Summer 2002  
Patricia Abbott: Smart There is no greater grief than that which comes from the loss of a child. When a parent believes that his/her actions have been in someway responsible for the death, the grief is compounded. In SMART, a father, obsessed with the part he unintentionally played in his child's death, takes increasingly desperate steps to relieve his guilt.

Carl Auerbach: Himself "It was ironic, Shoshana reflected later, considering that their academic discipline was concerned with the connection between language and reality, that the information that threatened her relationship with Jeorg had been concealed for so long by a few personal pronouns. Shoshana and Jeorg had used a variety of terms to refer to the man who was, they discovered, belatedly and to their dismay, the psychoanalyst they shared in common. Never did they refer to him by his professional title, Dr. Nathanson. Nor, heaven forbid, by his given name, Benjamin, which they uttered, if at all, only in his dark, carpeted, soundproof office, and then only in the throes of intense emotion. Like pious Jews, forbidden by their faith to speak aloud the name of their deity, they found substitutes. Dr. Nathanson became "him" or "he" or, when they were feeling particularly irreverent, "HIMSELF," uttered in tones of self-mocking awe."
Janet Fyne Cochran: The Dressmaker's Mirror " 'Don't you need a pattern?' The dressmaker taps her temple and smiles at the girl. 'The pattern is . . . here!' The girl stares. 'You mean you just look at the picture . . . and start cutting?' 'Except for one thing. I look at you, then I cut. The dress must be you. There will be no other like it.' 'That's almost like magic,' the girl says. 'Anything we create has magic in it. And what is life without magic?' The eyes of the two meet, and the only sound in the room is the purring of the cat. 'Can magic be knowing things . . . without knowing how?' the girl asks. 'Of course,' the dressmaker shrugs, 'if you receive the gift. But one must use caution with gifts. Sometimes gifts can cause pain.' Her voice changes. 'And now, the details of the dress. But for accompaniment. . . ' She reaches over and switches on the phonograph. The notes of the love duet rise and weave, spreading through the room, curiously pure and clear, as if the record were without defect."
Nelson James Dunford: The Head of Grendel "The viola da gamba was a modern one, not modeled in its specifies on any one instrument of the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Its neck was however topped with an ornament copied from a harp that dated to the correct period. Rather than human, this head was of a dragon or some such mythical being. The sculpting of crest and scales was exquisite. Teeth were of the whitest ivory, contrasting magnificently with the deep reddish-brown face surrounding diem. Set into the eye sockets were a pair of glistening blue opals. A legend had come down over the years with the Baroque harp. It was held by many that the flickering of the opalescent eyes bespoke a sentience of human proportions. The creature was said to scan audiences and to put small curses on listeners who were less than attentive. The builder of the viol had in part chosen to fashion a likeness of this particular ornament because he was amused by the fabulous tale of its playing a mildly malevolent role at concerts in which it participated. This bit of folklore had been passed on to the young woman to whom the seven-string bass had eventually been sold, Fredericka Anselm. Ricky, as she was known to her friends, was superstitious enough to hope that what had been true of the harp might also be true of the newest addition to her collection of viols. To humanize her new friend, she named him Grendel, as he looked rather like the picture of that man/monster as he had been portrayed in a woodcut in a child's retelling of the Beowulf story she had had when she was little."
Susan Emerling: Cri du Chat " 'Why does the chicken cross the road?' screeched Lucy, barging unsteadily into the room. Without waiting for an answer from the startled faces that turned in her direction, she shrieked, 'To get to the other side.' Laughing, she careened out of the living room, catching the edge of a table with her clenched fist, sending a teacup clattering to the floor. Lucy stopped, startled by the broken dish, once so quickly in motion and now so still. She jerked her head up, pivoted and pushed through the swinging door to the kitchen. In the arc of the door closing behind her, they could hear the joke being shrieked to Sarah, her nurse, who was in the middle of fixing dinner. 'Another thing broken,' Isabelle said, smiling at Jonathon. Then she looked from Jonathon to her husband for approval. Approval was a bit much to ask, so Holloway turned away, leaving her to jerk her gaze to Andrew, her beautiful boy, who was sitting primly on the couch in front of her, staring quite deliberately into his lap, his eyes, precious jewels, locked away."
Jack Kamm: Light on the Wing "Out of a twisting nervousness, I shoved my face against the screen but there was only that awful screech of bugs out there in the darkness. Another prong of lightning flared over a mountain. The odor of ozone leaked through the screening and mixed with the heat in the room. Fidgeting with my father's favorite meerschaum (his only pipe), I remembered Mrs. Johnson at the board showing us how lightning goes underground, then jumps up and makes you sizzle like a pig on a spit. I snapped the stem. A terror like a hot stone lodged in my chest. When I'd dropped my mother's stupid china plate and it shattered on the floor, she'd whacked me so hard my nose bled. With the meerschaum, I was in even deeper trouble. There were ashes on the pillow, so I plumped it but a few feathers fluffed out. I examined the small tear in the seam of the pillowcase and pushed the tip of my finger into the hole. Then I spread the rip, sending out another feather, then another and soon-as I jostled the pillow-more feathers spurted out like multiple births and, in an inexplicable seizure, I continued to whack the pillow with a variety of frenzied blows. In command for the first time in my long seven years of life, I was Alpha Male beating the crap out of a pillow. The catharsis . . . part pity, part fear, mostly aggression . . . felt good. This pillow will never bother you again, son. Count on it."
Elizabeth Howkins : Amor Vincit Omnia He stood on the bridge and watched the lights from the passing cars writhe snakelike on the surface of the water. With a single movement, graceful as Pavlova dancing "The Dying Swan," he lit a plump cigar. Then he saw her, barely visible, emerging from a cloud of deflected light at the other end of the bridge. She stood there, straight and noble as a caryatid, with just the hint of a Praxitiles slump. She looked up. Their eyes met. Their glances locked and stuck together tightly like wet postage stamps. Slowly, he edged closer. Shyly, she backed away. She was wearing something long and vaporous, reminiscent of a comet's languorous tail, and suggesting a dimly-lit Paris bistro of the 30's, very chic, very je ne sais quoi, just a tad déclassé. The pale fabric, weightless and fluid as the contents of an overturned cistern, caressed her body like a cloud. Her hair was a rat's nest of tight yellow curls above an elfin face putoesque in its innocence. He was smitten and fell back as if struck sharply by cupid's arrow deeply in his vena cava, at no great distance fromthe heart, and he wondered-was it love or merely a balky gallbladder."
Jim Meirose: Ivan and the Potters "Mom Potter pushed up through the wet sod into the moonlight, one arm lifted, covered with earth. She lurched to her feet beside the deep hole, got her balance and walked forward, steadying herself on the passing gravestones. Her loose dirty clothing hung about her and her hair shot out stiffly in all directions and her puckered pale old woman's face caught the moonlight in every hollow and line and crease. She moved across the cemetery toward the gate onto Woods street, the gate with CONCEPTION CEMETERY written above in a wrought iron arch and her shadow cast by star and moonlight flowed under the arch onto the rough concrete sidewalk and she headed up toward where Woods street met Alley, heading toward his house-and Ivan Kelly immediately forgot the dream and woke up standing in the dark in his underwear at the door to his room. As the room formed around him he stumbled back to sitting on the bed and thought Damn this sleepwalking-Damn I ought to see a God-damned doctor. I need a doctor. But there's no time. The clock by the bed glowed six thirty at him. He went into the bathroom and splashed water over his grizzled face, no need to shave today-every other day isenough-and he stepped back into the bedroom and ran a comb through his hair and got dressed in loose pants and a green shirt and went downstairs to start breakfast for them. They'll be up soon, if they're not up already. Funny, for such people, they're such early risers-and he went in the kitchen and Mom Potter sat there at the head of the white and chrome table, her long narrow face set and her lips pursed, while her son Zeke sat to the side in a bright red shirt and with his hair combed straight back, glistening in the light of the bare bulb overhead."
Fanny Morweiser: Beyond the Seven Hills (Translated from the German by Gustav Richar) Originally there were six refuge cities, but I only remember the last one. That's where my Auntie Tillie, the seamstress, met her husband Solomon, who worked in gold.

They were both recent inmates of the city when they were introduced to each other by the Jewish chaplain. Each had murdered their previous spouse unintentionally, in the midst of a minor domestic quibble. In the case of Auntie Tillie, a tiny, well organized person who kept her work space neat as a pin, she felt it necessary to puncture her previous husband with her seam ripper after he had deliberately mislaid an underarm insert for a customer's plum velour jacket. He had only wanted her attention, poor man. She hadn't really meant to do it. But now that the gory part was over and the law was on her tail, she fled to the last refuge city and was admitted on the spot.

Judith Slater: The Widowers' Club One morning I almost told my story. It was a bitter day, the kind that will freeze your fingers even with mittens on, but warm-almost too warm-inside the restaurant. Horace Franklin was gabbing on about the time back in 1950-something when he told his boss to shove it, and instead of firing him, the boss was so impressed by his nerve that he'd given Horace a raise. Jim Fisk was bragging about his glory days as a ladykiller-the bachelor party he'd gone to in 1948 where the hired stripper took a liking to him and offered her services in the parking lot after the party. Didn't even charge him, according to Jim-if you believe that. And the urge started in me-irritation at first, nothing more-to shut them up. Maybe I was getting tired of us all dressing up the past to make ourselves look better than we were. Maybe I wanted the club to really mean something. Otherwise, we were just a bunch of old, overgrown kids, in love with the idea of a secret club but with nothing important to keep secret."
Brock Taylor: Brothers "In June 1945 my mother and Bob's mother shared a room in the maternity ward. Their husbands were both about nine months back from the war and Bob and I were the result of the two reunions. We were born just an hour apart on the same summer solstice evening. Our mothers, lying six feet apart, experiencing the same confusion of joy and agony, sweating and crying through parallel crescendos of contractions and diminishing periods of reprieve, formed a relationship that they keep to this day. Our fathers, pacing the waiting room like caged bears, exchanged enough words to appreciate the other's nervousness and to realize that they lived just one block apart on the same beech-lined street. So it was natural that Bob and I grew up being best friends. Best friends in spite of being so different. In high school we ran in separate packs. I with the jocks and cheerleaders, he with the science and math nerds. He was the school chess champion, I the basketball star. Our friendship survived because we both wanted it to. A whole childhood of shared birthday parties and family outings to the lakes and mountains made us feel more like brothers than friends. When I needed help with an algebra assignment it was Bob I turned to. When he admitted he was too bashful to invite a cutie named Cheryl to a school dance I made it happen for him."