Editor’s Note: We’re pleased to bring you the opening chapter from Wayne Hammer’s sci-fi thriller Shifts. The novel weaves elements of genetics and espionage into a story about a man, Michael Duchesne, and the potentially world-changing implications of a DNA mutation secret he’s keeping. If this teaser chapter piques your interest, you can buy Shifts on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. * * * An elderly couple walked within a few feet of the boat slip. The woman slightly rotated her frail body and hunched her shoulders to keep the chilled morning air from leaking in over the collar of her oversized windbreaker. She paused for a moment and then left her husband’s side to stroll toward the edge of the dock. When she got to the railing, she leaned over to get a better look…

Continue reading →

  Angels, Pearls and Mannequins “Neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet…” Matthew 7:6   Each New Year I stop by family graves asking for ease, as if anything they could do would put me on track, and then I drive south:   there, a half-moon, slightly less really, was a half-buck short of a dollar. I thought today would become warmer and make up the difference. There, I would hammock under heaven:   arms stretched back behind my head, gazing at clouds moving across the face of a broken moon on a black Formica sky.   When I needed truth you were honest:   but there’s distance between us. Everyday you slip more new clothes over pearl-dusted mannequins in window displays.   You may have forgotten I…

Continue reading →

THWAP. “Catsup,” Hershel yells. “Is that really too much to ask?” The plate smacks the wallpaper, the meatloaf sticking, the plate crashing to the floor. “Meshuggina,” Judith says. ‘Two year olds, I know two year olds more flexible.” Her chair shrieks like a leaf rake on a blackboard as she shoves backward and thumps out of the kitchen. “What? After all I do and do and do for you, catsup I don’t get,” he calls after the wife. “Had too much onion anyway. You call that meatloaf? Heartburn loaf.” He stares at the slab of meatloaf slithering down the foil paper. Foil paper, Judith put up foil paper. “What, you think this is Florida?’ She walked out on him when he asked; she’s getting expert at it, this walking out. Silver foil. Shlock. Got no…

Continue reading →

“We also spent entire nights in bed and I told her my dreams. I told her about the big snake of the world that was coiled in the earth like a worm in an apple and would someday nudge up a hill to be thereafter known as Snake Hill and fold out upon the plain, a hundred miles long and devouring as it went along. I told her this snake was Satan. “What’s going to happen?” she squealed; meanwhile she held me tight.” – Jack Kerouac * * * “Rattlesnakes can swim.” Valerie grabbed the nun’s wrist, desperate to get her attention. Thirty demonstrators walked down the highway median with children and dogs in tow. Despite the chilly January wind, the ragged line of walkers was determined to show support for a proposed rattle snake…

Continue reading →

“Don’t use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.” ― Jack Kerouac     The Quickening Because I believe in perfection I believe in abortion Babies are asymmetrical They/she/he/it squander The silken grammar of routine But, a fetus can be edited Its absence assures a lacy indefectibility In the vacuum, I can breathe It’s not right It’s not the right time I don’t want to hunker down in Staten Island Or be on bed rest Or buy big clothes Or rush to alter with a gown and a groom and a promise With rice raining on me like fallout. I don’t want to be folk like my mother was folk. Children growing out of her hairdo. Dull eyes and unpainted nails. Waking on the hour to feed.  Feeding. Always feeding the hungry….

Continue reading →