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Omar's Story
by Hope Vanderberg
The dodo bird went extinct because it could not fly away. It wasn't always like this. Once the dodo knew how to fly; we know this because it must have flown to its island in the Indian Ocean long before the Dutch sailors ever showed up. There it made its home and, untouched by predators, grew fat on fallen fruit. Until finally its wings shrunk, and its body grew heavy, and it wandered the island looking like an overgrown chick. And it forgot how to fly. So that when the Dutch arrived with their clubs, the dodo had nowhere to go.
Palmetto Bug Serenade
by Paul Klemperer
In preparation for an important upcoming show, Franz practiced his trumpet for many hours each day. Toward the end of the week, he heard melodies in his head continuously and when he closed his eyes the notes from the sheet music danced across the screen of his eyelids.
PMS & Death by Suzy Spencer
Oh, am I sure this isn't PMS?
Raccoons
by Robert Kraft
We sat on the back porch talking, drinking Bushmills and chain-smoking Camel filters. A family of raccoons shuffled past us one by one on their way to the automatic feeder set up on the other side of the porch. "They must just think that we're weird, mumbling lawn chairs or something," I whispered.
Taken
by Kelly Stern
At first it's easy. Mixed in with the notes, articles, socks are magazines, journals, even a book. These get tossed on the floor in front of the bookcase. Then the photos -- these too are easy. Not so with the poems. A whole pile of them.
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A Tiny Room
by William Kier
My baby stirs. She brushes the sheet down her back, and for a second there's life coming from the corner floor where our mattress lies. It's like a wind hitting embers.
True Story
by David McDaniel
A strange eerie night indeed, and I come awake in the wee morning hours, suddenly claustrophobic in my sleeping bag. The tent is breathing with the wind, swaying, sucking in and ballooning out like some kind of gigantic jellyfish. These new nylon dome jobs are built to be portable and lightweight, and that is exactly what they are in a good stiff breeze. I can hear the dog and he is restless -- pawing around, snuffling and snorting and making other kinds of weird racket, and then it dawns on me, through the slowly ebbing sleep funk, that I don't have a dog.
Wild Blue
by Christine Hindman
I begin to ascend the hill that rises between me and the tall, puerile male with this amazing ornament of hair, blue hair colored like sunlight through a Tiffany iris, the blue I need. To find the blue in a freshman's choice of hair color is very queer, extraordinary, something I never would have looked for.
Windows
by Christopher Hess
I was sitting out on the back porch the other day, having a cigarette and watching the rain coat the ground. It was falling slow and lazy, the long blades of grass swaying in wavering arcs off time with the sporadic breeze, the lines in the only puddle, just off the edge of the concrete patio, bobbing outward from the fat splash and taking all day to hit shore. It had been raining a while, at least that's the way it looked judging by the even soak on everything not sheltered.
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