On "Medicine Show" by Charles Ramsay McCrory (1749 words) ***

In McCrory's world, pharmaceutical salesperson's are as likely to use their products as candy bar kids are to eat there. Neither person on this trip is exactly enthused by the work laid out for them, but sometimes the benefits are in the product itself. I love McCrory's use of language here. I could have read more. Read the piece here at Eunoia Review.

On "Magpies" by A. G. Synclair

I had planned on featuring three poems today, but the links for all three of them have gone dead--alas, the nature of online journal. Here's one I did manage to refind, republished in a different journal. If poetry is all in the language--and in a way it is--then Synclair's "Magpies" is an examplar of it. I am remembering the blurbs on some of the contemporary poetry books I've read, how single lines will be pulled out, so that's what I'll do here, for it's the final line "you . . . framed October under glass" that just astounds me. Out of context, it's not as incredible as it is in the poem itself. And you can check it here at the Eunoia Review (originally, it appeared in the Legendary).