Pointer #23 – Corium Magazine

* Online lit mags are publishing some of the most intriguing writing available today. Every Monday, I post a pointer to a site that offers fiction either as free content or as samples from subscriber issues. Today’s pointer is to Corium Magazine.

About:

The corium is the dense inner layer of skin beneath the epidermis, made up of connective tissue, blood and an elaborate sensory nerve network. Corium aims to showcase work that touches on nerves and lingers. That evokes and awakens. That leaves an imprint that sticks around for awhile …

Born March 22, 2010, Corium Magazine is an online, quarterly magazine, featuring short and very short fiction and poetry, as well as artwork.

Fiction excerpt:

Night Train from Seattle
Suzanne Marie Hopcroft

I.
Minnie is a boxer, and she doesn’t let the enemy get away with anything. But exactly what side Minnie is on tends to shift from day to day according to the vicissitudes of the more-than-marginally screwed up world that Minnie inhabits and the oddly tuned moral code that she carries around with her like an invisible pocket edition of Fordyce’s sermons updated to the extreme for a girl’s life hopping trains. And that’s always been Minnie’s way. With her, you can find yourself facing flashes of ferocity and bared teeth one day, then hot tea and a homemade chicken stew the next, all because the balance changes and you suddenly need rescuing from a threat even worse than the one you pose yourself (and she’s smart, so she knows it–and pities you enough to mother you for a while).

I remember the smooth chill of the winter night when Minnie and Sky laid it all out for me. Their distrust of the men in blue polyester suits with their radios and badges and patrol cars, set to harass them at any turn for not exactly having a home address to put on the report at the precinct. Their rule that a friend knifed in the back or a kid sister catcalled one too many times would mean one thing and one thing only: vengeance meted out swift and savage by their little community taking matters into its own hands. No recourse to courts of evidence or restraining orders, just eye for an eye, quick and sweet.