Meet Oscar Wao: an extremely overweight Dominican ghetto nerd with a penchant for fantasy and a jones for the ladies. Born for failure, thanks to the fuku, or family curse, Oscar struggles through life in New Jersey as a social oddity. Expected to be a ladies’ man as a birthright, Oscar is a disgrace to his machismo-dominated culture. To cope, he retreats into comic books, Twilight Zone episodes and thousands of pages of his own writings. When enchanted by the beauty of a woman, he comes on strong, in the most aggressively nerdy way possible – like an elephant at a tea party. Oscar’s methods of fitting in – taking up jogging to lose weight and secluding himself to nights of wild writing in an attempt to become the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkein – make him the laughing stock and, therefore, subject to even more ridicule. But a trip back to the island reconnects him with his roots and the family fuku, but also spurs the changes he has craved his entire life.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is as much an American story as it is a Dominican one, as much fantastical as it is real. It’s the inner pages – the generational tale of Oscar’s mother and grandmother – that let the reader in on the family history, the curse and all the misfortunes that Oscar haplessly was born into. Although we know from the title of Oscar’s eventual demise, it doesn’t make it any easier that he finds love and finally loses his virginity before falling victim to the fuku.

Junot Diaz’s brilliance comes from his lush, but pounding use of language – Spanglish basted in Dominican colloquialism. His heavy-handed prose carves away at the pains of life and history, a machete carving up pieces for all to examine and judge as he or she wishes. The story is revealed and over in an all-too-brief 335 pages. Fresh, energetic and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, Junot Diaz’s New York Times bestselling brief wondrous life of Oscar wows!

The Brief Wondrous Life of OscarWows!
A review of New York Times bestseller The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz.
http://www.associatedcontent.comarticle/1690528/the_brief_wondrous_life_of_oscarwows.html

Grateful to the artists of the world,

Tamryn Spruill

As I lay me down to sleep

Perfumed

With a voice that burns off like smoke

In the dark, under grey-blue sheets

I look at the outline,

How your face cuts the air

I pray the Lord my soul to keep

All I see is the pink, fleshy insides of your eyes

And the memories projecting from therein

The corners from where every tear was torn

Veins pressed against the white, like hollow/hallowed reeds

Sick and tired from this modern discontent

And if I should die before I wake

Retract into youth

As I fall asleep

Originality/A purity escaping, gasps and grasps

Sometimes I feel carved out

Like a silhouette, skin over air

I pray the Lord my soul to take

An artist from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Jesi Bender graduated with a B.A. in English and Fine Arts from Cornell University in 2007. Her first book, entitled Oppressed by the Notion of Beauty, will be released by December 2009.

Contact: Jesi Bender * Email: jesibender@gmail.com.

Click here for audio version!

Little Nobodies wing past

In the wee hours of morn

On way from Bardo to

Rebirth. Awaiting a host to

Implant life, orgasms galore.

With ova and seed, they’ll mate –

Gestate, and then be born.

But no being lolls here, for

My glands are immoderately worn –

Unused, yet terribly shorn.

Contact: Tamryn Spruill * Website: www.wordnerdeditorial.com

Email: info@wordnerdeditorial.com

These photographs tell a story of discovery of self and innocence of youth. Eighteen months old, Noble's curiosity leads him into a world of exploration. In these photos, I combine the element of simplicity with the raw curiosity of a child.

Story of a Little Boy 1Story of a Little Boy 2Story of a Little Boy 3Contact: Stacey Lee * Email: sgirl777@hotmail.com

I am

missing you a bit,

More than I thought,

and more than I should.

But your spirit hovers over me.

Impish.

You must stop playing with my halo.

I should stop letting you.

Shoo, gone now.

You know me well.

It was the melanin, I’m afraid

It was watery,

It leaked all over you.

No mixing, no adulterating.

Grain alcohol blackness

saturated even the tangled,

sovereign curls

you idly twisted in daydreams

It simmered on your cheeks,

a veiled emotion.

It seeped onto your breasts,

where it burst at their conclusions.

It dove into your lips, where...

Those lips.

Your lips were grey.

They were like black after pink lost out.

They were softly corrugated and nice.

Your tongue was neon

against night’s background

It was easy to see between teeth.

You were better for shadow

like poems for solitude

The bad lighting to finish good novels to,

There were secrets in your stare

that made it worth the strain to see you

I could you make you out

in basements with no light.

I could feel for the warmth

that had blown out the bulbs,

and follow the heat of an urge

that could rip out a pull string

Or you would usher me down,

slowly

compelling exploration

until I could not stay

the night.

Cedric Tillman received a BA in English from UNC Charlotte and an MFA in Creative Writing from American University. He lives in Charlotte.

Contact: Cedric Tillman * Email: juggsmurf@yahoo.com

Stuck painfully to my side a film projects
Askeleton dancingtomy defectedbridal fantasy. Stairwells bring down
A polite remark,tense with trembles tempting the satin,
Expecting the least from what is to become.
Theseguests- molding together a somber prediction-
Place moist palms onto a book that defines
A muttering God? This verbal disturbance shreds blank, longing notes that
Confess murder and marvel. Red velvet contradicts the canvass
Andstaresdownan emptyditch. Graves honoring
My selected victims of force that tieglee down.
Complaints from blisters winning authoritystrive tocaress
A patient registered with alert in police mind states.
Domestic disturbance fails toawaken the obvious.
Red hair pulled from the scalp of a slouched, bitter
Angel. Starving sandlesson a beachamidst demons of
Imagery forests.

Brian Anthony Hardie, a native of Portland, Oregon, has been published in numerous small press journals and e-zines, including The Pebble Lake Review (Houston, TX), Conceit Magazine (San Fransisco), Hudson View (NYC/South Africa), Ditchpoetry.com (Canada) and SALiT Magazine (International), among others. He will appear as a guest speaker and writer at Mount Hood Community College this spring.

Contact: Brian Hardie * Email: rose_angeles@hotmail.com

Website: http://www.myspace.com/farestandthefieldsoffrance

New Email

Contact: Mike Lindwasser * Website: http://lindwasserphoto.dphoto.com

Patriarchal parsimony had its way again,

Little divination doll descends into a crevasse.

Her wood ripened from eons of basement storage,

Habiliments soiled from stagnation.

The varnish of her face cracks and furrows,

Stop-motion anime where salty secretions flow.

Infinity beckons from the depths of verisimilitude –

An invitation to His Perdurable Party.

Contact: Tamryn Spruill * Email: info@wordnerdeditorial.com

Website: www.wordnerdeditorial.com

To break it in, to love something enough

He is formed in the shape of number 9

Ripped from the white, beating [w]h0le

A blessing, this wound seems

Coagulated grape jelly encrusted

To the disconnected lid

The cover of innumerable insides

This deep red, myriad

Bubbled dissonant paradise

Burns like an omnipresent hell

When you amputate part

Still feel where it should be

The happy violence of love

When she saw him saw

To cleave can both stick and split

Our bodies are the same

Evil and Good coalescing

To make it whole again.

An artist from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Jesi Bender graduated with a B.A. in English and Fine Arts from Cornell University in 2007. Her first book, entitled Oppressed by the Notion of Beauty, will be released by December 2009.

Contact: Jesi Bender * Email: jesibender@gmail.com.