ISSUE 6.2: Asquint
Asquint – (def.) with the eye directed to one side, obliquely, or squintingly as if with distorted vision or as if to peer or glance furtively or slyly
“When a man speaks the truth in the spirit of truth, his eye is as clear as the heavens. When he has base ends, and speaks falsely, the eye is muddy, and sometimes asquint.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays
Herein
Fiction
Rootless Shells by Hank Morgan
Buttons by Meagan Lucas
The Brothers by Kevin C Stewart
Another Red Wheelbarrow by Kevin Grauke
Earmarked for Later by Jessica Evans
Later is One of Our Tags by Jessica Evans
Managing Secrets by Jessica Evans
Poor Boy by Steve Comstock
Fifty-Five by Charles Pearson
Down on the Farm by Jeremy Perry
Get to Work by Miranda Ramírez
Just Another Day by Miranda Ramírez
The Last Scrabble Game at Beaver Swamp by Ken Post
Never the Type by Glenn Deutsch
Here Comes the Night by Mark Westmoreland
The Fixer by Bobby Mathews
Litter by Emmi Conner
The Waltz by Sean Jacques
The Yellow Corvette by Jim Woessner
Rolling on the Bottom by Wilson Koewing
Like Wonders Much Reduced by Evan James Sheldon
Nonfiction
Tyler Childers and I Drive Out of West Virginia by Kirsten Reneau
In which I make note of all good wishes by John Meyers
Reviews
Working It Off in Labor County by Larry D. Thacker (reviewed by Adam Van Winkle)
Hobo Radio by Brian Beatty and Charlie Parr (reviewed by Adam Van Winkle)
Cover art: Gone (mixed media collage) by C. R. Resetarits
Contributors
C. R. Resetarits is a writer and collagist. Her art has appeared in dozens of little mags. https://crresetarits.com/collages/
Hank Morgan is a writer from Austin, Texas, and has previously been published in Sigma Tau Delta's The Rectangle, The Flash Fiction Press, and the Dead Mule School of Literature. He is currently living in Seattle, and hibernating when not drinking coffee.
Meagan Lucas is the author of the award-winning novel, Songbirds and Stray Dogs (Main Street Rag Press, 2019). Meagan's short work has been published in journals like The Santa Fe Writers’ Project, Still: The Journal, MonkeyBicycle, and others. She is Pushcart nominated, and won the 2017 Scythe Prize for Fiction. She lives in Western North Carolina where she teaches English and Creative Writing at Asheville Buncombe Technical Community College and is the editor of Reckon Review. You can connect with her on twitter @mgnlcs.
Kevin C Stewart’s “The Brothers” is one of a dozen linked stories and shorts, Tales from North Gates and Beyond, set in or connected to Baton Rouge, Louisiana (where Kevin C Stewart lived and taught from 1999-2006), after Hurricane Katrina. Others (of these stories) have appeared in The Southeast Review, Juked, Fiction Southeast, American Literary Review, and The Hamilton Stone Review. A native West Virginian, Stewart now lives in Montana, serves as Associate Professor of English at Carroll College and holds an MFA from The University of Arkansas. His collection of stories and a novella, The Way Things Always Happen Here, was published in 2007 by WVU Press’s literary imprint, Vandalia, and was a finalist that year for ForeWord Magazine’s book of the year (short-story collections) and the Weatherford Award for the best Southern Appalachian book of fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry. Stories from it appeared in, among others, Shenandoah, The Antietam Review, The Connecticut Review, Now and Then, and The Texas Review, which awarded “Margot” its 1999 novella prize. Since then, his stories have appeared in the anthology Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Fiction and Poetry from West Virginia (Vandalia, 2017) and, forthcoming, in Writers by the River: Reflections on 40+ Years of the Highland Summer Conference (MacFarland, 2021). In addition, The Common and Red River Review have recently published his poetry.
Kevin Grauke is the author of Shadows of Men (Queen's Ferry Press), which won the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. His work has appeared in The Southern Review, Quarterly West, Blue Mesa Review, and Cimarron Review. He teaches at La Salle University in Philadelphia.
Jessica Evans writes from Arlington, VA. She is the EIC for Twin Pies, poetry editor for Dress Blues, prose editor for Knight's Library, and serves as a mentor for Veteran's Writing Project. Work is forthcoming in LEON Literary Review, Emerge Literary Journal, and elsewhere. Connect with her on Twitter @jesssica__evans
Steve Comstock was born and raised in South Alabama. He served with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan and now works as a diesel mechanic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His work has previously been published in Hobart, Dinner Bell Magazine, and Parhelion Literary Magazine among others.
Charles Pearson is from Spearman, Texas. He enjoys reading, music, and film noir.
Jeremy Perry is an American writer whose books and stories span many genres. His stories have appeared in literary magazines such as Plumb Journal, Revolution John, and Hello America. Jeremy Perry lives and writes in southern Indiana. For all book and story news visit https://www.jeremyjperry.com/.
Miranda Ramírez is an activist/artist residing in Houston, Texas. You may find her publications in Ripples in Space, Glass Mountain, Shards, The Bayou Review, Coffin Bell, and Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century. She is a founder and contributing editor for Defunkt Magazine, an international publication that seeks to uplift marginalized voices. Her visual works have exhibited at Williams Tower Gallery, Tea+Art Gallery, and Insomnia Gallery. She is currently drafting her first novel. Instagram: @ramirez.miranda.n , Twitter: tellme_to_smile
Originally from the suburbs of New Jersey, Ken Post worked for the Forest Service in Alaska for 40 years, including many seasons on a million-acre island with more brown (grizzly) bears than there are people. He writes short stories during the long, dark winters. His fiction has previously appeared in Cirque, Red Fez and Poor Yorick.
Glenn Deutsch’s work has appeared in Post Road, The Literary Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Gargoyle Magazine, and Fiction Southeast, among others. He lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with his wife and son, two brother-and-sister rescue cats, and a guard dog from Kentucky who would hurl himself if he could at skateboarders and fire engines. Find Glenn on Twitter @GlennDeutsch and at glenndeutsch.com.
Mark Westmoreland is a Georgia native living in Oklahoma with his wife and two dogs. He’s a part time writer, full time Dawg fan, and likes sipping good bourbon. He’s the author of A Violent Gospel. Coming from Shotgun Honey Books later this year. You can find him hanging out on Twitter @ItsMarkYall.
Bobby Mathews is a writer and journalist based in Birmingham, Alabama. His checkered past includes stints as an investigator, PR flack, reporter, bartender, and other shady occupations that find their way into his short fiction. Mathews's novel, Magic City Blues, will be published in February 2022 from Close to the Bone.
Emmi Conner is a graduate of the University of North Carolina Wilmington with a BFA in creative writing. She writes fiction and research-based nonfiction. Emmi is from a small town in western North Carolina and now lives in Wilmington, where she works as a writer and librarian. Her work has been featured in Adelaide Literary Magazine and Atlantis: A Creative Magazine.
Sean Jacques is a fifth-generation native of the Missouri Ozarks. His wayward career includes bartender, bank teller, stone sculptor, public relations director, creative executive for the Weinstein Company film studio, and screenwriter in various development hell ventures in the movie business. Currently, he teaches English Literature in Los Angeles while writing new tales, his most recent work can be found at Across the Margin, Dead Fern Press, and 34 Orchard. You can find him on twitter @SeanJacques10.
Jim Woessner is a visual artist and writer living on the water in Sausalito, California. He has an MFA from Bennington College and has had poetry and prose published in numerous online and print magazines, including the Blue Collar Review, California Quarterly, and Close to the Bone. Additionally, two of his plays have been produced in community theatre.
Wilson Koewing is a writer from South Carolina. His work has recently appeared in New World Writing, Pembroke Magazine, Maudlin House, Trampset, JMWW and The Loch Raven Review.
Evan James Sheldon's work has appeared recently in the American Literary Review, the Cincinnati Review, and the Maine Review, among other journals. He is a Senior Editor for F(r)iction and the Editorial Director for Brink Literacy Project. You can find him online at www.evanjamessheldon.com.
Kirsten Reneau is a writer from West Virginia, now living in New Orleans. Her work can also be seen in Hobart, Trampset, The Threepenny Review, and others. She’s on Twitter: @ReneauGlow.
John Meyers' stories and poems have appeared in Spartan, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Louisville Review, Threadcount Magazine, Lunch Ticket, North Dakota Quarterly, and many other places. John was a 2018 Best Small Fictions nominee and is online at hammeredinmetal.com
Adam Van Winkle is the founder and editor-in-chief of Cowboy Jamboree Magazine and CJ Press. He is the author of the novels Abraham Anyhow and While They were in the Field, the novella Hardway Juice, and playwright of The Red Knife Plays and Two Eunices. A Pushcart nominee, his short fiction has appeared in BULL Fiction, Plumb Journal, the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, CHEAP POP, Steel Toe Review, and several other publications. @gritvanwinkle
Constance Beitzel is a PhD candidate in English Literature at Southern Illinois University. She recently published an article analyzing motherhood in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 in The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association.
“When a man speaks the truth in the spirit of truth, his eye is as clear as the heavens. When he has base ends, and speaks falsely, the eye is muddy, and sometimes asquint.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays
Herein
Fiction
Rootless Shells by Hank Morgan
Buttons by Meagan Lucas
The Brothers by Kevin C Stewart
Another Red Wheelbarrow by Kevin Grauke
Earmarked for Later by Jessica Evans
Later is One of Our Tags by Jessica Evans
Managing Secrets by Jessica Evans
Poor Boy by Steve Comstock
Fifty-Five by Charles Pearson
Down on the Farm by Jeremy Perry
Get to Work by Miranda Ramírez
Just Another Day by Miranda Ramírez
The Last Scrabble Game at Beaver Swamp by Ken Post
Never the Type by Glenn Deutsch
Here Comes the Night by Mark Westmoreland
The Fixer by Bobby Mathews
Litter by Emmi Conner
The Waltz by Sean Jacques
The Yellow Corvette by Jim Woessner
Rolling on the Bottom by Wilson Koewing
Like Wonders Much Reduced by Evan James Sheldon
Nonfiction
Tyler Childers and I Drive Out of West Virginia by Kirsten Reneau
In which I make note of all good wishes by John Meyers
Reviews
Working It Off in Labor County by Larry D. Thacker (reviewed by Adam Van Winkle)
Hobo Radio by Brian Beatty and Charlie Parr (reviewed by Adam Van Winkle)
Cover art: Gone (mixed media collage) by C. R. Resetarits
Contributors
C. R. Resetarits is a writer and collagist. Her art has appeared in dozens of little mags. https://crresetarits.com/collages/
Hank Morgan is a writer from Austin, Texas, and has previously been published in Sigma Tau Delta's The Rectangle, The Flash Fiction Press, and the Dead Mule School of Literature. He is currently living in Seattle, and hibernating when not drinking coffee.
Meagan Lucas is the author of the award-winning novel, Songbirds and Stray Dogs (Main Street Rag Press, 2019). Meagan's short work has been published in journals like The Santa Fe Writers’ Project, Still: The Journal, MonkeyBicycle, and others. She is Pushcart nominated, and won the 2017 Scythe Prize for Fiction. She lives in Western North Carolina where she teaches English and Creative Writing at Asheville Buncombe Technical Community College and is the editor of Reckon Review. You can connect with her on twitter @mgnlcs.
Kevin C Stewart’s “The Brothers” is one of a dozen linked stories and shorts, Tales from North Gates and Beyond, set in or connected to Baton Rouge, Louisiana (where Kevin C Stewart lived and taught from 1999-2006), after Hurricane Katrina. Others (of these stories) have appeared in The Southeast Review, Juked, Fiction Southeast, American Literary Review, and The Hamilton Stone Review. A native West Virginian, Stewart now lives in Montana, serves as Associate Professor of English at Carroll College and holds an MFA from The University of Arkansas. His collection of stories and a novella, The Way Things Always Happen Here, was published in 2007 by WVU Press’s literary imprint, Vandalia, and was a finalist that year for ForeWord Magazine’s book of the year (short-story collections) and the Weatherford Award for the best Southern Appalachian book of fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry. Stories from it appeared in, among others, Shenandoah, The Antietam Review, The Connecticut Review, Now and Then, and The Texas Review, which awarded “Margot” its 1999 novella prize. Since then, his stories have appeared in the anthology Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Fiction and Poetry from West Virginia (Vandalia, 2017) and, forthcoming, in Writers by the River: Reflections on 40+ Years of the Highland Summer Conference (MacFarland, 2021). In addition, The Common and Red River Review have recently published his poetry.
Kevin Grauke is the author of Shadows of Men (Queen's Ferry Press), which won the Steven Turner Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. His work has appeared in The Southern Review, Quarterly West, Blue Mesa Review, and Cimarron Review. He teaches at La Salle University in Philadelphia.
Jessica Evans writes from Arlington, VA. She is the EIC for Twin Pies, poetry editor for Dress Blues, prose editor for Knight's Library, and serves as a mentor for Veteran's Writing Project. Work is forthcoming in LEON Literary Review, Emerge Literary Journal, and elsewhere. Connect with her on Twitter @jesssica__evans
Steve Comstock was born and raised in South Alabama. He served with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan and now works as a diesel mechanic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His work has previously been published in Hobart, Dinner Bell Magazine, and Parhelion Literary Magazine among others.
Charles Pearson is from Spearman, Texas. He enjoys reading, music, and film noir.
Jeremy Perry is an American writer whose books and stories span many genres. His stories have appeared in literary magazines such as Plumb Journal, Revolution John, and Hello America. Jeremy Perry lives and writes in southern Indiana. For all book and story news visit https://www.jeremyjperry.com/.
Miranda Ramírez is an activist/artist residing in Houston, Texas. You may find her publications in Ripples in Space, Glass Mountain, Shards, The Bayou Review, Coffin Bell, and Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century. She is a founder and contributing editor for Defunkt Magazine, an international publication that seeks to uplift marginalized voices. Her visual works have exhibited at Williams Tower Gallery, Tea+Art Gallery, and Insomnia Gallery. She is currently drafting her first novel. Instagram: @ramirez.miranda.n , Twitter: tellme_to_smile
Originally from the suburbs of New Jersey, Ken Post worked for the Forest Service in Alaska for 40 years, including many seasons on a million-acre island with more brown (grizzly) bears than there are people. He writes short stories during the long, dark winters. His fiction has previously appeared in Cirque, Red Fez and Poor Yorick.
Glenn Deutsch’s work has appeared in Post Road, The Literary Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Gargoyle Magazine, and Fiction Southeast, among others. He lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with his wife and son, two brother-and-sister rescue cats, and a guard dog from Kentucky who would hurl himself if he could at skateboarders and fire engines. Find Glenn on Twitter @GlennDeutsch and at glenndeutsch.com.
Mark Westmoreland is a Georgia native living in Oklahoma with his wife and two dogs. He’s a part time writer, full time Dawg fan, and likes sipping good bourbon. He’s the author of A Violent Gospel. Coming from Shotgun Honey Books later this year. You can find him hanging out on Twitter @ItsMarkYall.
Bobby Mathews is a writer and journalist based in Birmingham, Alabama. His checkered past includes stints as an investigator, PR flack, reporter, bartender, and other shady occupations that find their way into his short fiction. Mathews's novel, Magic City Blues, will be published in February 2022 from Close to the Bone.
Emmi Conner is a graduate of the University of North Carolina Wilmington with a BFA in creative writing. She writes fiction and research-based nonfiction. Emmi is from a small town in western North Carolina and now lives in Wilmington, where she works as a writer and librarian. Her work has been featured in Adelaide Literary Magazine and Atlantis: A Creative Magazine.
Sean Jacques is a fifth-generation native of the Missouri Ozarks. His wayward career includes bartender, bank teller, stone sculptor, public relations director, creative executive for the Weinstein Company film studio, and screenwriter in various development hell ventures in the movie business. Currently, he teaches English Literature in Los Angeles while writing new tales, his most recent work can be found at Across the Margin, Dead Fern Press, and 34 Orchard. You can find him on twitter @SeanJacques10.
Jim Woessner is a visual artist and writer living on the water in Sausalito, California. He has an MFA from Bennington College and has had poetry and prose published in numerous online and print magazines, including the Blue Collar Review, California Quarterly, and Close to the Bone. Additionally, two of his plays have been produced in community theatre.
Wilson Koewing is a writer from South Carolina. His work has recently appeared in New World Writing, Pembroke Magazine, Maudlin House, Trampset, JMWW and The Loch Raven Review.
Evan James Sheldon's work has appeared recently in the American Literary Review, the Cincinnati Review, and the Maine Review, among other journals. He is a Senior Editor for F(r)iction and the Editorial Director for Brink Literacy Project. You can find him online at www.evanjamessheldon.com.
Kirsten Reneau is a writer from West Virginia, now living in New Orleans. Her work can also be seen in Hobart, Trampset, The Threepenny Review, and others. She’s on Twitter: @ReneauGlow.
John Meyers' stories and poems have appeared in Spartan, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Louisville Review, Threadcount Magazine, Lunch Ticket, North Dakota Quarterly, and many other places. John was a 2018 Best Small Fictions nominee and is online at hammeredinmetal.com
Adam Van Winkle is the founder and editor-in-chief of Cowboy Jamboree Magazine and CJ Press. He is the author of the novels Abraham Anyhow and While They were in the Field, the novella Hardway Juice, and playwright of The Red Knife Plays and Two Eunices. A Pushcart nominee, his short fiction has appeared in BULL Fiction, Plumb Journal, the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, CHEAP POP, Steel Toe Review, and several other publications. @gritvanwinkle
Constance Beitzel is a PhD candidate in English Literature at Southern Illinois University. She recently published an article analyzing motherhood in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 in The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association.