A salesclerk at a very large chain bookstore once scoffed - loudly, in front of many fellow customers - at my request for feminist literature: "We don't carry feminist literature. We carry literature."

Okay, maybe she was having a bad day, but my feeling was that she didn't really get feminism, in spite of the fact that she looked old enough to have lived through that glorious burst of consciousness-raising in the 1970s. Whatever your political opinions, I hope you'll enjoy this issue of Strait Jackets, in which our writers provide a sampler of offerings by and about women. Betty Jane Weigand reflects on a physician's incompetence in her poem, "The Mistake." Katerina Stoykova-Klemer of Bulgaria shares universal insights in her poetry, while Ray Strait reflects on his West Virginia roots in "Grandma's Boy." Dodie Cross channels Erma Bombeck in her howler excerpted from "A Broad Abroad in Thailand" and Kathryn Jordan's "Hot Water" will have you running hot in no time.

With this edition of Strait Jackets Magazine, we hope to add our own chapter to human "herstory".