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Bathtub Gin – Spring/Summer 2007

Issue 20

Spring/Summer 2007

Biannual

Robert Duffer

Despite an impending hiatus, Editor Christopher Harter is optimistic that Issue 20 will not be the last batch of Bathtub Gin. The challenges of producing a lit journal be damned: Harter expects Gin to reach legal drinking age. The stapled, zine-sized journal features new and familiar artists contributing pieces on war, work and marginalization. Carmen Germain’s broken verse gets better with each read, specifically in the fight between a homeowner and a nest-building wasp in “Work Like This”: “Work like this makes / work. I aim the garden // hose, sorry that killing / comes to what’s / mine, what’s yours.”

Despite an impending hiatus, Editor Christopher Harter is optimistic that Issue 20 will not be the last batch of Bathtub Gin. The challenges of producing a lit journal be damned: Harter expects Gin to reach legal drinking age. The stapled, zine-sized journal features new and familiar artists contributing pieces on war, work and marginalization. Carmen Germain’s broken verse gets better with each read, specifically in the fight between a homeowner and a nest-building wasp in “Work Like This”: “Work like this makes / work. I aim the garden // hose, sorry that killing / comes to what’s / mine, what’s yours.” A Benitez pencil drawing inspired Blair Ewing’s recreation of the image in prose. It represents the best of Bathtub Gin, evoking a singular moment or scene that puts the reader there. Place is paramount in each of Tom Kryss’s shadowy prose poems, as well. Tom Maxedon’s short story “33 1/3” introduces a man who debates how to handle the two kids trespassing on the lawn of his dead father’s house. He feels old, starts to understand his father. Many of the contributors have more than one piece (both poetry and prose are relatively short – none of the handful of prose pieces nears the 3,000 word maximum). Amidst these are literary nuggets, quick shots of prose that deserve another turn, a moment to settle into the bloodstream, like “Invisible to the Naked Eye” by John Bennett. For that reason alone I wish a happy, expectant 21st birthday to Gin.
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