What It Is Is There's A Cover Now For WT #2

With summer about a week old, we've started in full with gathering together the in-hand stories and such for the second issue of Wrong Tree Review.

I realize I've not mentioned WT very much of late, but what can I say? I've grown fat over the past several months and content with the shine and lasting fulfillment of our first issue, so happy was I with the results.

But I have news, people. Gather 'round. Listen:

Aside from the fact that this next issue has some of the finest writing from the finest writers in these parts (including a posthumous offering from our dear, lake-bottom scraping Finnegan Flawnt and so many others) there is also, as is normal for journals, some cover art.

But listen...listen closely.

The cover for Wrong Tree Issue #2 will feature artwork by a man called Sam Pink. Yes, you heard me. A man called Sam Pink.

More updates to come as the good work continues for the summer issue.

Goddamn, I'm pumped!

Interior: Floyd County Times newsroom. Midday.

Sheldon: Huh, I lost someone who was following my blog. Had 30, now it says 29.

Co-worker: (Laughing) Loser.

Laughter dies away, replaced by general office sounds.

Sheldon: (Quietly, to himself) I know.

Heartfright

The last chord splinters. All eyes to me, scalded red hands folded in my lap and finished. She's not listening and if she's not listening there is no music.

Patricia, a Problem, and a Pencil

Zoology class. Patricia pays attention. Pays attention like she’s got credit cards full of it. All the plastic attention you can handle.

The rest of the class pays attention to Patricia, the tight American Eagle t-shirt even more tight over her melon belly. Chatter over her shoulder, food chain chatter at the front of the room where Mrs. Evans explains and explains. Chatter in Patricia’s head so that she can almost hear her thoughts in her throat, real words vibrating downward.

She raises her hand and Mrs. Evans calls on her without looking away from the caged boa propped on the edge of her desk.

“Can a baby inside of you hear what you’re thinking?”

Mrs. Evans says nothing and does not call down the kids laughing at the back of the room. Instead, she takes a white mouse from a box the class prepared the day before. Tiffany stabbed holes in the sides and top so the mice could live long enough to die.

Patricia raises her hand again but Mrs. Evans and the rest of the class watch the mouse and the snake. She writes a note instead and resharpens her pencil.

Grocery Shopping

Clay took the first chicken, white-knuckled its neck until there was no chicken voice left, just the whir of feathers.

Three, four, five propeller rotations and the body splashed across the yard. He tossed its head on the front porch and went for another.

I poked at the flap of neck, the moving beak, and did not flinch when it gave its last scream, a brain stem reflex.

David E., Flawnt and a Confession.

David Erlewine left. Now Finnegan Flawnt will be stepping offstage. Both writers and individuals I hold in high regard.

David said his job lawyering had picked up and was demanding more of his time. Finn said he worried the instant gratification of flash and a fast-track publishing world where a story can be written, submitted and published in some cases within a week was keeping him from the art of the longer story, longer prose.

I appreciate both reasons, but can't fully understand either. But I can hope that David will, as all true writers do, continue to produce work. He mentioned before of a long break he took from the writing world only to reemerge and give us dozens upon dozens of wonderful stories. As for Finn, let's hope we see some of those longer stories somewhere in the future.

Now, for a confession...

For reasons I can't rightly understand myself, I decided to start an online journal called A-Minor Magazine but not connect my name to this publication. Maybe I wanted the work to stand alone, apart from any writer or editor connected to the journal. Maybe I felt playful. Maybe this. Maybe that. But, at this point, it has started to feel a bit more deceptive than I imagined it would, though I know most would understand.

So there it is. I started and am publishing and editing work at A-Minor Magazine. I've confessed this not because I feel anyone necessarily cares, but for myself. Deception, even at the most diluted level, has never been a coat that fits me well. I feel a little better already.

Now, all that being said, take a look at A-Minor at www.aminormagazine.wordpress.com. Read, submit, comment. I hope you enjoy. It's certainly been pleasant for me so far.

GUEST POST: Amy Geeleher

I recently asked writer Amy Geeleher to contribute a guest post here concerning reading. An avid and dedicated reader, I thought Amy would offer some interesting insights on reading as a writer, reading for enjoyment, reading for this and that and whatnot.

Instead, and even better, Amy gave me a pleasant surprise by writing about reading with a fine bit of fiction. A chef, this lady, a cooking guru of unique ways of taking on an assignment.

So, I offer you Amy Geeleher's views on reading through the eyes of her fictive world. What better way?

Sebastian, Chester and Harry Make Three

By Amy Geeleher

The forest is an open forum for the earth to unveil its overflowing glory and spread in green bucolic fervor. Reading is an intrepid feat of movement through the journey that is unfurling understanding via imagination and cognition, honing in on language and the subsequent pearling strings of syntax and grammar: art is love is god.

Sebastian was reading the back of a cereal box the other day, gleaning meaning from its ingredient list. High fructose corn syrup holds no saving graces from which misery is inevitably derived, but somehow there is language communicated by the commas connected to words with spaces and nouns depicting complex chemical components, what is zinc oxide exactly? Chester on the other hand subscribes to various magazines and political periodicals, filling up his head with so much input that he is bursting at the seamless seams of his skin, pore openings swelling at the mere thought of such super-saturation. And then there is Harry, who reads to write, he writes to expand the greenness of his earthly being, for his intrepid travels across multiple fronts of consciousness via the process of sublimating rage…expand and contract, repeat then fall to the wayside in writer’s block.

Amy Geeleher is a social worker who hails from western Massachusetts and finds that it is heartening to connect with others through writing and other creative venues.

Album

A flushed cheek, round of smiling blue, missing teeth, watch me, close the door, words thrown, fingers held, cake, song. How long was she that first hour?