ISSUE FOUR

SUMMER 2007

Interview with Pen Center Award Winner Diana Abu-Jaber
Robin Hirsch's story of the restaurateur who falls in love
with his dishwasher
Evan Morgan Williams' haunting tale of a Japanese girl who will not eat
Janet Burroway compares Apples and Oranges
Menupoems from Ricardo Pau-Llosa
Recipepoems from Nora Robertson
Yu-Han Chao's philosophical pies
Plus: the art of eating alone; a journey through time with an onion; the diner of forgotten foods; an organic farmer's battle with wasps, birds, and deer; what your waiter is really thinking; a special section on BANANAS; and much more. . .
32 writers & poets. . .

Issue Four
excerpts . . .

From Steam by Evan Morgan Williams . . .

megan knows these foods. they are the sorts of foods she eats when her grandparents visit. last year, tashiko came too. tashiko in america! tashiko came to golden sunny california, and she stayed with megan and katie in san francisco at their host family's house. there was this one night, tashiko and megan are getting dressed for an evening out, putting on blue eye-shadow and smoking clove cigarettes by the open window, and tashiko says she wants american foods: cheeseburger, pizza, food court at a mall. megan thinks she would prefer a traditional japanese place, but tashiko says that is a fairy tale. she says "i want a hamburger and american milkshake and supersize fries. extra ketchup."

From Fine Dining by Keith (K.P.) Lyles . . .

Sure, anyone can cook at home and save a penny, but who will do the shopping, the chopping, the boiling, frying, pouring, plating, clearing, cleaning, washing, scrubbing, drying, reshelving, saran wrapping (in some cases inviting, socializing, bartending, coat taking, taxi ordering)? The same person who a partner would later expect to be exceedingly energized for life-affirming, mind-cleansing, screaming, shuddering sex?

From Banana Aubade by Kerry Trautman . . .

I awoke, having slept on the couch, my cheek
no doubt pocked with pillow texture.
And before I registered even the time
as judged by light's blue between drape seams,
and before my tongue had time to crave
coffee's acids on its buds,
I smelled the bananas-

From The Art of Eating Alone by Scott Seward Smith . . .

. . . I sat there waiting for my food and feeling quite proper in my loneliness, quite relaxed. I felt the propriety of my loneliness. It's all in the attitude: don't keep recrossing your ankles, don't bite your cuticles, don't twist your glass so much, but don't look catatonic either. Just look like you know something everyone else doesn't.