AN INTERVIEW WITH TOM DALEY, AUTHOR OF FAR CRY by Michael McCarthy
AN INTERVIEW WITH TOM DALEY, AUTHOR OF FAR CRY (Ethel Zine, 2022) by Michael McCarthy Tom Daley is Boston’s bard. His dedication to the craft should be obvious to anybody who’s spent an hour with him, for in that hour, he will have likely recited any number of poems from memory, as he does in this interview. Employed as a machinist for more than twenty years, he left this work to pursue poetry full-time, making him one of perhaps a half-dozen people I know who make their living exclusively as practitioners and instructors of poetry. You’d be forgiven for mistaking him for one of the Boston Brahmin due to his love of Robert Lowell, his friends at local universities, and his tweed. That perception collapses once it becomes clear that he is, quite literally, a card-carrying socialist. Politics is at a far remove from his most recent chapbook Far Cry. … chop! chop! read more!
Lillian Lowenthal
Lillian Lowenthal is a recent graduate of Vassar College, where she majored in Creative Writing and minored in Asian Studies. Lillian currently lives in Baltimore and is working to complete the first draft of a novel. In her free time, she swims, rides horses, and is teaching herself to sew.
chop! chop! read more!THE FICTION MULTIVERSE, or What Happens Next. Or next, or next… a craft essay by John Fried
THE FICTION MULTIVERSE, or What Happens Next. Or next, or next… A Craft Essay by John Fried In the brilliant British playwright Caryl Churchill’s one-act play “Heart’s Desire,” a mother and father sit in their kitchen, awaiting the arrival of their grown daughter from a trip to Australia. “She’s taking her time,” the father says, as he pulls on a red crewneck sweater. The mother, setting out silverware for a meal, replies, “Not really.” The actors then freeze and the play stops, everyone returning to their starting stage positions. The characters then start over, saying the same lines, repeating the same actions, except that this time the dad is putting on a tweed jacket. The scene moves forward for a few lines, past where it had gotten before, but then abruptly stops once more. The action begins again, this time with one subtle shift: the father is putting on a … chop! chop! read more!
An Interview with Author Phoebe Reeves on Two New Publications by by Hannah Felt Garner
An Interview with Author Phoebe Reeves on Two New Publications by Hannah Felt Garner I Think of My Poems as Being Products of Sound— Phoebe Reeves Phoebe Reeves is a poet and an English professor at the University of Cincinnati having a very productive year: she published her third chapbook last fall and débuts her first full-length book in May. The Flame of Her Will (Milk and Cake Press, November 2022) is a chapbook of erasure poems that mines a 15th c. guide to witch-hunting called the Malleus Maleficarum, or “Hammer of Witches.” Through an alchemical process, Reeves turns misogynist propaganda like “All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman” into lines pulsing with feminist imagination: “Woman is the lion./She is by nature/the song of strength/and the flower of thorns./But her end is as bitter as wormwood.” Her poem from this project, “Chapter One: Methods of the … chop! chop! read more!
FLIGHT PATHS by Jacqueline Ellis
FLIGHT PATHS by Jacqueline Ellis December 2021: I give my dad a project: tell me what you remember about making wine with your friend Franco, back when we lived in Peterborough. The task distracts him while he waits for biopsy results. Suspected mesothelioma. It is two weeks after he called to tell me that a routine chest X-ray had uncovered nodules in his lungs, and we have spoken every day since then: 4:00 p.m. in the United States, 9:00 p.m. in England. Each time, before I hang up, I say: “I’ll call tomorrow. Just to check in.” Each time, my dad hands the phone to my mother. “Shall we come?” I ask her. “For Christmas and for dad’s 80th?” “Not yet,” she says. “Not until we know for sure.” My dad records his memories and sends me a digital file. I touch play on my phone and wait for his … chop! chop! read more!
Art That Speaks
Art That Speaks Digital images by David Sheskin These images come from a large body of works which I refer to as Art That Speaks which involve the creative integration of art and text. My Art That Speaks images, which must be read to be fully appreciated, are atypical in that unlike most art they challenge the viewer on both a visual and cerebral level. Although some of the works in the collection are mixed media (for example, using ceramic tiles), the images presented here were created digitally using computer software. My Art That Speaks images employ the format of a Scrabble board to provide a unique and/or humorous commentary on a broad spectrum of topical and fictional subjects ― the relevant commentary appearing in every odd-numbered line of text. I view my Art That Speaks images as an anthology of parables or fables, intended to provoke in the reader … chop! chop! read more!
THE SECRET ANNEX by Rita Mendes-Flohr
THE SECRET ANNEX by Rita Mendes-Flohr In all those years we have lived in this the old house in town so close to the sea, I have never been able to get near the beautiful turquoise water behind the row of houses on the Pietermaai. It is too dangerous to walk through the narrow alleys between those houses to the sea that is sparkling at the other end. You don’t know who is hanging around there, my Mami says. In the backyard of the Wilhelmina School, we are even closer to the sea. If you listen hard, you can hear the rustling of the waves above the terrible noise of the screaming girls. But we are locked inside the schoolyard by a high yellow wall with broken pieces of glass on top to make sure we won’t climb out. I want to get to the sea that is so close … chop! chop! read more!
MARK MY WORDS by Christine H. Chen
MARK MY WORDS by Christine H. Chen Ah Ma tells me what a lucky girl I am, I am the only child, Ah Ba spoils me with toys I break within a week, dresses I dirty within minutes, shoes I muddy after one wear, what a lucky girl I am who has everything now that we live in America, the land of big-box stores with acres of surface and shelves filled with people’s dreams of things to buy and accumulate in their vinyl-siding homes with manicured lawns, who never had to fight for the last ladle of porridge with a brother or a sister, never had to watch Grandpa paraded on the streets by juvenile Red Guards, younger than Ah Ma, never had to be called dirty words like Bourgeois, never had rotten cabbages thrown on unwashed hair because there was no running water, never been denied to study because … chop! chop! read more!
SAHARA DREAMS by A. J. Jacono
SAHARA DREAMS by A. J. Jacono The first night of the tour, after the guides had hitched the camels and secured the mess tent and laid out the steaming tagines and plates of couscous, Cash decided to make some friends because he hadn’t had a meaningful conversation in days and sat with two people from either New Zealand or Australia. One of them held out a hairy hand and introduced himself as Reeky; the woman with him, he said, was Queen. “Super hot today, wasn’t it?” said Ricky. “Sweated out half my body weight by noon.” Quinn squinted at him, said, “No shit,” and stuck a spoon into her couscous mountain. “We’re in the middle of the fucking Sahara.” Cash wasn’t sure of their relation. Quinn was too comfortable snapping at Ricky to be even a close friend, and they didn’t resemble each other—he was large and had a doughy … chop! chop! read more!
MESENTERIC PANNICULITIS AT NINE MONTHS by Robin Kinzer
MESENTERIC PANNICULITIS AT NINE MONTHS by Robin Kinzer Today, they applied electrodes to my abdomen, then told me to slowly up the voltage. With each added jolt, it felt more like a hundred bumblebees burrowing beneath my scarred and dimpled skin. I apologized to my doctor, who apologized right back. Said: It’s likely the pain is too deep within you for electricity to penetrate. Said he would refill the two prescriptions for pain medicine I need, but would rather dump riverward. I picked up a 32-pound package today, insisted on not asking for help. Tripped over the cardboard edges, sliced open my palm, fell so hard an oof scurried loose from my chest. I sat on the long, dark floors of my building people liken to The Shining. Let myself wail. Watched the dozens of doors as voices poured under their edges, as laughter and cilantro and cannabis spilled loose. … chop! chop! read more!
WITNESS TO THE ARIA by Meg LeDuc
WITNESS TO THE ARIA by Meg LeDuc A sculpture soars in the sky of Meijer Gardens, red as a hummingbird heart, rising over the pinprick of a groundskeeper below. Of the painted scarlet steel of his public art, Alexander Liberman once said, “All my sculptures are screams.” Yet Aria shouts joy, curves a-dance, music in metal. Meanwhile, in downtown Grand Rapids, a woman sings The Clark Sisters on the corner of Monroe and Pearl, singing the sunshine down: “You came my way / You made my day” and “I’m a witness.” Here on that city intersection, a gospel woman caresses her aria with winged voice. In the sculpture park, a groundskeeper tends his aria with downy hands. I’m a witness. I once overdosed in the back of a car, swilling down hundreds of minute cotton-candy-colored Benadryl pills with lukewarm Budweiser. When I awoke, I wanted to hide from the police. … chop! chop! read more!
church by Erin Pesut
church by Erin Pesut There came a time about three years after we moved to Vermont when I decided I wanted to go to church again. Really what I wanted was to go to church at Christmas. Really what I wanted was to go to church for the four weeks of Advent leading up to Christmas. Really what I wanted was to see how church changed for Advent. Really what I wanted was to hear familiar hymns. To make the sign of the cross and feel holy water on my face. Really what I wanted was for church to be a portal to being a small child, a little girl again, sitting in a wooden pew at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church on Devine Street in Columbia, South Carolina, with my mother’s arm around me. Where I went to CCD. Where the priest once blessed our corgi. Really what I wanted … chop! chop! read more!
MAGIC WINDOW by Anne Panning
MAGIC WINDOW (CHASING HOME) by Anne Panning What did you think when you cupped your hands against the glass and peered inside? Did you think the old wavy Victorian glass was a portal to the past? Did you see your mother in the kitchen, frying liver draped with onions? Was she listening to John Denver on her little boom box? Did she have a dish towel slung over her shoulder? Embroidered with kittens or vegetables? Was it soft with wear? Was the yellow-painted radiator leaking warmth? Was her heart a basket of needles? A tiny jar of yarn? If you sat at her table, might she fry you an egg? Pour you some red Kool-Aid in a juice glass? What might she tell you that you’d never heard before? Try the other side of the house. The window back there, by the tiger lilies. Was that your father there in … chop! chop! read more!
THE PHANTOM BABY by A. C.
THE PHANTOM BABY by A. C. The baby dies on garbage day. It’s a Monday, very cloudy, with a sixteen percent chance of rain. There’s a little cough, a little spit, then nothing. The collection truck comes on time. It was not a Monday when the baby first revealed itself—in my table drawer, wrapped in something now a far cry from my best cloth. The police found it hard to believe that the baby in my house wasn’t mine. It didn’t help there was no documentation of that time it had happened to my grandmother. Only after I offered my birth canal for their examination, did they begin the search for the baby’s family. Still, I was obliged to care for it as more officers came and went, their theories more and more unsettling. The mother would be found in the worst neighborhood. The mother had to be an inmate … chop! chop! read more!
PISSER CLAM by Yujia Li
PISSER CLAM by Yujia Li Learned today that clams break with the slightest pressure between forefinger and thumb. I jumped at the crack, admiring a broken shell, gray and soft and more vulnerable than I— a bed of them clamoring northeast, pressed ridge to ridge against each other, their mantles against the shore like an embrace. Thereafter, another timezone away, my grandma is hit with a rock, for no reason other than a trip for groceries and some broken English spoken to strangers, a cracked skull opening like a letter warning each of her daughters— reciting this poem a thousand times until the gap between mandarin oranges and English pears disappears. What does it mean to harden a shell? Does it not mean learning each American vowel while being a quiet girl, a thousand good girls hiding behind a white man’s book? Yujia Li is a senior at William Mason … chop! chop! read more!
SHAPES by Meg Pokrass
SHAPES by Meg Pokrass He is kissing his wife goodnight on the cheek as she slips off to the spare bedroom with Tylenol and a hot water bottle. “I smell like a seal,” she says. Before that, she’d been at her surfing lesson while he waited at home in the big dog’s chair, listening for the snap of the car door. He was wondering why he could no longer remember the feel of her cold foot skin in the middle of the night, recalled that she used to press her toes against his shins, how he missed that ice. Before that, she had gone quiet after he suggested that they fix up the little room that was supposed to be painted with elephants and birds, but they had never wanted to jinx things, so they left the walls plain. “It can be like a hobby center,” he said, but he … chop! chop! read more!
HUMMINGBIRD SKETCHES by Evan Anders
hummingbird sketches by Evan Anders iced ruby oolong— hints of soothing baked pear, cedar, cacao, the miscarriage. precarious masculinity drizzled upon lamb tikka masala golden basmati rice, boisterous cumin, ginger, cordial turmeric. there are fragments of you inside me jubilant kachumber salad days, peshwari naan, pudina chutney, single malt ginseng whiskey. himalayan salt besprent smoked salmon. avocado toast smeared with truffle butter, truffle butter, mango jalapeño pepper jelly. tragedy advances like all the prayers wasted— jesus christ outstretched upon a toy crucifix accumulating dust desiccated piers morgan feuds with himself over meghan markle the president of the united states bombs syria antiquated armament asphyxiates pristine sky pope francis releases a dove amongst the antiquity of mosul, a former isis stronghold. we do not achieve we bury our brothers and sisters law enforcement condemn. besieged, this flesh i prune devoid of mercy the sphinx devours the ruin. elizabeth stood in the … chop! chop! read more!
THE TATTOO by Wendy MacIntyre
THE TATTOO by Wendy MacIntyre Wita’s mother had a tattoo that colonized her left forearm. Six words, sinister and enigmatic: “Keep me safe and kill me.” The dyes that needled this sentence into her flesh were sea-green and Prussian blue. Wita was sure she had an infant memory of trying to clutch at the shimmering sea-green stuff beneath the bath water where her mother held her snug. What had she thought the tattoo was? Pretty. Dazzling. A fish perhaps? But she was then not long out of the womb and did not know what a fish was, or even how to distinguish her mother’s body from her own. What she saw was all of a piece, amorphous and ever-shifting, with sometimes these patches of dazzle and gleam that made her want to reach out and grab them fast. Ouch. No, Wita. That hurts. By two she had learned the tattoo … chop! chop! read more!
PARAÍSO by Mark Williams
PARAÍSO by Mark Williams Henry Hoover is in his bedroom, mastering the G-chord on his Martin acoustic, when his father walks in and brings up Science Camp. With Henry’s sophomore year of high school behind him and all of summer ahead, he couldn’t care less about Science Camp. “You need to expand your horizon, young man,” says Henry’s dad, giving the Martin a thump. Henry thinks there is no horizon to expand. It’s filled with coal dust and shit. We’re toast. He almost says something about his father’s horizon (he’s an orthodontist) but instead asks, “If I go to Science Camp, will you buy me an electric guitar?” “What’s wrong with the guitar you have? It was good enough for me.” Here it comes, thinks Henry. For about the hundredth time, Henry hears how his father paid his way through dental school by playing in a bluegrass band throughout southern Illinois and … chop! chop! read more!
CREATION MYTH WITH CHORUS OF WORMS IN MY BRAIN by Jordan Ranft
CREATION MYTH WITH CHORUS OF WORMS IN MY BRAIN by Jordan Ranft nothing springs forward it spills as it would from a drain pipe or falling through a solid sheet of glass. there may have been a man with a spear. you poured forth from between his fingers. shook, the mountains shook again how will you inherit this want? trembling like an addict watching the sugar cool. we cannot address the world. it’s a history of sculpture where the heads and dicks were crushed with a hammer years before you learned of it. fever swept the village and boiled the tongue from every mouth if something created you it should have gone to therapy instead. their roadways thickened at the fringe with lemongrass and bloodweed the stage remains empty. every record of debt shredded and festooning the central plaza it was entirely political ending the way it did. Jordan Ranft … chop! chop! read more!
SHUTTING DOWN by Thomas Johnson
SHUTTING DOWN by Thomas Johnson Stevie watched the road. Driving right now made him nervous. Cars moved tightly in each direction on the highway. Stevie’s wife, Ruth, was next to him in the passenger seat, and their friend, Helen, shared the backseat with the dog. Everyone sat in silence, Stevie driving, the others thumbing a phone. Stevie tried to concentrate. “So many more cars than I expected for a Sunday,” said Stevie. Helen spoke up from the rear seat. “Normal for this part of the country.” Stevie started to say, “Maybe it just feels crowded because of,” but he trailed off. “Whatever it is that’s happening,” said Helen. “When do we get home?” asked Ruth. She thumbed her phone without looking up. “Best guess a couple of hours.” There were lines of cars on the interstate. Every lane was congested. It had been Stevie’s second time in Philadelphia, but the … chop! chop! read more!
BULLY BOYS by Gay Degani
BULLY BOYS by Gay Degani Her brothers are rough-and-tumble types roaming the streets after Mother and Father go to bed. They are expert at sneaking out, know every creaky floorboard, every groan in the front door hinge. Robbie greased their window sash. Willie blazed the perfect trail down the ancient oak. They say it’s important in any escapade to have a perfect plan. They learned this from Saturday afternoon movies, Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, The Dead End Kids. They want to be tough. Too old to run around with tin-can tommy-guns anymore, they drink, they smoke, they swear. She wishes she could be tough too, a torch singer, a reporter, or a runaway heiress like Claudette Colbert. Her friends are tame, boring, all wishing to be Shirley Temple on the Good Ship Lollipop. In bed at night, in the room next door to her brothers, she listens to the scuffles … chop! chop! read more!
RED SUN by Mary Lewis
RED SUN by Mary Lewis Using the full twelve-foot length of the handle, Jake pushed the floater over the last slab of new concrete, then pulled it slowly back towards him. This was his favorite part of the job because after all the heavy work of ground preparation, framing, pouring, leveling, and compacting, he could watch the new surface turn glossy and smooth under his touch. Daryl could have done it, he was as good at it as Jake, but as the business owner he liked to give himself the pleasure. Daryl could start the cleanup while he had these moments to himself. But with thunder growling nearby, they did need to wind it up. Concrete likes moisture while it is curing, but hard rain or hail would pockmark the surface, so they’d better put a tarp on in case. He’d had to take chances with the rain this strange … chop! chop! read more!
VILLAINS by Samantha Neugebauer
VILLAINS by Samantha Neugebauer Back then it was impossible to do anything with my mother sleeping. In the evenings, we watched Prancer and ate turkey clubs; in the mornings, we drank coffee, then Bloody Marys. It was when I worked in the afternoons that she liked to sleep, so I schemed to thwart her efforts (although I did celebrate her condition in the abstract). I’d give her small tasks; send her out for a forever stamp, or to Dunkin’ Donuts, or to pick up her prescriptions, things like that. My bank account had become anorexic, so we kept our overhead low. It was a transitional time for both of us. My mother, sixty, had recently gone on disability after an injury at her job. I, thirty, had moved back after working abroad for ten years, although no one was interested, so I tried not to think about it. In general, … chop! chop! read more!
MEDITATING IN HELL by Megan E. O’Laughlin
MEDITATING IN HELL by Megan E. O’Laughlin Age 24. The Gambia, West Africa. I do not pray five times a day like the people in the village. When I duck into my little house, the girls ask where are you going? I tell them to pray; I don’t know the Mandinka word for meditation. Most evenings, the gaggle of girls come over for gossip and help with their homework. They ask about my prayers, so I sit criss-cross-applesauce, close my eyes, and watch the space between my breaths. “That’s not praying. She doesn’t know!” the girls giggle. But their laughter washes away, for I know how to control my unruly mind. I meditate even more at the Stage House, where Peace Corps volunteers convene in the city. We drink skunky beers and stay up late watching DVDs of The Ring and Legally Blonde. Dishes pile in the sink, and we … chop! chop! read more!
RANDOM PRECISION by Caleb Murray
RANDOM PRECISION by Caleb Murray I woke up in the morning with a hemorrhage in my brain that made me think that life is some kind of nightmare even though, logically, such a state of affairs would be irrelevant to life—after all, if life is a dream, or if there is no such thing as reality (there is and there isn’t, as it were), it would make no difference to how we think about practical matters. Through the kitchen window I saw my neighbor, a heavy woman with dark hair, standing in the road with a black blob in one hand and a stick in the other. The stick opened into a wide, flat scoop against the asphalt. It was a snow shovel. The black thing seemed to be a small duffel bag. She tried to scoop up some unresponsive, wiry lump in the road. Her face was wet, and … chop! chop! read more!
TWO POEMS by Nathan Lipps
TWO POEMS by Nathan Lipps Controlled Burn To the north they have set fire to a thousand acres of a very real forest to prevent future fires. Walking through the ash it makes sense to him the many ways we handle a decadence not our own. The trees survive, of course their bark seared but intact the ground charred and gray with the exhalation of hope. It makes sense to him burning down the fear before the greater pain sets in singing praise in a cloud of smoke watching the animals flee. Dipping For Osmeridae, Upper Peninsula Michigan 1988 They make a fire along the riverbank to keep their hands warm and for something to do. Wading out to their knees they dip for smelt. Their long nets straining with moving gems. Enough to fill a bucket each. The smoke from the fire rolls beneath their bodies and will … chop! chop! read more!
TO MY ONCE AND FUTURE BODY by Shabrayle Setliff
TO MY ONCE AND FUTURE BODY by Shabrayle Setliff Grandmother’s body was vast, heavy, and unknowable. Her belly was like an ocean in a cave. She never understood the glorious figginess of it. The tacky, seeded roundness held together with lovely bruised purple skin. Instead, she seemed concerned with its dimpled retaliations. Its heft that felt like the constant plunge of gravity, not the groundedness I knew when I fell into the soft acreage of her arms. Despite her efforts, the field of her kept producing fractals of brown skin, smooth folds, and pillowy lipids. Her body’s growth came under constant surveillance in doctors’ offices and Weight Watchers’ meetings, on the scale, in the dressing room—and I began to wonder, to whom did this acreage belong? She was scattered, like seed, along the perimeter of her body, alert to expansion, engaged in a loop of field exercises: chewing her food … chop! chop! read more!
THE SHAPE OF A FOG by Kevin Eguizabal
THE SHAPE OF A FOG by Kevin Eguizabal It was in the water, the shape Of a fog. Surrounding me with ambiguity. Western shadows. I had so many questions. A begging dog. A valley flowered in spring— Hanging in the air. A drag queen // changing as a ghost in the driveway— Expecting nothing from the fog. Every iron soul— Like a bone made of steel. If only weather could move mountains of darkness… The lightweight flees, steady in the Fountain of my brain. This is it! The softest almond perished on the soil. We are not growing anymore. The Belly we try to sell on AliExpress. The loss of appeal. The snaps nobody sees on Snapchat. The world of men– In the hands of OnlyFans tips. We are cerulean waters. The sea— Like a dewy cloud of tragedy. The insults Breaking our jaws. The fog abroad— And somebody bleeding … chop! chop! read more!
THE BEST THING YOU REMEMBER by Kelly Pedro
THE BEST THING YOU REMEMBER by Kelly Pedro The baby shower was on a Sunday, a day that was supposed to be about peace and rest, but Connie felt anything but peaceful or restful. Her hips still ached from a terrible night’s sleep. The body pillow she draped her leg over at night was no use. And now she waddled around a conference room in the Four Seasons Hotel in Yorkville like a rusty can opener, stilted and slow, but still getting the job done. The job today was to be sweet and smiling, grateful and, mostly, surprised, even though her mother told her weeks ago she was planning Connie a baby shower. Natalia picked the Four Seasons against Connie’s wishes. With its plush carpet the color of steamed milk, cherry wood furniture, and a brocade couch with ornate carvings, the conference room was meant for high-powered meetings and not … chop! chop! read more!
SCENE OF THE CRIME, a novel by Patrick Modianom, reviewed by Jeanne Bonner
SCENE OF THE CRIME by Patrick Modiano translated by Mark Polizzotti Yale University Press, 157 pages reviewed by Jeanne Bonner I write down all kinds of little snippets of thought because otherwise they will float away. For example, one day in the small notebook I keep in my car, I scrawled, “I think I am losing my fingerprints.” Sometimes I write as if in a trance. I must—otherwise it’s difficult to explain this command that I recorded one day: “Map my brain.” You could say it’s a call for a decoder ring of sorts, or simply my secret instructions to an artist I have yet to find, one who can draw the ideas that paper the walls of my mind. Someone who can decipher the permanent mosaic of thoughts, from the moment as a child that I poured the bottle of Prell shampoo on the floor in the upstairs hallway, … chop! chop! read more!
ON AUTOBIOGRAPHIA: YOURS, MINE, AND OURS, a craft essay by Ian Clay Sewall
ON AUTOBIOGRAPHIA: YOURS, MINE, AND OURS by Ian Clay Sewall 1. Writing stories and essays about the people I remember and the people I know requires stretching out moments, staring through a square piece of stained glass that’s purple and blue and orange, soldered a long time ago against strips of silvery-looking zinc. The stained glass is a few feet from my stained desk, and looking at it helps me remember that what I am writing, the colors I use, the tools of creative nonfiction, are many. And they’re both new and old. At times, when I’ve wanted to explore further inside another person’s interiority, when I’ve wondered what those people wondered, I’ve written in a draft, “I imagine,” or “perhaps,” or “maybe.” When I write about my memories, I’m a first-person narrator limited to my own experience. But when I speculate in these narratives, “maybe” is a round trampoline … chop! chop! read more!
RIGHT THIS WAY, novel by Miriam N. Kotzin, reviewed by Lynn Levin
RIGHT THIS WAY by Miriam N. Kotzin Spuyten Duyvil, 339 pages reviewed by Lynn Levin They say it can be done, but it is hard, very hard, for most betrayed wives to regain trust and forge ahead in a marriage with a husband who has cheated. This may hold true even if the man has ended the affair, even if he feels remorse, even if he is not a repeat offender, even if he tries to repair the marital bond. Warranted or not, suspicion, like a persistent shadow, may stalk a woman’s thoughts. She may not be able to rid herself of the notion that somewhere out there the enticing forbidden fruit still dangles or ripens anew. The concept of transgression without redemption goes all the way back to the myth of Adam and Eve. Miriam N. Kotzin, in this wise and heart-wrenching new novel, reimagines the foundational Genesis text … chop! chop! read more!
A conversation with Nancy Ludmerer, author of Collateral Damage: 48 Stories by Kathryn Kulpa
FLASH-WRITERS: TRUST YOUR READER: a conversation with Nancy Ludmerer, author of Collateral Damage: 48 Stories (Snake Nation Press, 2022) by Kathryn Kulpa I had the pleasure of interviewing Nancy Ludmerer, a student in one of my Cleaver flash fiction workshops, about her full-length flash collection Collateral Damage: 48 Stories, published by Snake Nation Press. Nancy’s work, both fiction and nonfiction, has been widely published in journals, and she moves effortlessly from brief, lyrical microfiction to longer, more complex stories that push the boundaries of flash fiction. A master of compression, she can unfold a lifetime in a paragraph, as she does in this piece from the collection, originally published in Night Train: Bar Mitzvah When Benjy started to choke on a piece of celery stuffed with scallion cream cheese, I turned from the buffet table and asked, are you okay, and when he shook his head, I said raise your … chop! chop! read more!
A conversation with Christopher M. Hood, author of The Revivalists by Hannah Felt Garner
I Tell My Students All The Time, “Your Job Is to Make Art. Your Job Is Not to Explain Shit,” a conversation with Christopher M. Hood, author of The Revivalists (Harper 2022) by Hannah Felt Garner I met Christopher M. Hood in the English teacher’s lounge at the Dalton School in New York City, where he’s been a teacher since 2008 and where I periodically substitute. Starting out as a high school English teacher, Christopher went on to found Dalton’s Creative Writing Program, which he now runs full-time. My first impulse for this interview was envy-tinged curiosity: how does he approach creative writing to college-bound high-achievers? And how did building a curriculum for teenagers impact his vision of the craft? Which brings me to the interview’s other major impulse: to discuss Christopher’s debut novel, The Revivalists. The premise: Bill (our narrator) and his wife Penelope are surviving in Westchester in … chop! chop! read more!
FROM DRAWER TO BOOKSTORE IN JUST TWENTY-FOUR YEARS: The Long and Worthy Journey to Publication by Ona Gritz
FROM DRAWER TO BOOKSTORE IN JUST TWENTY-FOUR YEARS: The Long and Worthy Journey to Publication by Ona Gritz The oldest version of my forthcoming middle-grade novel that I can access on my computer is dated 2010, though I know the drafts go back much farther. For one thing, these pages have equal signs where apostrophes should be, indicating that it was wonkily converted to Microsoft Word from WordPerfect. Anyone remember WordPerfect? I recall that the initial glimmer of the idea came to me soon after the release of my first book—and only other children’s novel—when my now twenty-six-year-old son was two. As is often the case with fiction, the idea was born out of an image from my own life: me, as a little girl, staring at a childhood photo of my much older half-sister and noting the similarities in our faces, along with something else I recognized, something beyond … chop! chop! read more!
A Conversation with Alison Lubar, author of Philosophers Know Nothing About Love by Michael McCarthy
Wisest is she who knows she knows nothing: a Conversation with Alison Lubar, author of Philosophers Know Nothing About Love Thirty West Publishing House, 2022 by Michael McCarthy Read Alison’s poem “Grand Slam” in Issue 39 of Cleaver. I first met Alison Lubar at Fergie’s Pub in Center City Philadelphia. Kind of. The Moonstone Art Center runs poetry open mics every Wednesday there. One night I took to the stage to read a poem I had written in an online workshop. When I stepped down, Alison came up to say they recognized my poem. Only then did I recognize them as the leader of the very same workshop for which I’d written it. A digital interaction became a real-world one, though I suppose COVID-19 collapsed the border between digital and real-world realms a while ago. Anyway, we met. I went to Fergie’s every week and often heard Alison read there. … chop! chop! read more!
Michael McCarthy
Michael McCarthy‘s work has appeared in Beyond Queer Words, The Adroit Journal, and Prairie Schooner, among others. His debut poetry chapbook Steve: An Unexpected Gift is forthcoming from the Moonstone Arts Center in Philadelphia in early 2023. Originally from Massachusetts, he currently studies at the University of Carlos III in Madrid, Spain.
chop! chop! read more!I LIKE TO THINK THAT ALL OF MY CHARACTERS HAVE A GOOD SENSE OF HUMOR: A Conversation with Chaitali Sen, author of A NEW RACE OF MEN FROM HEAVEN by by Gemini Wahhaj
I LIKE TO THINK THAT ALL OF MY CHARACTERS HAVE A GOOD SENSE OF HUMOR: A Conversation with Chaitali Sen, author of A NEW RACE OF MEN FROM HEAVEN Sarabande Books, January 2023 by Gemini Wahhaj Chaitali Sen’s short-story collection A New Race of Men from Heaven (Sarabande Books, January 2023) won the 2021 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. Her novel A Pathless Sky was published by Europa Editions in 2015 and her short stories have appeared in Ecotone, Shenandoah, American Short Fiction Online, New Ohio Review, and Colorado Review. The daughter of Indian parents, Sen grew up in the US and now lives in Austin, Texas, where she is an important part of the literary community. In the fall of 2022, we participated on a panel about Bengali women writers at the Conference on South Asia and I was lucky enough to read an advance copy of her … chop! chop! read more!
INVENTORY by Nicholas Claro
INVENTORY by Nicholas Claro My therapist asks me to create a list of people I’ve known who have died. To order their deaths from biggest impact to least and provide some details from when they were alive, or after they weren’t. 1. I don’t use my brother’s name or say how he died. The therapist asks that I do both, but I refuse. Elementary through grad school, whenever a situation arose where I had to use his name, I’d write or say “narrator,” “character,” “protagonist.” It’s how I’ve always coped with him. A lot of the time I’d use the initial. Somehow, I always got away with this. I remember one time when I nearly didn’t. A professor accused me of “being too familiar” when examining the little boy in an O’Connor story, who I called “J.” She told me that when I speak like that, it’s easy to forget … chop! chop! read more!
THE PRIZE FIGHTER by Lyn Chamberlin
THE PRIZE FIGHTER by Lyn Chamberlin She would go to Paris. When this was all over, this is how she would start again. But today she would go back to caring for him, undo the hook and eye they’d put on the outside of his bedroom door so she wouldn’t find him in the middle of the night peeing into the kitchen sink or looking for the knives she’d stashed in her car. When she unlatched the hook in the morning—she wasn’t sure how much longer it would hold, it was already loose—she would find him dazed, poised like a prize fighter in the middle of a ring, hands clenched in ready fists, feet in a “come get me” stance, his eyes wild and frightened. He didn’t recognize her until he did. Sometimes, she felt noble and kind. On good days—hers, that is—she became the person she wanted to be. … chop! chop! read more!
LINE COOK: A LOVE STORY by Madeleine Barowsky
LINE COOK: A LOVE STORY by Madeleine Barowsky For this task, your tools must be hot. They must be cold. They must be bone-dry or slick with hot water. Cold water. For this task, the item should be room temp. It should be completely frozen. It should be partially thawed, and I learned that lesson the hard way, goat cheese shattering with a ferocious bang of the knife. Be sure the plate does not have any hint of heat. Be sure it is still warm. The buns should be sweaty and puffy. If the cheese is sweaty, it has sat too long. Bake them till they’re golden-brown on top. If you bake the fitascetta until they show color, they will be rock hard, unusable. Keep a constant tension on the chicken breast with the palm of your hand so it doesn’t shred as you cut. The trick to slicing loaves … chop! chop! read more!
2020 APRIL by James LaRowe
2020 APRIL by James LaRowe My kids’ new favorite game is searching for signs of life in satellite photos. They crowd around the family computer to hunt for civilization in the most far-flung, godforsaken places on Google Earth. They’ve grown adept at spotting thin dirt roads etched along shorelines and valley floors, the needle-straightness of airstrips or docks, the unexpected glint of a lone, distant roof. I drink rosé in the kitchen doorway, waiting for the lasagna to cool, flicking through news on my phone: New symptoms have been identified…stores are running out of toilet paper and water…the stock market is up…the President tweeted. “Guys, look, buildings,” Emma says. “On an atoll.” “And a clay tennis court! They must be French,” Grace says. On the monitor, a dented sandy ring floats in azure, pocked on one side by a red smudge and a cluster of beige buildings. I walk over … chop! chop! read more!
LET’S LICK IT by Amanda Hadlock
LET’S LICK IT by Amanda Hadlock The first night I spent with the guy I dated last summer, he told me we had just snorted the last of our coke when I asked for more, so I said, “Turn the baggie inside out and let’s lick it.” So, we did. We tongued the corners and crevasses of the sandwich bag to save every last bit of residue we could, and my teeth and lips went so numb I couldn’t even feel it when he kissed me. ◊ In the beginning, not much happened: We would meet at his apartment, stretch out on his bedroom carpet, and snort lines off the cover of the physics textbook from the class where we’d met that spring, which he would have to retake the next fall. We would take turns playing songs on his laptop we thought would make the other like us. And … chop! chop! read more!
THE TUMMY BRIDGE by Andrea Marcusa
THE TUMMY BRIDGE by Andrea Marcusa Right now, it’s an old wooden bridge spanning railroad tracks, a rickety structure that’s fun to cross on her way to the beach. Its steep incline causes her car to jump when she zips over it too fast, and then her stomach to lurch into the air. Her two children and husband love the bridge. When she calls out, “Here comes the Tummy Bridge,” they wait in anticipation holding their stomachs and then erupt into gales of laughter. She presses the brakes, and her husband, who is in the passenger seat, reaches his hand across the gear box onto her knee and travels up her thigh to her bikini bottom and says, “I can’t help it when you pump your leg and arch in that wet suit,” and doesn’t leave her thigh until she swats him away and whispers, “Later!” After the kids are … chop! chop! read more!
MOSAIC FOR MY MOTHER by Emily Hoover
MOSAIC FOR MY MOTHER by Emily Hoover 1. When I was a teen, she’d sit on the porch cloaked in a cloud of cigarette smoke with pruning shears in her hands. She’d whisper to herself while cutting photos of George W. Bush out of the newspaper because she couldn’t stand to see his face on the front page, especially after 9/11. I thought it was normal, but my friends’ moms cut chunks of cookie dough into hearts while baking. They didn’t talk politics, especially when no one was listening. She’d open mid-day beers in the closet and fall asleep on the porch at dusk, her hair kinking from the humidity. Smoke plumed from the ashtray, a grayish ink. Dad would watch reruns of Seinfeld, laughing at the same jokes while piecing together the sports section. 2. I am twenty-eight when she is diagnosed for the first time and prescribed … chop! chop! read more!
THE RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE WORLD by Sarah Freligh
THE RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE WORLD by Sarah Freligh They come from everywhere, come to us hungry. They wheel in suitcases that they park tidy under tables, drag in trash bags or carry backpacks that they ease off and set on chairs. Sometimes they bring pets—dogs and cats and once an iguana in a plaid harness—though they’re told not to. They’ll claim the damn dog just jumped into the car and wouldn’t budge, and what was I supposed to do about it anyway? We tell them we understand completely and send for the Pet Whisperer, who pulls up in her dusty grey Jeep with endearments and a pocketful of treats and sits with the owners until they’re ready to let go. The restaurant at the end of the world never closes. We serve eggs-over-easy late at night, bowls of chili with extra spices, and pitchers of beer at … chop! chop! read more!
IMPACT by Lisa Lanser Rose
IMPACT by Lisa Lanser Rose A voice above proclaimed: No automobiles may be left unattended within three hundred feet of the facility. I blinked; an imaginary avalanche of flame slammed through the airport. “Where is everybody?” I asked at the empty ticket counter. On board at Harrisburg International, the flight attendant lectured us on safety features, and I relished my front-row seat in the almost-empty puddle-jumper. Fifteen days after 9/11, and so far I avoided the news blazoning Bin Laden’s face in satanic black and red. Limp children draped over firefighter’s arms. Immune, I knew not to give it too much thought, even when ashes from Manhattan dusted my Pennsylvania town like plant spores from outer space. “Which emergency exit do you want?” I asked my seatmate. “That one’s mine.” “I hate prop planes,” the big guy said. “Why? Because those propeller blades could zip through this aluminum can and … chop! chop! read more!
A CONTENTED SUN RISES by Joe Alan Artz
A CONTENTED SUN RISES by Joe Alan Artz Envelopes of Very Small People keep arriving in my mailbox. I bring each envelope in and gently slit open the top flap. The people come out slowly, gasping in awe, looking all around. They spread out across my apartment. They explore, find small nooks and crannies, settle in. They raise magnolias in tiny pots. The peculiar charm of a magnolia breeze wafts through my four rooms along with Celtic music, or something similar, that the people play and sing. The settlers, hardly aware of my presence, require nothing of me. Farmers plant small grains and leafy greens in the soil built up in the gaps between floorboards. Shepherds tend flocks of dust bunnies in the gloom beneath the couch. Come spring, they shear fleeces of lint from the bunnies that others weave into fabrics to be scissored and stitched into clothing, using … chop! chop! read more!
Of Comfort and Connection: Paintings by Lex Lucius
Of Comfort and Connection Paintings by Lex Lucius I live in the Roaring Fork Valley just north of Aspen, Colorado, tucked into the Rocky Mountains. My life is full of family, painting, and horses. My clothes smell of the stable, and on far too many days, my boots, of the pasture. Less than five minutes from my painting studio is the stable where my wife Aimée keeps her jumping horses and my daughter, her pony. When I drive over and watch them ride, which I do several times a week, I pass by a field of polo ponies. It is these ponies that have become my favorites to paint. I love their small, muscled bodies, and I see strength and determination in their movements. At the stable our warmbloods are huge, muscled, yet incredibly calm animals. Even in my paintings they have a sureness of movement and a stillness that … chop! chop! read more!