For when you shop: regular red-eye remover drops mildly sting after application. Get the kind with moisture. Regular red-eye remover drops aren’t silica or other base elements. They are liquids and ipso facto have moisture. But this word on the outer box of differentiating red-eye remover drops means the post facto hardly sting isn’t there at all. Set the atoms of a million base elements, that when combined form red-eye remover drops, in a petri dish. Introduce the chemical process that will join all the atoms into red-eye remover drop molecules at the same time. Is there a nanosecond at the instant of combination where the molecules exist, and thus voila c’est! red-eye remover drops, but the petri dish is not yet wet?
Rob Cook lives with someone who almost isn’t there. Matthew James Friday continues his sharp series of Europea quotidiana. Margaryta Golovchenko lives where the sound in the air melds with its hearer. Sandeep Kumar Mishra thinks his way out of a trap. And Joel Schueler has enough heart left to generate disgust — a feat in our drug-evened world.
Kleist is our first of three excerpts this issue. His prose is like walking on old leaves that have never seen the rain. Musset is more philosophical, a frequent claimant as quick witted as a comedian. Johnson in all his non-fiction pens prose as he would lecture. Here his eye turns critical in a manner we bardolators do not often hear.
Check out cover artist Guy Benjamin Brookshire’s stunning podcast, The Republic of Sin.
–ed.
Fiction
The Roommate by Rob Cook
“like the steady breath of insects that lived in the walls”
Michael Kohlhaas by Heinrich von Kleist
“he was almost sorry he had sent a messenger to annihilate the prophecy”
The Confession of a Child of the Century by Alfred de Musset
“Are you passionate? Take care of your face.”
Non-Fiction
Preface to Shakespeare by Samuel Johnson
“the ignorant feel his representations to be just, and the learned see that they are compleat.”
Poetry
A Different Toy; Dog Walking in Krakow by Matthew James Friday
“his owner wrapped in age”
The Marsh by Margaryta Golovchenko
“My lazy minnow self lives here”
Descending into the Earth by Sandeep Kumar Mishra
“in the mirror of vitality”
I’ve Seen You About by Joel Schueler
“You never did glitter in crazed sobriety”