Yay for water, nay for whimsy

Behold AQUARIUM: Fuselit's 13th issue of poetry, short fiction, artwork and musical trinkets from amongst the likes of Pomegranate’s Richard O'Brien, Steve Himmer, Chelsea Cargill and Brittle Star’s David Floyd.

So yes, it’s small and cute and oh so pretty, but do its lovingly bubble-painted pages caress innards of satisfying substance? It’s a worthy question, to which the heart warming answer is yes, yes, yes; this is a delightful collection of prose and poetry that also happens to fit neatly in the palm of one’s hand.

As you might hope to expect, the writers offer an impressive and diverse array of bite-sized slithers of word joy, varying from witty and absurd to slyly understated and sneakily sinister. You can but marvel at how this particular rabble of writers has taken the theme and run, rolled, skipped and swam with it. This really is a tiny chest of treasures just waiting to acquaint themselves with your trembling, greedy, grateful fingers.

This issue also comes with an equally dinky CD, as well as a super fun mix and match poetry booklet: the pages are cut into three, allowing the reader to mess up the various stanzas in order to create confections that the editors promise will vary from the ‘alarmingly incongruous’ to those which make ‘unexpected sense’ – and, of course, the best results will often be a heady combination of the two.

Just be sure not to spill coffee on it (or anything sticky/corrosive/stain-inducing, really).