Prose Ax – Spring 2004

Prose Ax’s zine-like appearance (saddle-stitching, black-and-white photocopied art works on the cover and throughout the issue, untrimmed pages) and authors with attitude who write pieces with titles like “Brain Spiders” are going to appeal to a zine audience more than your typical academic audience. And this little collection of poetry and short prose pieces has edge in spades, although occasional clichés creep in to zap a piece’s potential.

Prose Ax’s zine-like appearance (saddle-stitching, black-and-white photocopied art works on the cover and throughout the issue, untrimmed pages) and authors with attitude who write pieces with titles like “Brain Spiders” are going to appeal to a zine audience more than your typical academic audience. And this little collection of poetry and short prose pieces has edge in spades, although occasional clichés creep in to zap a piece’s potential. This is not to say that you will not find interesting and fresh writing in these 33 pages – the short story “House Ad” by Jeffrey Rubin, about a house-hunting couple looking at a house for sale, bursts with understated sadness, and the aforementioned “Brain Spiders” is an interestingly-told tale about a girl’s first experience with cancer. “Marriage Proposal,” a poem by Stacey Robertson, communicates despair about a broken relationship using unusual details – as the speaker receives her lukewarm proposal she notices with devastating detail that “Sow bugs were crawling under my feet.” [Prose Ax, P.O. Box 22643, Honolulu HI 96823-2643. E-mail: [email protected]. http://www.proseax.com] – JHG