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FRiGG – Fall 2010

Issue 30

Fall 2010

Quarterly

Henry F. Tonn

This lit mag is classier than its somewhat obscene name. The writing generally is clear and of high quality, the website is well laid out, and each story or poem is accompanied by engagingly colorful artwork. There is a certain in-your-face irreverence to many of the stories, but they are also entertaining as a whole. Frigg often presents two or three pieces of flash fiction by the same author – unusual in the universe of online literature today.

This lit mag is classier than its somewhat obscene name. The writing generally is clear and of high quality, the website is well laid out, and each story or poem is accompanied by engagingly colorful artwork. There is a certain in-your-face irreverence to many of the stories, but they are also entertaining as a whole. Frigg often presents two or three pieces of flash fiction by the same author – unusual in the universe of online literature today.

I enjoyed the three stories by Kevin Spaide: “Lawnmower,” “Oncology,” and “The Sweater.” “Oncology,” in particular is quite funny (Humor! Give me more humor!), and concerns a husband wandering aimlessly around a hospital while his wife visits her ex-boyfriend who has cancer of the knee. A strange man offers to give the husband a blow job in the bathroom, and later the husband arbitrarily follows a young girl around the maternity ward and into the elevator and then says, “Goodbye, other wife,” as he exits There is a nonchalant, almost vacuous quality to these stories, which are slice-of-life with little or no real beginning or ending, but that is their appeal.

Another entertaining story is “In Thirty Minutes or It’s Free,” by John Minichillo, about a pizza delivery boy who dies in an automobile accident while attempting to deliver a couple’s pizza, and the couple feel sort of responsible for his death because they ordered the pizza, so they attend his funeral. They even offer to be godparents to the baby of the pizza delivery boy’s cousin, because the deceased had been the godfather.

The poetry here is not humorous, but more often on the brutal, uncompromising side. Here is the ending of a poem by Lois Beebe Hayna entitled “To Be Continued,” about a veteran of war who must again confront the realities of a stressful family situation:

All he wants, really, is peace. No stress.
Just one ordinary day after another
so dull, so boring he’ll remember
why it was he signed up for war in the first place.

But my favorite poem was “Hex,” by the same author, which concludes:

When you come
I shall be frost and silk, shall wear
disbelief at the back of my eyes.

When you go
you will remember nothing, yet be haunted
on certain moon-hung midnights by
the blood-red scent of poppies on my hands.

If you wish an excursion that deviates pleasantly from the madding crowd, try this one.
[friggmagazine.com]

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