reviewed by Patrick Meighan
Five years after co-founding the literary journal "Flash!Point," Frances LeMoine is flying solo.
Her former co-publisher (still listed as such in the credits) Lana Ayers split off for a new undertaking, co-editing the poetry journal "Concrete Wolf" with Brent Allard, who, like Lana, is a talented poet.
LeMoine is the first to admit that Ayers's departure offered some challenges for "Flash!Point." Ayers had a better business sense, says LeMoine, who had to scramble to get up to speed on aspects of publishing formerly handled by her partner.
The end result, though, is a happy case of addition through division: Southern New Hampshire has gained a fine poetry journal in "Concrete Wolf" without sacrificing the quality that has enabled "Flash!Point" to attract talented contributors from throughout the nation.
Though it contains some pretty good poetry, the strength of the latest issue of "Flash!Point" lies in its short stories. The issue contains winners from the journal's fiction contest and includes 15 very short
stories, mainly of the slice-of-modern-life variety.
In the winning entry, "Modification," author Peggy Gray of Michigan writes of a woman who frets over perfection in knitting a sweater for a lover who, unbeknownst to her, won't be coming home. The second prize story, "Inspiration," by Michael Lloyd Gray (Peggy's husband?) begins with the great sentence, "Sometimes inspiration is an unwelcome bird: not a hawk, nor an eagle, but a crow, and you never know when it will crap on you." The story is about two college friends whom life - physically
and figuratively - will kick in the teeth.
Other stories concern a woman who finds "resolve dripping from her body" as she plots to leave an abusive lover; a conversation about faulty burglar alarms and dead cats in winter during a wrong-number telephone call; and the approach of a hurricane that mirrors the storm in a marriage when a man attempts to manipulate his wife's fear for his own gratification.
LeMoine, a resident of Merrimack, is a writer of both fiction and poetry who is currently at work on her third collection of poems and second collection of short stories. Likewise, "Flash!Point" includes both poetry and fiction, as well as several prose essays.
One of the best poems in Issue No. 5 is "Mi Gente" by Los Angeles writer R.D. Armstrong, who describes wanting to be with a Latina lover on her turf:
And when I hear
you say it
"I'm down with mi gente"
I think of bare shoulders
bare feet, the flats
a red pony and jet black hair.
Another fine poem is "First Sex" by Robin Pelzman of Brookline, Mass., who describes love-making that begins in an uncomfortable "rush" of mechanics but ends with the speaker luxuriating in the experience:
...I kept my flowered shirt on
all afternoon, chiaroscuro of bees among blossoms.
New to "Flash!Point" with this issue are illustrations by Ron Lavallee of Nashua. His drawings add another dimension to the stories, particularly in echoing the darker moods of many.
Another issue of "Flash!Point" is in the works for this winter. With LeMoine settling into the role of sole publisher, fans and contributors shouldn't worry about the future of a journal that has been steadily gaining a national reputation.
Note: In the spirit of full disclosure, reviewer Patrick Meighan's poem, "Drunk's Beloved," was published in the Summer 2000 issue of "Flash!Point," and his poem "Too steep a price" is due out in the Winter 2002 issue.