Unauthorized Biography of Christopher Sholes, by Betsy Wheeler

The inventor of the typewriter was not by trade an inventor.

A mewing pack of kittens born in his family’s barn. Also a duck, but in the pond. A baby in the room painted blue. In his head, a small idea about salmon.

Near to there, a series of explosions; chrysanthemums blooming low in clear skies over Baltimore.

The memory of February was to him fourteen snowballs stored in the icebox.

He could have been 18 or 19, a dead-ringer for Horace.

He went to bed early, thinking of “g” sitting next to “h” or of the closeness that “buttes” holds to “butter”.

School and work are sisters, he thought.

He’d wanted out of the family.

As a printer, he was mindful but redundant.

Supper at the library was only allowed in summertime.

Librarian Dan is a “shussher from shusshville,” he pouted.

Migration, though not usually used to describe human travel, appealed to him as a method.

A short report on Wisconsin mining history revealed to him for the first time the food named “pasty” wrapped handily in napkins, then placed in squeaking lunchpails.

His personality was often borderline Collie.

First came the faint rustling of horsemen from under the bedclothes. They probably were hollering “writing machinery!” but what he heard was “riding to Tuilleries!” and this would set him back in years.

His way of spinning pencils between his thin fingers should have been patented.

That was a very serious idea.

The inflatable jackets were issued to all the riders on the ferry, but he was in the loo.

It was June 23, 1868, and he was very far from home.

Brain Silos, by Charles Harper Webb

“If weirdness is beauty, and beauty, truth, weirdness is true.”
–Marginalia

Does each silo plunked down along this highway
hold the living brains of geniuses and movie
stars contemplating gravity, the spotlight,
perfect sentences, the trill of atoms in platinum-
bombshell hair? Or are they average brains,

shucked from the heads of plasterers and managers
of donut stores—cab-driver, shoe-salesman,
swimming-teacher brains, rejoicing not to be
pinches of slush, flakes of jerky, or lumps
of nothing, like the flesh they used to ride?

Are my spirits so high because my brain’s near
its own kind, thinking of dance lessons and peach
cobbler, fixing screen doors and de-fleaing cats—
average thoughts like those that floated
up from Candlelight Lane on August evenings,

bobwhites whistling, Mom frying chicken, Dad
just home from work, tackled by kids as he heads
for his Big Chair—thoughts of bluegill fishing
and hot grounders, swing-sets and cheerleader
tryouts—no red envelopes marked "Final Warning,"

no coke-addict daughters or catastrophic
mammograms—generous thoughts, well able
to embrace a field of wheat under a sky embossed
with clouds—happy thoughts which fill the air
that parts in front of us like herds of Jersey cows

clogging the road—thoughts that cushion me,
my wife, and our five-year-old, who heard brain
when I said grain, from the world’s jolts and jarrings
as I laugh, and yell "Good thinking!" at the silos
our Rent-a-Wreck blasts by?

Cover Art for Issue 4, by Julien Pacaud

Into Exile, by Allison Sommers

Annointed, by Jeffrey Michael Harp