Welcome to the August 2011 issue of Defenestration.
An interesting (and true!) story about editing this issue*. After I stitched all the stories, poems, photos, and biographies together into the standard layout, I printed out a copy. Apparently my wife had accidentally loaded up the printer with a bunch of discarded drafts of old Ben & Winslow strips**. So as I’m editing the issue, these light pencil sketches keep showing up behind the content, like the ghosts of cartoon characters. The first page of Lawrence Barker’s “A Stinking Rose by Any Other Name,” for example, contains a half-drawn Apsara Williams in a tank top, which I found fitting because the first paragraph uses the word “attention-whores.” Several other pages have faceless proto-Bens and proto-Winslows cavorting on them. One of the proto-Winslows was fondling his breasts.
That’s not really the amusing part of the story. The amusing part is that my wife loaded up the printer because she was printing off paperwork for a new job. Which she submitted earlier that day.
You won’t find the afterimages of cartoons in this issue, which would only distract you from the great selection of short stories and poetry we have for you this month. Things you have to look forward to: skunk apes, literary allusions, sex, the results of sex, primitive shopping carts, and diseases of women and children. And that’s just a small sampling.
Once you’re done reading the issue, why not submit? We are now officially open again to short stories and poetry. The reading period starts now and ends December 5th.
—Andrew Kaye, Editor-in-Chief
Table of Contents
Poetry:
Autumn Hayes, “Xujaa, Guerrera, Q’Tnna”
Mason Johnson, “Appendicitis”
Marit Ericson, “Riddled”
John S. Fields, “Huck Elvis”
Kyle Hemmings, Two Poems
Short Stories:
Kenneth Cernik, “Baby Dedication”
Elizabeth Alexander, “House Arrest”
Kate LaDew, “The Shopping Cart Museum”
Lawrence Barker, “A Stinking Rose by Any Other Name”
Kimberly Emilia, “When Professionals Carry Diaper Bags”
Meg Tuite, “Bee Branch does Ulysses”
Graham Tugwell, “(un)Even Roads Have Feelings”
Downloadable Copy:
* Yes, I do actually edit these issues by hand sometimes. But not with a red pen, because they literally make Eileen cry.
** Yes, I do actually draw those strips on computer paper.