Ragazine.cc – July/August 2012

Ragazine.cc is chock-full of pieces to feast your eyes on: art, photography, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, interviews, reviews, and columns. There are two great poems by Nicole Santalucia. The first, “Emptying Out the House,” drew me in with the first three lines: “The only thing we found under her bed / was a note taped to the bed frame / that said who should inherit the mattress.” And her poem “What Stands Behind Me Now” has wonderfully captivating images:

Ragazine.cc is chock-full of pieces to feast your eyes on: art, photography, poetry, fiction, nonfiction, interviews, reviews, and columns. There are two great poems by Nicole Santalucia. The first, “Emptying Out the House,” drew me in with the first three lines: “The only thing we found under her bed / was a note taped to the bed frame / that said who should inherit the mattress.” And her poem “What Stands Behind Me Now” has wonderfully captivating images:

his hairy nose was frightening
it was like a monster crawling out of his head.
The black hairs like a thousand spider legs
took over his face

For a more lighthearted section, Scott Galanty Miller contributes a collection of his tweets from Twitter that are “aimed at whoever is still listening.” A couple of his tweets are “After sex, I said ‘I love you’—and she immediately ran off. Did I say it too soon? (Or was it because she was a prostitute?)” and “People accuse auto mechanics of being crooks. But my guy only charges me 15 bucks for my weekly oil change.”

Paul Sohar’s creative nonfiction piece “Worm Dialog” is entertaining in that he is stuck on a long airplane ride as the person next to him will not stop talking about how global warming is not from car exhaust but instead from everyone’s “crap”:

One day soon this whole world will be all crap, the earth, the oceans, everything. And worms. You know a worm dumps a hundred times its size, that’s how much crap it makes every day. Because worms eat crap. And they will be the only ones to survive. Worms will inherit the earth. Too bad they cannot drive though. We’ll all be nothing but crap. But the worms will be happy. Eating crap.

There is also poetry from Marissa Schwalm, Chelsie Malyszek, and Alfred Corn; fiction from Hermine Pinson and Rosebud Ben-Oni; and a collection of art, interviews, and reviews. Ragazine.cc artfully succeeds in its goal to “promote an eclectic selection of subject matter”; this issue certainly covers a wide range of writing and art.
[ragazine.cc/]