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Fiction
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Dancing on the Riverbank
Eileen Cruz Coleman
Lovers who met by the river; Carmella was married to someone else and had five-year-old twin girls; Andres was her childhood sweetheart. As children, they sat in front of Manuel’s bakery, eating chocolate-covered mangoes...Life was simple.
Gretchen of Wisconsin
Darryl Halbrooks
We were fat. It’s easy to swear off sex when you’re fat. We’re thin now. Are you sure you want to miss out on this?
I. Shy Men Anonymous
II. E
Misha Firer
Bobbie "Fat Cat" had no interest in eking out her serotonin or in
enticing her mind to become chemically happy. She was here
just to get laid.
A Miniature Forever
Linda Oatman High
Joe carries his journal with him each day. He writes a few lines by the cemetery. But on this day, Joe decides not to write. He decides instead to bury the journal. The journal is yellow -- the color of hope and sunshine and Joe’s first car.
Drowning
Miriam N. Kotzin
So Mom has to put the kittens in a tied sack with a rock in the bottom to weight it down. You can just about hear them through the burlap, kind of mewing, and the sack is all squirmy. You're trying to push her away from the barrel of water, and you can't.
Smell
Sandy Steinman
My shrink says his passivity goes to the root of our marital problems. Alice thinks he has a sensuality blockage and would benefit from aromatic massage. I call it lazy.
The Photograph
Liz Dolan
Kathleen would watch her mother stare at the photograph, and she wanted to ask her about him. Could he run fast? Could he play scullies, flys are up, or curb ball? She wanted to ask her mother, but something always stopped her.
Slouching Toward Grace
Susannah Indigo
How many days have you lived? How many left? What have you been doing with the fifteen or twenty thousand or so days that have passed you by? What do you hope to do with the X-thousands left? How many kisses do you suppose you can get in?
New books from Slow Trains writers
All material in Slow Trains is copyrighted to the original authors and may not be reproduced without permission. Violators will be prosecuted.
Red Tree, Cuba, by Cavalli
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Essays
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Rave On
March 18, 2010
Welcome to Slow Trains, where the postcards never stop.
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Volume II in print & Best Online Journals, guest-edited by Pam Houston
Gay Cuba
Richard Ammon
The students said everyone has a job in Cuba, and a person can be investigated and possibly jailed for not working -- or he will be given a manual job to do by the police regardless of his skills. A doctor in Cuba earns between $20-30 a month. A policeman earns a hefty $40 a month, so you can be sure he does his job well.
River Road
Molly McCluskey
The first time I saw the Colorado, it was merely part of the landscape, the ever stretching expanse of difference categorizing my trip west. Driving down 128 towards Moab, roaring toward the unknown, it was a border, a long sinewy thing, breathing, moving, running. Suffering. Dying.
sophistication pales
against
the rhythm
of slow trains
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On Becoming Jewish-ish
Jeff Leavell
I got rid of my TV, became obsessed with a boy across the street who would stand in his window and watch me, and I started reading the Bible -- the New Testament, because I thought as a writer I should know it. .
The Outing of Polonius Pete
Wayne Scheer
He became so notorious, in fact, that the Sidewinder organization asked him to wear the skintight uniform in the opening game of the new season.
Why the Ball Stayed in the Park
Gary D. Wilson
Even the blind man and the kid with blue hair trudging up separate aisles of the stadium know that crack doesn't do justice to the report of a perfectly thrown pitch meeting a perfectly swung bat.
An Arsenal for All Ages
Richard Fein
Two weeks later, my wild arena of small boy fantasies / was shaped into to a perfect diamond design / The departing workmen said I was old enough / and rightly should be the first to join
One of Us
Ed Markowski
That summer at our house in Ann Arbor had seemed
endless: great films, poetry, beautiful girls, and
baseball.
When Mark Fidrych, aka "The Bird," pitched, the porch was packed.
Baseball Forever
Michael Schein
It was the Microsoft Mariners versus the Genentech Red Sox. The game was a little late startin', 'cause the players all had to renegotiate their contracts based on their performance from the day before.
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On Peace & Politics
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Our new section on peace & politics during this critical election year
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Poetry
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The Talking Heads and Sylvia Plath
Jessy Randall
Both just groan out whatever it is. Just what if the baby is born with a huge body and skinny arms and legs and head?
Fanlights
Itinerary
Rebellion
Margarita Engle
Maybe it's time to start re-designing that saddle for dolphins, the one I rode a few years ago, when so many of my travel dreams required an uncanny ability to breathe underwater.
55 Ginsberg
They are the Eggmen, I am the Buddha
John Eivaz
i share with the nothing world / rocking me in the nothing cradle / lowered to the nothing grave / the nothing prayers i was taught / left to echo nowhere
Twenty Minutes
Dun Aengus
Liam Day
I feel I owe her, at the very least, a poem, a really good poem, one that connects her life to the space program, and even to the ancient Celts, who got this whole train of thought moving, after all
Curt Flood
impenetrable godwit bloodbath
Tony Gruenewald
What could this be, sent by
the mythical LaDonna Ott,
obviously an alias for a
counter terrorism super agent?
Leaving Indiana
Absence
Rescuing a Memory
Jason Fraley
Since you refuse my hand, I will keep these stones in my mouth, watch quietly from the bank as you swim. If I went into the water for you, I would drown.
Go
Martin Burke
A three-part contemplation on the beauty found
in the cities of the heart, Go travels through Venice and Greece,
always starting out for the islands, looking for the boatman, questioning the burdens and blessings
in the turbulence and calm of the world.
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Katharine Hepburn
Diane E. Dees
Rosie rushing down the river / Bones and angles lead the way/ Vowels wide as Fenwick's sky / Glints of sun on auburn waves
Celia Cruz
Diane E. Dees
Azucar! We love you, the line / written on these banners made at home / in haste, carried high along with flags / of Cuba—art not shown in the museum.
Thom Gunn
William Dean
He lived in London's old town / Jack, that is; the one earthquakes tear down / from time to time / in California's sunny clime /
where settle strange men of rhyme
Here Comes Mabel, the Queen of Spontaneity
Suzanne Nielsen
Although
I've given up the booze and chemicals, I still am leery of the
abstemious individual who's never known what it's like to soak in
oblivion. I would never have been leery of Mabel Normand, except she
might have pinched from my stash had we hung together.
Send comments to: editor@slowtrains.com
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