on the link and all initial signs were very positive – there were cool drawings to accompany the story! The bio says the author directed a movie about professional air hockey! And is currently working on a slasher film!! I was pretty excited.

I loved “The Instructions” primarily because it uses what I sometimes complain about seeing too little of in most contemporary literary fiction: humor. It is written in the form of instructions, complete with hand-drawn diagrams, left by a woman for a housesitter, while she is gone traveling. Or, not a “housesitter” per se, as she says in the letter:

“Remember, this is not a housesit. You are merely feeding the cats and keeping things up. You may not invite anyone over, even if it’s just to “watch a little TV” or “have a dip” in the pool. Do not bring your boyfriend over. Do you have a boyfriend?”

The story reads a little like a McSweeney’s humor piece (specifically, it reminded me a little of some of Christopher Monks’ writing, which everyone should now go Google, search down, and read everything you can), though extended and, like the best humor pieces, a story unfolds through the pieces and the whole adds up to more than a sum of its pieces. By the end, the instruction-leaver has revealed more and more of herself, in little sections like this:

“The closet is a great place to hang out although I’d prefer if you didn’t. I started sleeping in there after Ben left and before I got the new bed. There was something kind of small and comforting and cavelike about it. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and I’d be surrounded by all of these shoes and jackets and things. Not that I’m materialistic or anything-it just reminded me of being very young and having this huge pile of pillows and stuffed animals around me when I slept. It kind of felt the same although in this case the stuffed animals became pumps and stretch boots.”

B

Selected by Randall Brown

Randall Brown teaches writing at Saint Joseph’s University. He is a Pushcart nominee and holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from Vermont College and a BA from Tufts University. His stories, poems, and essays have been published widely, with recent work appearing or forthcoming in Clackamas Literary Review, Vestal Review, Cairn, Hunger Mountain, Connecticut Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, and others. He’s recently finished a collection of (very) short fiction, “Mad To Live.”

The Big Ugly Review
“The Baby” by Cristina Henriquez

For their theme of Broken Things, The Big Ugly Review published Cristina Henriquez’s “The Baby.” The “newly-nubby” baby falls apart, but the tone never wavers, keeping its distance and objectivity, the horrific surreal rendered without terror or panic. The “disintegrating” baby takes us from mother to hospital to the larger world—townspeople placing bets on the next baby piece lost—while the mother acts to keep things from falling forever apart. It’s a dramatic, compressed, literary flash that never lets the figurative “inner story” overwhelm the “outside” tale of a mother and her broken baby. Just remarkable.

They say he was born without fingernails. Not that it mattered. Because at four months old, just as his crawling was in full bloom, his hands fell off. There was a thud. His mother looked from where she stood at the sink, peeling potatoes, to see her baby with his face pressed against the carpet, pushing himself along with his feet, like a propeller boat. She smiled lovingly and then she saw the hands, which at first she mistook for dropped potatoes, on the carpet as well, left in his wake.

C

Selected by Sharon Hurlbut

Sharon Hurlbut’s fiction and poetry have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Kalliope, SmokeLong Quarterly, Staccato, Salome, The Pedestal, Strong Verse, Tilt, The Adroitly Placed Word, edificeWRECKED, NOÖ Journal, flashquake, and numerous other publications. She writes under the pen name Ann Walters. Visit Sharon’s blog, Field Notes, and read her interview for the Writer Profile Project. Contact Sharon.

Cider Press Review
“Mona Lisa” by Quinn Rennerfeldt

Cider Press Review is a journal of contemporary poetry published once a year. Samples from their current and past issues can be found online.

The current issue, Volume 8, includes “Mona Lisa” by Quinn Rennerfeldt, a delightful poem about the most famous painting in the world. Because the Mona Lisa is such a familiar icon, we approach the poem with the image of that reserved, modest lady already in our minds. We are immediately shaken loose from our preconceptions:

Making love to her would be like
lighting leather moccasins on fire.
You would have to break her in and burn her.

And while we’re still trying to come to grips with those startling images, Rennerfeldt takes us even further by bringing the woman herself to life, complete with her own will and desires:

Mid-foreplay she would get
the urge for a smoky Shiraz
and lose all lust for your baby.

The best poetry is revelation. It takes something familiar and makes us see it in a new way, a way that expands our vision of the world. “Mona Lisa” does just that. It takes an untouchable, quintessential work of art and shows us the mundane within it, while at the same time elevating the everyday “pot-bellied beauty” to a work of art. The poem’s final line exemplifies this relationship:

and I flock, a moth seducing a chandelier.

The contrast between this drab moth and bright chandelier embodies Rennerfeldt’s vision of the Mona Lisa. It is a vision that will change the way you look, not only at this painting, but at any work of art.

D

Selected by Mike Young


Mike Young edits NOÖ Journal, a free political/literary magazine published in southern Oregon. His fiction and poetry have appeared in a variety of publications, including Pindeldyboz, Juked, MiPOesias, elimae, 3:AM Magazine, and others. Visit his blog , his site, and read his interview for the Writer Profile Project.

DIAGRAM
“Bemidji in Spring” by Sean Hill

One of my favorite poems from Issue 7.2 of DIAGRAM is Sean Hill’s “Bemidji in Spring.” Usually, field composition (poems with words “all over the place”) makes me nervous. Like a family reunion picnic: you can wander your own path, but do you really want to talk with any of these people? Yet Hill’s poem uses the contours of white space to set poignant fragments in relief–”a bit of glass” or “broken wine bottle”–without losing potent turns of phrase or verbal music. This poem adrifts me, spurs me to collect what has scattered, and I go both lost and everywhere after the chase. Not a “sense of place,” but the more honest idea that place is just what pushes you away the least. You don’t return; you’re brought back. And Hill’s poem tugs me back again and again and again.



E

Selected by Me.

If you don’t know who I am, I’m not sorry.

If you really want to know about me, click Bio.

Ellipsis
“Adeline” by Giselda Beaudin

Since nobody chose the letter E, I decided to tackle it. I have a few “E” journals that I read regularly, but, as I said in the intro, I really wanted to find something new. So I set out. I browsed Duotrope. I went in order. I looked at a dozen or so journals, read piece after piece after piece, and was on the verge of irritation (read: total explosion) when I clicked on Ellipsis.

The quiet blue cover and the fact that it’s published in Utah, calmed me down. I started reading, and what I read was good, and I was happy and excited and very, very relieved. It’d been a loooong haul. Not unlike the haul the father makes in “Adeline,” to get home to his baby girl. Now, I’m not usually into stories with or about babies, but this one hooked me. I think it’s the author’s voice, her use of place, the sense that life moves too fast, and you damn well better do something about it, that resonated with me. That or the fact that Adeline reminded me of my niece, who is truly the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. Either way, this story is a fine read.

The pile of baby name books lingered on his bedside table for months. Sharon laughed at him. “It’s not that big a deal,” she said, “by the time you get to number three, you realize that the name is the least of your concerns.” But this was not number three for Jack. It was number one, his first child, and he needed to find the perfect name. He read the books from cover to cover, glasses on, in bed beside his wife: Margaret, Marge, Martha, Mary. And the boys’ names too: Jeffrey, Jeremy, Jesse. “If it’s a girl,” he said to Sharon, his hand on the blanket mountain of her stomach, “her name should be a song.”

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