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Fall 2007

John Amen
Kathy Babcock
Kate Benedict
Jeff Calhoun
Howard Good
Kenneth Gurney
Sarah Jordan
Lynn Levin
Alex Grant
Tim Mayo
PJ Nights
Tim Peeler
Cati Porter
Doug Ramspeck
John Repp
Bill Roberts
RL Swihart
Spencer Troxell
Kelley White
Teresa White

Flash Fiction

Mike Estabrook
David Jordan
Kelly Mandryk-Layne
Willie Smith

Featured Artist

Matthew Rounsville

Photography
Donna Dixon

Back by popular demand:See most pages of poetry for her photos,as well as her artist's page from the summer issue.

"Trim" Mannequin Envy's first print anthology

Bill Roberts

Fall 2007

HEADS WILL ROLL

They've erected a new-fangled guillotine
where I work, and mine will be
the first head on the pristine block.

It's said to be user-friendly, unlike
my perverse computer - never-mastered,
never-understood, so terribly un-friendly.

Which is why I've been extricated
from my PC (Petulant Computer)
to head up the queue at the G.

Finally, I'll be able to use my head,
I'm told by my boss who,
like my computer, is not a lot of fun.

He'll drop the scissor-sharp blade himself -
it's computerized, of course -
then send everyone an e-mail

when it's done and my head rolls.
'Tis the price one pays these days
for not being an online yes-person.

WEDNESDAY MATINEE

You might have thought it was
Wednesday matinee at the movie
house the line of old coots
was so long to view the guy
up front in the half-open casket.

We queued up and poked along
trying to remember who he was,
which building he'd worked in,
exactly what it was he'd done,
and if we knew his relatives.

Advancing slowly, we bantered
about our own goings-on, lied
about how well we were feeling,
spoke about the little wife and
how she kept us busy at home.

We were edgy, looking forward
to getting through another long
memorial service for a former
fellow worker, getting downstairs
to the punch bowl and cookies.

We studied one another seriously,
looking for chinks in the armor,
obvious deterioration since the
last such gathering, and wondered --
will he be the next attraction or me.

Bill Roberts is a retired nuclear weapons expert who dreams of the day all weapons of mass destruction (WMD) will be negotiated out of existence. Yes, a dreamer. His poetry has appeared in well over a hundred small-press magazines in the past twelve years, including Cricket Magazine, Main Street Rag, Pegasus, Plato's Tavern, and Rattle, to name a few. He lives with one highly energized wife and two hopelessly spoiled dogs near Denver, having fled from NYC and his hometown, Washington, D.C., long ago. (Edit as necessary, with my blessings.)

This year he has had poems accepted by the following magazines: Bellowing Ark, Chantarelle's Notebook, Clark Street Review, Long Story Short, Mobius, rattlesnake review, Thick With Conviction, and Waterways.