Excerpt: Laura Madeline Wiseman
From Sprung My Imaginary Cock Dresses for Halloween Holy the cocks of the grandfathers of Kansas! ~Allen Ginsberg My imaginary cock mans the bedroom closet. My cock pitches costumes: a Renaissance frock, a wand capped with a star, a fairy princess skirt, a witch’s conical hat and bodice laced in webs. I’ll find the perfect … Read more
Story: Rion Scott
Roadkill or The Animal Spirits 1. I begin each morning by taking apart and cleaning the pieces of the black nine millimeter handgun I keep by the bedside. It’s for the hunt, I tell people. I shine every inch of the thing even though I’ve only fired it once or twice at a gun range. … Read more
Haiku: Scott Wiggerman
among the stalks not one perfect cattail– so far Scott Wiggerman is the author of two books of poetry, Presence and Vegetables and Other Relationships. Recent poems have appeared in Spillway, Assaracus, Naugatuck River Review, Contemporary Sonnet, and Hobble Creek Review, which nominated “The Egret Sonnet” for a Pushcart. A frequent workshop instructor, he is … Read more
Poem: Bryan Miller
Fiction Tomorrow I am flying out of town on the backs of two birds. People keep telling me one will do. I tell them, I am a big man and need a bird for each foot. They say, But aren’t you afraid you’ll break the birds’ backs? I tell them, I am making every bit … Read more
Our Best of the Net Nominees
We here at Extract(s) are pleased to announce our nominees for Sundress Publications’ 2012 Best of the Net awards. Sundress has been giving these awards since 2006 and this year will publish an e-book as well as its online anthology. Again, we were limited in what we could choose based on dates (work published between July … Read more
Excerpt: Julie Corbett
From On The Humber Shore Leave Weekend Inside were always four smells— steak and kidney pie, stale breathy beer, shoe polish and the kit bag that guest by the veranda door— meaning he was home, spending love in the pub, tailors and sweet shop. By Monday the flat was ready— ripe enough for the purging … Read more
Story: Louis Bourgeois
The Khmer Rouge Slow movements of a day, and I’m ten years old and walking home from school skipping along the cobblestone sidewalk, deeply entrenched in nothing particular. I’m walking to meet my mother at the State Health Office where she works as a urine tester to find out who’s pregnant and who’s not. And … Read more
Poem: Mary O’Malley
A Keen Today we are lost, out of place. Kenning and keening are not understood. Once poets consulted with kings, talked and prayed to trees. Wore gold bracelets, touched and cradled beauty, while sending armies off to war. Now; it is a mostly hidden act. One may find us with our cauls and shroud shawls … Read more
Excerpt: Marsha Mathews
From Hallelujah Voices Everything to Do with Being a Lady Preacher Rupert The first few Sundays, we left our women home and circled the church parking lot in our F-150’s, gunning the engines, spitting tobacco into the gravel while the new lady preacher the Bishop sent us preached to empty pews. We thought she’d cry. … Read more
Story: Steven Gowin
Jimmy’s Glass Eye Uncle Jimmy wore a glass eye… left eye was glass. He was our bachelor uncle who worked out there for Suzanne McQueen’s dad on their farm North of Booneville. He didn’t lose an eye in any war, so we don’t know what happened, how he lost it, and Mom won’t say. We … Read more
