Hands by Stace Budzko He sits across from her on a stool in an early to open bar directly across the street from an early to open gym where he begins each day at five jumping rope and working the speed bag until his eight o'clock sparring session—his routine since he was sixteen—back when he could hear out his left ear, back when his eyes worked; he, this former nationally ranked middleweight now journeyman fighter is finishing telling she, this young reporter soon to be large market news anchor how each night he has to stick his hands in ice in order to work his knuckles back into place so that the next day he can let the new blood work him over, belly to brain, "What do you think, what do you think you can use here?" and she will say, "I think we can use all of this"—which she believes, and will argue with her editor to keep—and later, years later in a Chicago television studio, she will put on her glasses to look over the last of her notes, listen for cue just prior to going on for broadcast, and press on the bones of her hand, hard, not knowing exactly why. All content in SmokeLong Quarterly copyright 2003-2008 by its authors.
	Stace Budzko holds an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College where he currently teaches composition and creative writing. In addition, he is the writer-in-residence at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. He was a finalist for the Raymond Carver Short Story Award as well as the 2006 Richard Yates' Short Story Award and World's Best Short-Short Story and has work forthcoming in Rose Metal Press' Brevity and Echo and The Binnacle. At present, he is working on his first novel.
	Issue Fourteen (September 15, 2006): Everything by CB Anderson «» Twelve Steps Down by Mark Budman «» Hands by Stace Budzko «» A Boy Makes a Bow Makes a Man by Robert Earle «» Chancing by Utahna Faith «» Silver Spur Cafe by Sherrie Flick «» A Few Notes on the Remarkable Sighting of the Bishop-Fish of Smith Mountain Lake by R. L. Futrell «» Spooks by David Galef «» It'll Never Work Out for the Two-Headed Boy by Bayard Godsave «» Utilitarianism by Tom Hazuka «» Vandals by Jennifer A. Howard «» The Four Horses by G.A. Ingersoll «» Carrots and Plum Blossoms by Kit Coyne Irwin «» At the Well by Barbara Jacksha «» The Shanghai Cut by John McCaffrey «» Blank by Peter Mehlman «» The Reunion by Christopher Merrill «» Mullet Man, P.I. by Stacey Richter «» Bruce Holland Rogers by Bruce Holland Rogers «» Tamazunchale by Robert Shapard «» Three Steps for Nunzio by Ersi Sotiropoulos, translated by Kay Cicellis «» The Angel by J. David Stevens «» Translation by Melanie Rae Thon «» Diamond District by Katharine Weber «» Ancestors by Kathleen Wheaton «» Cover Art "Despair" by Marty D. Ison «» Letter From the Editor