On "Song of the Turkey Vulture" by G. E. Tallant (6403 words) ***

Here's a tale about seasons--of one's life, of the life of a place, and of a year. Cara is an older lady struggling against sickness. She has two dear friends down the road from her. All of them do farming of a sort. But the town is moving in, and the three of them aren't getting any younger. The significance of the title becomes clear in the last section. Read the story here at Terrain.

On "Coyote" by Werner A. Low (3172 words) ***

Okay, so the main thing I kept thinking while I read this (save, the part about how scarecrows generally don't work, so this must be something pretty special)--the main thing I kept thinking was this: This guy must be pretty desperate for some sort of life. I mean, imagine obsessing over winning some ridiculous office prize and then obsessing over how the reason for that prize is put into effect. The absurdity makes the story pretty funny--but it also makes the main character into someone rather pitiful, which in the end, I suppose, is the point. If only a prize could solve all our problems. Read the story here at Terrain.

On "The Third Way" by Tamara Kaye Sellman (1768 words) ***

I'm not particularly keen on politics overtly making their way into fiction, but then again, can politics ever not make their way into fiction? Even their supposed absence (if that is possible) is a political statement of sorts, an argument perhaps for the status quo. And as a novel I recently read shows--that novel being Romano-Lax's The Spanish Bow--sometimes even though one may want to simply write a story or play music or draw a picture, forces around will often conspire to use what one does for its own political ends. Is silence then the only option? But is silence then also a political statement?

These things being on my mind at the time that I read this story, I couldn't help but be drawn to some of the questions that Romano-Lax's book raised. And I didn't even know at the time that I was reading a "political" story, not until I was halfway in. I thought I was reading a disaster story--with a unique twist, the reason the story is compelling: the piece is told backward. But maybe disaster stories and political stories are the same. I fear that too often they are. Our desire for power over others generally spells disaster for someone else somewhere, as it does here. Read the story at Terrain.org.