Raymond Farr

This Isn't History, It's an Episode


My story is pretty simple—

Because I couldn’t finish a novel
My life begins

In a nation that does not exist yet

The icon & I weren’t personally close
Our family fled their orchards—

From medieval kabbalists
To 20th century refugees—

Our fury seems particularly apparent here

In a nation that does not exist yet

Where actors are hired to read scripts
& pretend
To be real people

My uncle told me—

This week’s parasha introduces a medium
For distinguishing truth
From falsehood—

That was my life

I was giving up
I was going back home

My uncle told me—

On the radio, things aren’t so simple

Leaving the icon to believe
One of two things—

A river was there
& it had two banks

Alex Missall

Morning in Graveyard


In this town the fields are dead,
cut to stumps,
filled with wilted shells of over-turned roots.


In this town, all are buried in the same place—
in the cemetery
next to the Victorian, red-brick home.


Cut into the earth are
miles and miles of tombstones.


Sealing the empty spaces: morning fog
that slips between graves,
that hangs onto the soil.


A white sun rises,
and turns the dissipating fog translucent.
Dew sits on blades of grass,
and the cemetery-caretaker walks a stone path
toward untouched, forsaken land.

Gerry Boyd

every spectrum contains a circle

i. it started near the garden of almost blooming

the pale blue shadow of a predictable leaf of graph

dripped behind the green sun of a fuschia terrace

on an afternoon filled with the geometric curve of insteps:

easy wide to eyeball this, from the sigh gasp calves

to the scarlet thrust of glamour toes in beige sandals.

this was the craving summer of grimy gnat filled screens

and curved lines that infuriated the crispness of Euclid.

and what was simply advertised as a failure of the will

became a rainbow of coincidence hidden in erupting leaves.

ii. after mid-summer the seasons start to change

the shadows of mimosa buds, having lost their scent,

form black comedic masks on the rain rusted siding.

we could smell the orange winds of autumn

hiding beneath the humid hems of summer

and the silver underside of weigelia leaves

that warned of scripted trysts unplanned.

a silver key balanced on the black mold,

unblenched, of the rocking chair armrest-

the chair painted in dramatic flowers

by the arm of a child expressing thanks:

this key could not open the painted doors

that lavishly barked the entrance to the garden-

it was a path we could not take.

iii. there are many ways to rectify the forgotten

in a dehydrated attempt to wetly articulate

the saved yellow globules of nostalgic desire,

the cancelled postage devoid of cellulose hinges:

deference is due to the wrappers of seed,

but only when the set of lavender ribbons

is proportional and, oddly, ironically demure.

there was the pitiless sun, not precisely prodigal,

that arced across peninsulas of the proverbial burning sand.

wait, she said, the waves are passing the bow

and the island is too distant.

iv. do not be disappointed by the refactoring of your bedclothes

in a windy foyer filled with antique chimes

and dead replications of the already dead,

do not sniff expectantly for a blowing wind

in this brown and barren alley of moldy must:

we cannot wipe away the chanting of the lost-

we can only hope to find someone who touches us

the way we touch ourselves.

Ande Enochsson

Extract from my short story “Appearance”


“All the right doors were suddenly opened; it was like they waited for me.” He exhaled noisily. “I feel like an android, but that was that.”

“Well, you have me, here.”

He grinned. “Yes, it feels fine to drop out sometimes.”

“Drop out? You mean like a hippie?”

“Hippie.” He tasted the word. “I remember when these things were fashionable. Everybody loved retro fashion a couple of years ago. The clothes they had, it was like the 70s.” She did not respond, so they were just lying there silently. He felt a weak tremor in her leg which continued to her upper body. It’s cold here, he thought as he listened to the low sighing from the apple tree out on the yard. His neck creaked loudly as he moved and her foot touched him lightly over his face and mouth. He noticed her socks with its embroideries of comical scenes.

“Nice socks.”

“Thanks. I bought them in the youth section on sale years ago and have kept them since. I don’t know why, but I like them.”

He made a new attempt to pursue his story: “I would be better off if I stopped worrying and became more like you.”

She laughed. “Do you want to walk the tightrope?”

The damp-stained roof was musty dark. Its rough beam structure reminded him of cut-down trees. ”My body and I have not always been compatible. Hey, you haven’t told me much about yourself, he smiled. “How many have you been with? Were they serious affairs? How come you fancy older men?”

She sounded annoyed when she answered. “There’s really nothing much to say…I like autonomy above all.”

They were lying there quietly. She kicked him carelessly in the face as she got bored. He felt her impatience and asked what they should do. She answered absentmindedly that they could do whatever he wanted. He wondered if she really meant that and got a wild impulse to test her. He pressed his hand against the small of her leg and said with a forced voice: “Can you really prove that?” She sat up and eyed him.



Ande Enochsson (b.1979) lives in Uppsala, Sweden. He writes short fiction and poetry and maintains a blog named Faun. Some of his pieces have been published in, for instance, Fosebook and Smokestack. Ande is also an editor of the literary journal Rufous Salon.