Challenge 853

Into the Mix

In Bill Kowaleski’s Disruption, Jason Wise contemplates “wooing” Maria Schoenbrun or Miles Martin. Can he do both?
In Jeffrey Greene’s A Can of Beans:
1. Is the economic and social desolation plausible under the circumstances?
2. What reassurance does Francis Mooney offer the little girl? Is she wrong to respond to it?
3. Why is the plague called the “White Sickness”?
4. Aside from events such as the Hundred Years War, what was the major threat to health in 14th-century Europe?
In Charles C. Cole’s Down-Home Hunting, how does the story illustrate a combination of what the narrator considers good and bad? How might the encounter between the farmer and hunter have gone wrong?
In Jackson Arthur’s Remember the Horses:
1. In what ways are human characters made to resemble horses and vice-versa?
2. How are the house and stable similar?
3. What different time settings does the story have?
In Daniel W. Galef’s Ex Libris:
1. How might the style be characterized: as neo-Victorian or neo-baroque?
2. When the narrator first establishes his hideout in the library, what does he do without that the readers will expect him to need?
In Edgar Rincón Luna’s Treeless Patio — Patio sin árboles, which common topic does the poem emphasize: carpe diem, sic transit gloria or memento mori?
In Douglas Young’s The Oyster’s Pearl: Physical aspects aside, does the object of the narrator’s affection have a personality? If so, what seems to characterize it?