Mexican wrestling is awesome. Everyone wears a mask, so everyone looks like a superhero.

Winslow would like to be a lucha libre superstar, but he needs to bone up on his Spanish a little more.

For countless generations, the romantic poetry of the Greek lyric poet Sappho (c. 630-c. 570 BCE) has tickled the ears of man and woman alike. Recent generations have misinterpreted her work as reflecting the demons of homosexuality; right-thinking scholarship, however, begs to differ. It is my purpose in this introduction, therefore, to dispel any and all scandalous rumors regarding the poet, our beloved matriarch and muse.

Though later exported to Japan by St. Francis Xavier (1506-1552 CE), the haiku poetic form dates back to ancient Greece. St. Cacostomos of Lydia writes in his compendious second-century Lives of the Lesbians that the pagan people of Anatolia claim the haiku was given to them by their god Hedone, daughter of Eros and Psyche. A common greeting amongst the heathens of this time, ‘ηδονη κυδος (hedone kudos—lit. “pleasure which is heard of,” perhaps used as a question, implying “Have you heard of pleasure?”), was often shortened to simply he~ku in speech.

Welcome to the April 2011 issue of Defenestration!

You could call this the “Five by Five” issue. That’s not a Buffy the Vampire Slayer reference, but it could be, because back then vampires were cool. No, it refers to the layout for this issue. This time around, we’ve published the work of five short story writers and five poets. If symmetry delights you, then the table of contents alone will be enough to entertain you for hours.

Of course, there’s more to this issue than its table of contents (which is pretty great). We have monkeys and sex and Andy Garcia. We also have a story about a ham sandwich—I daresay it’s the greatest story about a ham sandwich that’s ever been published. And that’s only scratching the surface. This issue features a lot of new faces and a couple of familiar ones. I hope you like it as much as Bigfoot does.

Sharp As A Tack

Self help insult books are on the rise
Since researchers discovered
the severely critical remain
sharp as a tack into old age;
alzheimers thwarted
with withering stares.

I hear these pop stars
are falling in love,
stumbling blind for
chic gowns
and ballroom brides,