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Brett
F. Woods’ most recent
political novel, Autley House, was
hailed as "a dark, suspenseful novel
of espionage … a
thrilling and adventurous mind game from
first
page to last." Now, with a history of
spy literature scheduled for release
in 2003, he talks with TPR about his
experiences as a student, writer, and
historian. MORE
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 World
War I: Empire and Espionage
While [Riddle of the Sands]
it would be [Childers'] solitary contribution
to the genre of espionage fiction, its publication
held
twofold
significance: primarily it brought to the attention
of the general public the troubles of Britain’s
dwindling military capability; but, secondly,
it marked the advent of the modern spy novel
by embracing the proposal of plots and themes
being set astride existing geopolitical scenarios.
It's
All in the Maul by
Tom Sheehan
It was the moment of pure silence before
we would set the forest on its ear with the roar
of our chain saws. The deep woods that morning
glistened with long tracts of snowy and scary
silence, now and then broken by the creaking
of a frozen limb swearing it would fall to earth.
At best that fall would be a minor distortion,
a minor distraction.... At attention we stood,
my friend Eddie LeBlanc and I, some twenty yards
apart, some huge oaks apart, their ugly and monstrous
arms clawing at early daylight.
Peaches
by Theresa Boyar
He set the album on the turntable
and lowered the needle. Zappa again. I was
five and I could already differentiate between “normal” music
and Zappa music. Xylophones, horns, and guitars
all thrown together in a medley of weirdness
that my father worshipped. He danced across
the living room.
Peaches en Regalia, he yelled above the
music.
Final
Approval by
Lad Moore
He spewed back my proposal, substituting
his slur for my words of passion.
“She can be ‘re-gaged,” he
said, “but there’ll be no damn ringely-dingelies on her hand!” The
lid of the ring box snapped shut so fast I nearly lost a finger, and I stuffed
it back into my jeans pocket like a shoplifter. His quivering pointy-finger showed
me the way to the door, and I left with Kay writhing out pleas for mercy while
Mrs. Eddie joined her husband in a chorus of boos.
Christina's
World by Terri Brown-Davidson
“I was thinking about painting Christina
Olson. But now maybe I’ll only paint the
house, the grass. She’s—too deformed,
I think; I don’t feel like I can put her
on the canvas. Seems a little creepy.”
“Good decision,” Pa
says. “The world doesn’t want to look at a cripple.”
Beside me, Betsy’s sudden
breathlessness. I gaze down at my plate, absorbed in my venison.
“Andrew Wyeth,” my
mother announces suddenly; startled, everybody looks. “Do you have a cold?”
Fate
by G.K. Wuori
Inside the medicine cabinet she found
Carl’s head, his eyes open, a certain disappointed
glaze to them.
Mary Lou remembered telling Carl that she didn’t
like the deeper style of medicine cabinets, that
the design philosophy of any such cabinet should
be all things up front—accessible now. No
one kept aspirin a closet, she said, nor did
you keep your deodorant, tweezers, unguents, and
toothpaste in the garage. Carl, of course, was
now meeting that standard of accessibility...
Invisible
by Margaret Karmazin
Work was a world
unto itself with its own laws—mainly: 1.
You must do the work decently in record time,
and 2. You must have the respect of the workers
under you.
Perry had no problem with the
first law; his success with that one was how he had earned the chance to deal
with the second one—well, that and the fact that his uncle was part owner
of the factory. Law number two was the one he tackled now. His uncle was not
in the least bit interested in helping him on the actual job. Perry hardly ever
saw the man. It was sink or swim.
13
Halloweens by
Michael K. White
Every evening the Walking Heart Attack
Man walks the sidewalks so he can stay alive.
It
is before
the modern era of bypass surgeries, stints and
heart transplants. We don’t even know his
name; all we know is the neighborhood gossip that
says he is a man of many heart attacks. He must
walk in the sun and rain, snow and sleet if he
wants to live. He has to walk, even on Christmas
even on Easter and even on Halloween.
Language
of The Air
by Lois J. Peterson
“I would like a baby,” she told him
not long ago, as if she was choosing something
for supper.
“It’s spread to her brain,” she
said, as if she was talking about a soap opera
character, rather than her own mother.
“I hate bugs,” Drew says aloud in
Julie’s unconvincing monotone. Of course,
he doesn’t, only the fruit fly that’s
flickering around the nectarine pit on the ledge
next to his toes.
Lion
Jaw by
Paul A. Toth
These were things Neil could never
offer. They were biologically impossible for
him.
“Unconditional love is what we want,” she
said, “but only God can give it. Why are
you laughing?”
Because, he wanted to say, God has more fucking
conditions than a used car warranty. Instead, he
said, “I’m really tired. Guess I’ve
got the giggles.”
The
Raincoat by
Stephen Lewis
“Minh, if you’re gonna
stay here, you’re just gonna have to stop
leaving your goddamned half drunk glasses of tea
all over the place.” The day old tea bags
lay on the bottom of the glass in liquid thick
with leaves, all of it a murky brownish color.
Minh stirred on the couch and then emerged from
beneath his raincoat, which he preferred to the
blanket I had offered him. He slept in his dingy
gray underwear. I did not know when, or if, he
bathed. Or what he ingested besides tea. He yawned
and then he tapped the glass down on the table
top to show he had heard me.
Room
Service Comes Till Midnight by
Paul Silverman
Next
pitch he sends to the moon—over the side
of the tub and out of sight. Steve licks his lips.
He keeps pitching and hitting. He’s everything
in this park; pitcher, batter, ump, manager, bullpen
staff and thousands of screaming fans. He hasn’t
done this for fifty-four years. And he knows, he
knows—the hand/eye thing is working, connecting,
he hasn’t lost a fraction of a fraction.
He’s fast as ever.
The
Bequest
by Elizabeth Tarver
“Oh, whoever heard of a Dying
Room. Look at that lovely view of the garden.” She
gestured at the windows. The heavy drapes were
gone and the back yard looked overgrown and lush.
His grandmother’s camellias were in full
bloom. “This room is going to be our sanctuary.
Imagine big, overstuffed chairs, velvet throws,
and a big screen TV. Ashford, we will live in this
room.”
The
Sunken Cathedral by
Kevin Frazier
I
can afford to eat at better restaurants. My firm
is reputable and my salary is more than ample.
But the Sunken Cathedral comforts me. Like my
own body, it has tried to keep up appearances
while slipping slowly into decay. Besides, every
tile, every door, every stained-glass shard in
the ceiling holds this place to my past. The
Sunken Cathedral used to be one of the most popular
nightspots in St. Petersburg, and I used to come
here regularly as a young man.
Godless
in India
by Jason DeBoer
“You see him?” The soldier, a captain
just back from the Pakistani border near Jaisalmer,
pointed. “He’s a saint. A holy man.
He’s traveling on what you call a … ” The
captain scowled and asked someone in the corridor
a question in Hindi. He turned back. “A
pilgrim.” “A pilgrimage?” “Pilgrimage,
yes. He has no home, just travel.”
Vintage
'43 by Wendy Dartnall
She survived,
keeping her silence. Memories were bottled and
stored in the darkest part of the cellar.
The children never asked what she did in the
war. She talked to them of life and love. She
drank
to that, often.
“‘Ave a Dubonet. Eet won’t ‘urt
you,’” she said to me at breakfast.
They found her on the bedroom floor this morning. No need for a post mortem—they
thought they knew the cause.
Refill by
Michael Cocchiarale
One night,
while lounging at his desk, eyes drooping with
fatigue, the draft of his last collegiate
assignment spread in front of him, Tom sat bolt
upright in his chair. He was preternaturally alert,
stung by a sharp sensation of depletion. Before
he knew it, he had run across campus and scattered
impatient knocks across Sarah’s door. When
she answered—raw-faced and yawning—he
stammered “Will you … will you … marry
me?” As she nodded through emerging tears,
Tom was relieved—the empty feeling filled
in like a hole.
Of
Swans and Frogs and Princes Charming by
Gerald Budinski
He joined her and when they faced the camera he put his arm around
her waist and she stiffened. She had always thought of herself as a scrimshaw
creature,
all bone, not to be squeezed or fondled. Somehow his hand had found soft flesh
above her hip and he pulled her close, hip to hip, shoulder to warm shoulder.
She hardly saw the remote device he had, her mind in a swirling panic mastering
face muscles, savoring vital flesh against hers, resisting fantasies.
The
Sailor Returns by
Melissa Bell
nineteen hundred
something or other
when fathers graspt the things they feared they’d miss
and never graspt the things they might have known
and boys marched past with stares that shamed you
oh! how dare you try and guess their fear
how dare you
Counting
Placemats by Janet I. Buck
This is how a poet explains
shaving the beard of loss
with a quick screw and a long shrug.
This
is Your Season by
Richard C. Williams
It
is the cameo on your lapel, an irenic
arm to brush the hair from your eyes
when the walls close in; thus, you may see mist
as mist, and not the breathy loss of ghosts.
My
Desires Align Themselves in Neat Rows by
Scott Coffel
(in love
the best goes unspoken, reflective
as mulled cider)—her eyes catching mine in the act,
mine feigning interest in yesterday’s pastries.
A
Kind of Mourning by
R.T. Castleberry
There is beauty
in a runner, in velocity
and a body’s arch toward the ending line.
I remember the day, the hour, the casual, happy greeting
A
Cabbage Garden by
Jeffrey Ingram
Your gaze casts
past those slow-
grown rows. Toward your wife,
a far richer plot
to cultivate.
Maggie by
V.G. Krikoryan
Why did you disappear,
Mag?
Your blazing context was always in fashion.
The walls berserk?
Watching
New Students in September by Anna Smith
and already the end was near,
and we knew that perhaps we were aging;
the grass was still outside near the
beach; the moon was full, or close enough,
but we were aging ...
How
Many Times You Told Me That
by Jeffrey Ingram
Einstein walked the
fields
beyond campus. Dew-
soaked tongues of loafers,
each step a hatched thought
Lost
to Beauty by
R.T. Castleberry
I want to learn the imperfections
you charge yourself with.
So that I may present them to you, singly,
as cherished wit, warmth,
the tease of irony and intelligence.
Fantasia by
V.G. Krikoryan
Oh she would surely
create him a beauty,
flamed of the fierce glitter of her joyous
yearning for his soaring ecstasy
The
Forefather by Richard C. Williams
One step
and all that grieves
from their shallow beds are the flowers.
From
my absence will come a legacy ...
Harmony
in Red by
Jeffrey Ingram
Or is she merely silhouette? Still,
her fingers grip stiff as if to balance
something far more pressing—
Fog by
V.G. Krikoryan
Symbols are seen where none were
intended:
bridges, short on goals, compromise
and go halfway. A steeple, given
to proving its point, absconds to heaven.
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