The Literary Issue

May 2, 2007

Word of the Day

It has been a week of nouns weakening in applicability, often adjunct and defunct; this acronym owes more, to us, than onus. Mill mountain, noun, is promised to purge even itself, last sold in 1633, last whispered in Winchester, the … Read More

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Summer Postmodern

The boy has black hair that’s clipped to be unkempt. From a mall bench, he eyes two girls, who wander past in the distraction of gossip and pre-ripped jeans. He wonders which he would prefer. But he stops himself, in … Read More

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Gibraltar

We expect the days like this, but they come only when they like, and carrying their monstrous young inside them, waiting. There were dust motes, but Philip didn’t see them. Nor could he remember faces, just then, nor forms. There … Read More

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Conversation

It’s like a death, but it’s worse. Because this is the last time I’ll speak with you and we’re both angry. I’m yelling something, but I’m looking at the rumple between your mouth and your nose, watching it as you … Read More

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A Yacht Club Party is Winding Down

The last few bars of a big-band tune exposing themselves without a hint of self-awareness and the half-sober apercus of a gaggle of twenty or so be-sequined, be-suited women and men of a certain age their laughter playing soft on … Read More

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Simile

I have written poems pomes (pennyeach) like pommes as in pommes de terre those roots with eyes— and now I write in my eyes, to my eyes à mes yeux which means in another light ‘by my way of thinking’— … Read More

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Her Torso or Addie

Like a length of string, like a lily of a day a firm, fragile thing. A spring stuck in play; or, the spring that can begin halfway to halfway The fixed compass pin where every line and degree meet their … Read More

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Amphorae Transported

a Palestinian transports wine amphorae West. state government export programs should be. implemented as opposed to the arguments. about policy intervention strategies. an eager Roman transports wine amphorae East. execute the social change, “I am invulnerable. like a trade’mark”, says … Read More

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Rosemary’s Texas Taco

Denver was becoming acutely aware that at this moment in the road trip, where a second wind might have kicked in, not even the slightest of breezes was blowing. “I know! Lets not go, let’s go somewhere else, we can … Read More

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Ghazal

It could be anyone, the one waiting somewhere for you to love her. You wait in a dark station, the trains arriving and leaving, knowing nothing of her. Everything is a welling up, an unhurried dance spinning and dipping, like … Read More

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A Translation by Elizabeth Abernethy

JESUS Either someone plays Mahomet or I quit! MOSES But you’re not taking into account the risks that that imports. If you make an actor incarnate Mahomet you’ll have fifteen thousand fatwahs on your back. JESUS When I do theatre, … Read More

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Lightning Can Mean Everything

There is a stop light in front of Weston Autobody; in evening the autoshop light sears mechanics. Some stand – columns – and hold cars with outstretched fingers. One hangs like a bodied hammock another is a bowed branch. The … Read More

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The End of the Hanging Basket

“Mr. Stone was commissioned by the mayor of London to design a “dry garden” of plants and flowers that use less water because England, widely associated with drizzle, is actually drying up.” “LONDON IS SO DRY,” Wall Street Journal, July … Read More

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Letter from the Editors

It would seem the mad dash to fill the Nass’s literary issue might best warrant a clandestine mafia negotiation; by this logic, the editors (in fedoras and spats, sure, and affecting a Sicilian shtick) would send out coercive e-mails to … Read More

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Hot Fuzz…

Until it goes batshit crazy, Edgar Wright’s Hot Fuzz is a slightly underwhelming, if occasionally hilarious, film. [Cormac: The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no … Read More

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Carrying the Fire

Every now and then there comes a book which is like an arrow shot into the heart of things because it has the power to redeem the fading, diffuse enterprise of bookselling and novel-gazing both, all the misbegotten hours spent … Read More

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Narcissus

Jakob’s eyes were a prison for my soul. They were tragically beautiful. They were beautifully tragic. There was sadness there, and a wise weariness of the world, and yet somehow a glint of hope. His eyes nearly broke my heart. A sapphire ocean, sweeping me away in a shimmering riptide of tears and fluttering lashes.

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Hang Up

And imagine my heel a hook around your ear – my other against your chest, the rest of my leg singing. Stay there, crush ripping hair from the bud, the best part thrash: from the shove. or the bouncy ball … Read More

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Ovaries look like oysters, but they taste like halibut

That’s what I used to tell my interns, anyway. It was such a hoot to watch the queasy dubious looks on their faces as they glanced sideways at each other, speechless. They’d grin at each other, sometimes giggle; other times they just looked sick, or nervous, like I’d taken a piss on the preacher Sunday morning at church—Is he serious?

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Verbatim

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Overheard outside Lockhart

Dude on phone: The green linen pants, the baby blue blazer, the white collared shirt and the navy blue tie...I think that's it. I definitely need it by Friday

Overheard at Ivy

Girl 1: Then, I fell down in the tap room and broke my left wrist.
Girl 2: Well it's good that you broke the left, and not the right, because at least you can still give blow jobs.

Overheard in Bloomberg

Drunk guy: I think you're one of the most beautiful girls on campus. (thoughtful pause) Does that offend you?

Overheard outside 1879 Arch

Girl (motioning down campus): Let's go down
Guy: Here?
Girl: Fuck off!

Overheard at the CJL

Guy 1: What do you think about Butt Rape For Kids?
Guy 2: I don't know. Maybe the government should start a program called No Child Left Behind.

Overheard on McCosh Walk

Freshman guy on cell phone: Hi Mom, I have a meeting with my adviser in 20 minutes and I have to decide on classes -- What should I take?