I always love those stories which seem to catch you unaware, that kidnaps your senses for a little while and dissolves any faith in reality, like some tempting faceless figure that leads you, surprises you even in the confidence of your imagination. Well, you ain’t gonna find that here. I kept trying to think of good things to say about Urban Graffiti, I really did, but every page kept kept throwing me tired, boring and cliché-ridden stories. The stories, and most of the poems, use heavy-handed material and somehow render seemingly interesting things like violence, sex and bodily fluids exhaustingly boring. Leda’s “Girl,” “What We Think About But Don’t Talk About,” and “Minute Man” are the only remotely good pieces (all poems) in this zine. The stories, however, seem to suffer from that high-school fiction affliction of trying too hard to shock the reader with violence, or sex, and somehow depart some deep, heavy-handed meaning. The characters never come out as characters as much as clichéd pawns to push some story that should’ve better been left for the enjoyment of the writer. While there were some good poems in this zine, they were few and far between – and the short stories? Uh… why? (James King)
litzine, #9, 31 pages, Mark McCawley, $5, PO Box 41164, Edmonton AB, T6J 6M7