| Featured Book |
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| Just West of Famous |
| Charles Baxter doesn't pull any punches when he answers Lisa Coutant's questions in this month's author interview.
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| In this issue: |
An encore poem from Gol McAdam
Claire Litton's amazing Authenticity Leads
A collection of poetry from Craig Kirchner
New fiction from Maria Pollack and Josh Stewart
Plus great poetry from Corie Feiner, Gary Wilkins, and Sherry Pasquerello |
| Coming Next Month |
Anne Frasier has some fresh ideas about how to boost her book sales,
Ron Hogan is the ultimate literary insider - and next month he's going to take the Picolata Review into his world for an exclusive look around.
Plus:More great poetry, short fiction, and features. Enough great writing to satisfy any literary palate.
Want to submit to The Picolata Review? Send your submissions and queries to submissions@picolatareview.org
Complete guidelines can be found here. |
| The Picolata Review |
Managing Editor Mark Pettus is a full time journalist in St. Augustine, Florida, and author of the novel, Transit Gloria
Features Editor Lisa Coutant is a consultant, former writer for the Philadelphia Theatre Review, and a fiction writer. She is also Vice President of the professional writing group, Pennwriters.
Poetry Editor Andy H-H., is a poet who lives in the beautiful countryside of West Yorkshire
with his partner and a menagerie of pets (a sheep occasionally stares in through the kitchen window), in a home surrounded by literary history. Ted Hughes was born there, Sylvia Plath is buried nearby, and first Emily Bronte, then Kate
Bush, made a certain stretch of desolate land five minutes' walk away very famous indeed.
Fiction Editor Serenity Banks's day job is as an industry magazine editor. She also writes an online sex-advice column, and is trying to find an agent for her latest horror novel.
The Picolata Review is a monthly online publication, and a place to find emerging writers and poets. We welcome you, and hope we'll see you again. If you forget our address, look for us just a little west of famous. |
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| Volume 1, Number 2 August, 2006 |
| Authenticity Leads, by Claire Litton |
Truth: conformity to fact, sincerity, integrity. Often considered to be the supreme reality and to have the ultimate meaning and value of existence.
At least one of these things is true.
When I was born, I had a vestigial twin with a swarthy demeanor who grew darkly in my armpit. She began as a lump with hair and teeth and reduced over the years of my childhood to nothingness. Now, there is a slight scar, a mole, and the sense from time to time that someone in my head is watching me and laughing.
Birds have hollow bones. This means the wind fills them. That is how they fly.
My grandmother was born in Indonesia, on the island of Bali. When she was a little girl, an old man saw her on her walk to school. He went to her family and asked to marry her, struck by the gentle curve of her ankle, and the way bees seemed to follow the path of her eyes. They told him no. Undaunted, he met her after school and walked with her along the road. He did this each day for two years, until he mysteriously disappeared. She did not think of him again until she received a note at her home in Long Island, written in shaky black ink on the back of a grocery receipt, that said only, "I loved best the way you smelled."
When a child learns to play the piano, he or she must begin naked. The piano bench must be smooth and without splinters, and should feel warm to the touch of a woman's hand. The music must be in the key of G, and without arpeggios, or the child will never grow past the age of twenty-five. It is important that a glass of water remain always close at hand. Playing the piano is thirsty business.
At twelve, he ran away to join the circus when his mother sent him for cheese one afternoon. He was gone two years. In that time, he learned to be shot from a cannon, got a tattoo on his bicep (it said "Mother"), and fell in love with the lady who balanced on the back of a horse. When he broke his arm, the circus returned him to his hometown, where his family lived in the same house as always. Their excitement at his reappearance caused him much consternation.
I have forgotten the way you smell, the way you dress, the way your hair falls on your forehead. I no longer cry in the night at the thought of you. My body does not ache for your touch.
There are no liars here.
Claire Litton enjoys a career as a professional belly dancer, and belly dance instructor. However, she's wanted to be a writer since she was three years old and started stapling pages together to make books. She recently won the Grain Magazine "Short Grain" competition for 2006, and enjoys the dubious pleasure of winning a writing award for an essay so dense even she couldn't understand it.
Her website is www.khafif.com/safadancer
She blogs at safadancer.livejournal.com |
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