Illuminate

I'm very behind in my literary journal-reading and will probably never catch up. Just as my pile of books keeps growing so does my pile of journals.

I just finished a Fall 2004 issue of Hunger Mountain, a beautiful, glossy-covered journal with a lot of excellent poetry, fiction, and essays within.
One of my favorite fiction pieces in this one was Mark Turcotte's "That Sunday Under the Table," a raw, evocative story of a boy's experience with an out-of-control father. The ending of the piece was incredibly perfect--as if the whole story had been honed to lead up to just that moment. Another favorite was Anh Chi Pham's "Mandala," a story of the burning of a monk told from five viewpoints: East, West, South, North, and Center. Each of the Directions were different witnesses to the event, and Center was the monk just before, during and after the burning. This design added to the story's power. I also appreciated Sheila M. Schwartz's "Poor Cousins," so much I ordered her story collection. "Poor Cousins" follows an American woman to Peru on a quest for magic to rid her body of cancer.