Rough Copy

The online magazine for creative writing, short stories and artistic expression.

Category: Vol2, Issue2 - Fall/Winter 2009

• Editor’s Note

  Janet Freeman | 11.24.09 | Editor's Notes, Vol2, Issue2 - Fall/Winter 2009 | Comments

  It’s that time again, and I couldn’t be more excited to announce our latest issue. In it, Royce Clay Slape recounts a harrowing episode from his memoir Are You My Son? and Sandy Tanaka has penned a spellbinding story that’ll have you racing end to start to find out what happens (you’ll see what I […]

• The Countdown as Seen from 2000 Feet Above

  Sandy Tanaka | 11.24.09 | Fiction, Vol2, Issue2 - Fall/Winter 2009 | 1 Comment

  jyu (10)
  You ask me to recount my death.  Unimportant at this juncture, do you not think?  Yes, well it was, after all, 1945, over fifty years ago. 
  It is “for the record”?  How can records and statistics matter here.  How can there be clerical mistakes in the most natural act of crossing over.  Oh, not a […]

• An Interview with Deema Bayrakdar

  Janet Freeman | 11.24.09 | Interviews, Vol2, Issue2 - Fall/Winter 2009 | 1 Comment

  Deema Bayrakdar is a mixed media artist and textile/surface designer living in Brooklyn. Her work finds inspiration in both urban and natural landscapes, and Bayrakdar’s keen interest in energy and movement is reflected in her playful collages, prints and textile designs.
  JF: First, I’d like to say thanks, Deema, for agreeing to this interview! Your images […]

• Steilacoom

  Royce Clay Slape | 11.24.09 | Non-fiction, Vol2, Issue2 - Fall/Winter 2009 | 11 Comments

  An excerpt from Are You My Son?, a memoir.
  The year I got my hands on a book called “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask),” was the same year my mother was admitted to a mental hospital. In my case the book would have been much more aptly titled, […]

• sunny-side down

  Kristine Ong Muslim | 11.24.09 | Poetry, Vol2, Issue2 - Fall/Winter 2009 | Comments

  He thinks: it was thoughtful of her
  to say yes when nobody’s looking.
  Slumped across his plate
  is the squelched dreamy yellow
  of fake pearls and sunsets.
  The tines of his fork trespass,
  unbutton, catch the light.

• Dispersal

  Kristine Ong Muslim | 11.24.09 | Poetry, Vol2, Issue2 - Fall/Winter 2009 | Comments

  We believe that the floor will hold, will
  remain flat, so we can trample it all day.
  But every surface tries to shake us off.
  The white horses are ferrying the seasons.
  The wild roses are wilting away; in a year, we
  will learn to love the husks which they have left
  behind. Then we imagine forgiveness disappearing
  among the sun-scarred children […]

• The Power of Fiction

  Benjamin Chadwick | 11.24.09 | Fiction, Vol2, Issue2 - Fall/Winter 2009 | Comments

  Usually in my fiction writing classes there’s a student with a critical streak who pipes up early on in the semester and says, “What’s the point of fiction?”  And he or she will go into the whole litany we’ve heard ten or fifty thousand times before: most people read non-fiction only, movies and TV have […]

• Ten Commandments for the Happy Writer

  Nathan Bransford | 11.24.09 | Non-fiction, Vol2, Issue2 - Fall/Winter 2009 | Comments

  Writers aren’t generally known as the happiest lot. As a recent Guardian survey of some top writers shows, even the best ones don’t particularly enjoy it all that much. And in case you think this is a new development, an 1842 letter from Edgar Allen Poe to his publisher recently surfaced in which he was found apologizing for […]

Egg Beater
by Heather McQueen