This is one of our special issues featuring poetry and fiction even shorter than the work in our usual issues.  Poems under 30 words and fiction under 100 words.  Which is ridiculous.  And yet, again, our contributors met the challenge.  Thanks to all whose work appears in this issue, and for all the other people who honored us by sending work that we reluctantly passed on.

  I had accepted a handful of the poems you'll read in the issue and was reading away when I decided that what I need in my life is more TV.   And all the reading was getting in the way of me trying to watch all 3 seasons of "Dexter" on Showtime-On-Demand this summer.  So, I flew to Oregon and started showing Doug Draime's photo to people in bars, convenience stores, and libraries.  "Have you seen this guy around?"  I got a good number of invitations to do something to myself that I'll not mention here, for fear of getting crossways with CyberNanny.   Finally, I slipped my last $50 bill to a guy with no earlobes named "Molar" (I'm pretty sure that wasn't his real name) and he found Draime's home address in the phone book.  Can you believe it?  An old-fashioned print phone book.  What a loser, this Molar guy.  (And who's listed in the phone book, anymore?)

  When Doug answered the door, he didn't recognize me at first and so just had the door open a crack.  So, I told him who I was and he closed the door the rest of the way.  I came back later with a pizza from town and that did the trick:  I got into Doug's house and I asked him to guest edit the poetry in this issue and he agreed to eat the pizza.  Readily.  Just a few short months later and a few additional deliveries to Doug's house and he was on board.  So, thanks to guest editor Doug Draime.

  F. John Sharp has been reading his butt off.  He hasn't had time to watch "Dexter," so I agreed to call him up sometime and tell him what happened in Seasons 1-3.  This guy's a serial killer but he only kills really awful murderers so he's sort of a good guy.  He almost gets caught but then he doesn't.  That's pretty much it for Seasons 1-3.  So, there you go, John.  No need to call you now.  But thanks for reading all the stories for RHP.

           Dale

  Thanks to Kristen Tsetsi from the now defunct 'Tuesday Shorts' for mining her database to get us a ton of submissions. Fare thee well, Kristen and Shelly. 

                     F. John Sharp