New Millennium Writings, Issue 13

Issue 13 -- 2003-4

Contents - Departments

The Essence of George (and Faulkner's Tweed), by Brian Griffin, 68
'Garrett's grin actually entered the room before Garrett did. The grin stood at the door and scanned the crowd, teeth gleaming….'

In his own words
…a question and answer interview,
by Laura Hoffer, 78

Festival pays tribute
to George Garrett
Oct. 3-4 at UT, 87

Poetry Suite, 155-189, Recent Poems by…
Rachel Contreni Flynn, Peter Serchuk, R. B. Morris, Clifford Paul Fetters, Shadab Zeest Hashmi, Dennis Saleh, Cynthia Ann Tidd, Shelby Allen, Laura Sobbott Ross, Claire Braz-Valentine, Peggy C. Hall, Walt McDonald, Charlotte Pence, Andrea King Kelly, Keith Flynn, Simon Van Booy, Gordon Massman, Doris Ivie, Angela Vogel, Diana Gordon, Rob Cook, Emma Williams, Larry Bradley, Sara Maté, Laura Still, Marybeth Boyanton, and First Verse by Phil Lowe, Darius Antwan Stewart and Lauren McCollum.
First Verse by Therese Stegman, Doug LaVerne, Everette Bach, Joe Quinn, and Nancy Callahan

Funny Stuff, including…
The Layman Philosophies by Greg Stras, 195
'This whole business started so innocuously when my girlfriend of two weeks, Viscosity Panpipe, invited me to escort her to one of those campy, avante-garde get-togethers. You know the kind, where everybody stands around with a snifter of cognac and an intellectual bent that includes an ego the size of Lakehurst. At first, I refused because this profound hoedown coincided with a twelve hour Get Smart-fest on cable. My refusal, however, fell on deaf ears as Viscosity slowly opened her house coat, exposing her peignoir and a body so stunning it caused her canary to fall off his perch into the seed cone…'
Light Verse, by Judy DiGregorio, 202

Writing 101, Conducting the Interview, by Don Williams, 208
'That voice of sad experience, history, mystic insight, certain knowledge or raw enthusiasm is a treasure that can both inspire and inform your writing, whether fiction, nonfiction or poetry…'

Notes on Contributers and Acknowledgments, 190-194
Back Issues Kiosk, 203

Cover Design
by Rhonda Swicegood
of Hart Graphics

Cover color portrait
of George Garrett,
bottom center,
by Donnie Wier

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Contents - Special Section
New Millennium Awards XIV & XV

Read the Winners,
Special Section - 6 to 67
Honorable Mentions, 6 - 7
New Contest Guidelines, 67

1st Place, Fiction, NMW 14 (tie)
Dorene O'Brien,
Oven Birds, 8
'After I read my daughter to sleep with fairy tale stories of magic mountains and happily ever after, dark forests and sleeping death, I lie awake teasing the flames from my husband's back….'

1st Place, Nonfiction, NMW 15 (tie)
Maria Caruso,
The Vacationers, 19
'I can hear him say, in his reasonable, see-it-my-way voice: Perhaps the ass who goes traveling does not cmoe back as a horse, but I'd bet he comes back as a better-informed, more well-rounded ass….'

1st Place, Nonfiction, NMW 14
Maria Weber,
Queen of the Woods, 32
'She taught me how to make a grapevine swing and said fairies were real. We used to practice trying to shrink down to fairy size. We would site still with our legs stretched out straight, willing ourselves small. There were days when I knew my legs had shortened…'

1st Place, Fiction, NMW 15
R. A. Lopata,
Feeding the Reindeer, 39
'You really get to hate the wet ones. At the last minute, just before their soggy little asses hit your lap, you see that look on their mothers' faces… and you know a wet one's coming….'

1st Place, Nonfiction, NMW 14 (tie)
Morgan McDermott,
Depreciation, 50
'Crouch had her in one motion. His arm enveloped her, and she moved into him, her head tilted…'

1st Place, Poetry, NMW 14
Larry Bradley,
Renovation, 64
'The house preens itself like a buzzard,
mechanical almost, lifting its eaves
to the flies, picking the jellied grubs
from joist to joist, rifling through nests
of insulation so the wings of this house
seem folded over each window….'

1st Place, Poetry, NMW 15
Carolyn Moore,
Mrs Wold Writes A Friend in North Dakota, 66
'Tomorrow, my reckoning with eighty.
At the first shriek in my joints
I will rise to walk the lane
as far as the new intersection
where tires whine through rain
and dry the pavement out of season…'

Ann Pancake's prize-winning essay, 'Tough,' will appear in the 2004-05 issue.

Featured Writers

Steven Simoncic
Birthday Boy, 88
'It was the morning of my twenty-ninth birthday when Kelly began to stink. Or manbe I began to smell her differently. I don't know. Back then I couldn't pinpoint change. I was never prepared for… that first night of neavy city heat…'

Juliet Wittman
The Ballerina and the Butcher, 100
'Grushenka was dancing. What can you say about that? Grushenka stops the universe when she dances. The audience was still, all two thousand of them, not a cough or rustle to be heard… unwilling to disturb the air between them…'

Tom Larsen
Lids, 108
'Funny, he had to wait until he got out of th ejoint to do his puzzles in peace. He knows them by heart and each one triggers a different response. Childhood memories that refuse to focus. Love affairs that never happened….'

Florence Larson
Carry Me Home, 126
'Luke dreamed. In his dream the river was young, birthing its way out of the basin of the great glacial lake. The ancient rivers once feeding the lake were goine… leaving a shoreline, a fertile delta and the infant river. The buffalo were not yet. Neither the people… but the singing of the river… was the same….'

Carole Evans
Light: A Romance, 132
'I could have insisted she have just a bite, "to keep your strength up," I might have said. But Sylvia is a woman who honors the truth, and I have made a promise to tell it. After a few sips of tea she reached over and patted my leg, then closed her eyes. I removed the tray and eased her back under the covers. I kissed her forehead, and picked up the small brass bell on the nightstand. "Ring if you need anything," I said…'

Kelly Shire
A Patch of Weeds, 138
'Over the metal railing in the parking lot below, something flashed and caught her eye. She turned to look and stopped cold, rapt at the vision of a girl twirling around in the dark…'

Flora Bray
Wednesday's Child 150
'I stood up and moved close enough behind the teacher so that I was able to grab hold of the switches when she brought them back over her head. She stopped in her tracks.
I said, Miss Rose, I think you've whipped her enough….'

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