Winter 2008

Editorial by Julia LaSalle and Stefani Nellen

The Non by Phillip Kohtz

The color struck me first. Everything was brighter and blue, bluer than the sky looks after you've been inside for more than a day. I gasped, my mind racing to call up programs that weren't there, programs that would analyze this weird vision and tell me what was wrong. But there was nothing…

The Centrifuge by Elizabeth Eslami

Van Aubergine, the butcher, had a daughter who was insane. She stood at the foot of the glacier which bore down upon the village, held her arms in the air until they became a translucent blue, and beckoned it to migrate, killing everything in its path…

Exercise 3 by Matthews F. Stancato

Maybe we’ll drive into town tomorrow anyway, over to TJ’s for a burger—for a nice lunch together—but we’ll get t-boned at a stoplight. Evvie will be fine, of course, but the doctor will tell us he’s sorry, so sorry, but she lost the baby. She’ll cry, and I’ll cry, and for a while things will be tense, but then they’ll smooth out again. I can’t tell whether it’s a horrible fantasy or not…

The Bee Factory by Dawn Corrigan

Now he leads me into a booth from which we can look down into one of the giant hives. The room is cavernous; its activity tiny and swarming. Several humans in protective clothing move about on the floor below. "What are they doing?" I ask.…"

De Bloemist by Kirsten Gay

No one in this county or further will ever forget the heinous crime that Prity Vanderhess did commit in administering such a quantity of rat poison to her husband that he did succumb to death sometime after eating the fatal porridge…

Bête Noir by Sunny Woan

Dannie walked out feeling miserable. She really wanted Martha to be beautiful. And mean. She wanted Martha Bristow to be a pretty but snotty white woman who would talk at Dannie with condescending disregard…

Old Movie Stars by Laura Tanenbaum

Watch how a man enters a room: kicks off the shoes, keys on the counter-top, coat on the back of a chair. Listen for the sound of a throat clearing. Wait for the sound of his words…

Automatic Transmissions by Warren Buckles

There was a concrete floor under my feet, a metal roof over my head and five acres of junk outside the door. Heaven couldn’t have been better and I felt like crying…

Story excerpts © 2007-08 individual authors

Web design and editorial © 2007-08 Steel City Review

Photos (left to right, top to bottom) © Luciano Tirabassi (Argentina), Lynne Lancaster (UK), Natalie Killian (UK),
Robert Aichinger (Austria), Bruno Sersocima (Brazil), John Allen (USA),
Mark Altamero (USA), Lars Brinkman (Netherlands), John Nyberg (Denmark)