Lilies and Cannonballs Review – Spring/Summer 2004

Lilies & Cannonballs Review “seeks to create a space for the synthesis of contrary elements: aesthetically driven and socially conscious literature and art; traditional and experimental forms; crazy-man conservative and bleeding liberal views.”

Lilies & Cannonballs Review “seeks to create a space for the synthesis of contrary elements: aesthetically driven and socially conscious literature and art; traditional and experimental forms; crazy-man conservative and bleeding liberal views.” This beautifully designed inaugural issue, thin and sleek, features three diverse short stories, a short three-act play, and a wealth of poems. Nathan Leslie’s very brief story “The Dusting” deals with a young fly-duster faced with a moral dilemma when he agrees to the request of a good-natured client and friend to covertly drop insecticide on a neighbor’s organic farm. The story concludes with the wonderful “ahh”-inducing quality of the most thought-provoking poem. And speaking of poems, the selections featured here run the gamut from impressionistic pulsations to minute narratives both lyrical and blunt. Sample the capitalistic frustration that is T.K. Murray’s poem “Barbed Wire Bitch”: “Ms. Marianne Westbridge, / director of personnel, takes the app, smiles sweetly, / says, ‘Thank you. We’ll call,’ / and shows me to the door.” Or the playful lines from Inigo Gracia Ureta’s poem “Belongings,” translated from Spanish by Daniel Connor: “I recently elected myself emperor of my bed, and my love I / elected the empress. There, in my empire, she has the right to / kick, and we dream supine, and I rule to her left.” [Lilies & Cannonballs Review, http://www.liliesandcannonballs.com/pages/1/index.htm] – MC