TRUE STORIES: TELLING IT SLANT IN FICTION AND POETRY Consider the following: A lawyer with a divine client and a bone to pick with the Father of Lies. A housewife whose daily routine stirs the dust of human detritus, thrust to the eye of a storm. Party guests whose requests to use the bathroom hide banal purposes their hosts would never guess. A 12-year-old girl hangs her blue corduroy jumper in a locker in the ladies room of the temple, soon be baptized by proxy for Marilyn Monroe at the authorized request of her mother. Truth, we are told, is stranger than fiction. But can fiction and poetry sometimes bore to deeper truths than mere compilations of fact are able to provide? If you are intrigued, what more surreal setting than a hotel meeting room, in which two poets and two fiction writers wait to introduce us to worlds under creation.

PAUL SWENSON, PAUL TOSCANO, CHERYL PACE, DAWN HOUGHTON