THEMA – Summer 2005

If you don’t already know, Thema is a journal whose every issue is based on a different premise, upon which the poetry, fiction, and photography reflect. This issue’s theme is “Hey, Watch This!” If you don’t already know, Thema is a journal whose every issue is based on a different premise, upon which the poetry, fiction, and photography reflect. This issue’s theme is “Hey, Watch This!” From a neglected boy looking for attention from atop a slide in Lynn Stearns’ “Anybody,” to a match-making ghost in “Who Dares, Wins,” by Peggy Tabor Millin, to Jennifer R. Hubbards’s story of teenage bravado and emotional turmoil in “The Train Tracks,” the theme evokes a variety of different responses. Some tend toward a subtler exploration of the premise, as in James Penha’s poem, “Venetian Love Song,” in which a young man steers his gondola as though it were an art form. For the most part, Thema’s works are more breezy than provocative (though Serena Alibhai’s excellent “New World Water,” in which an ambitious young Indian man is made aware of his country’s sufferings, is an exception.) All of the stories here are enjoyable to read, but often seem just one draft away from their full potential. Even so, as I finished the issue’s final piece, Carol V. Paul’s “Birth,” in which the speaker witnesses a doe giving birth to a seemingly stillborn fawn, I was left awed by the beauty of nature’s wonder and of tragedy averted. [http://themaliterarysociety.com/]