Dear June, Since the start of this pandemic, I have eaten more and exercised less, and have gone from a comfortable size 10 to a tight size 16. In July and early August, when the world seemed to be opening…
Interview by Kathryn KulpaFive and a Half Questions for Michelle Ross on SHAPESHIFTING (Stillhouse Press) Michelle Ross has published short fiction in Cleaver (“Lessons,” Issue 13; “My Husband is Always Losing Things,” Issue 23; “Night Vision,” with Kim Magowan, Issue…
Tom GammarinoREAL ROT: My Newfound Impatience with Antiheroes Something is wrong with me. Last week, when I tried to re-watch one of my favorite TV series of all time, Breaking Bad, I made it through just two episodes before calling it…
Kari Ann EbertHARNESSING WILDNESS: THE PRACTICE OF POETIC LEAPS To avoid stagnation and cliché, one of the tools in a poet’s arsenal is to conjure associations that bring energy to the poem and add complex layers. These associations can show…
Fiction by Olivia Tapiero, translated by Kit Schluter, reviewed by Dylan Cook PHOTOTAXIS (Nightboat Books) There’s something refreshingly laid-back about Olivia Tapiero’s take on apocalyptic fiction. Most novels in the genre come off a bit preachy, warning us page after…
Poetry by Theadora Siranian, reviewed by Juniper Jordan Cruz SHE (Seven Kitchen Press) Theadora’s Siranian’s chapbook, She, is violently intoxicating and sobering at the same time. In investigating loss and trauma, she chooses to present the messy over the meditative.…
Capitalized "Scrabble" on second reference (themed Scrabble).
There was an extra space between the July and August paragraphs, inconsistent with how other changes in date were treated, so I deleted the extra space.
John CullenSTINGRAY My sister and I recall that old Stingray while we sit a vigil in the critical care unit. She melts into the vinyl cushions and I lean sideways, balanced like a circus acrobat one moment before falling. My…
Regan PuckettLEFTOVERS I almost had a husband once, but we never made it to the wedding. Now, he’s someone else’s husband, with a baby announcement on Facebook and a house two towns over. Our last date, we went to an…
Sarah FrelighOUR FATHERS Our fathers rise at five and whistle out the door carrying thermoses of black coffee and lunches our mothers have packed for them—bags of corn chips that fat up the blood and sandwiches made of meat and…
Tingyu LiuMONOCULAR Remembering, still: Sunday egg scrambles, green …………..peppers and sharp cheddar adorning …………..our fingers, coffee pot chuckling. Tilt and: our slip of a room …………..in Havana, stumbling on the party downstairs, sweet …………..cake kiss, warm cola in colored cups.…
Frankie McMillanSEVEN STARTS TO THE WOMAN WHO WENT OVER THE FALLS IN A BARREL Annie Edson Taylor, 1901 1 Picture the cold dark inside of the barrel. Annie feeling her way over the padded mattress to a harness hanging from…
Melody WilsonSILVER FALLS We have driven east this bright afternoon, the two of us, young parents on a break from entropy. I am drowning in something I can’t define and the day reels out like un-spliced frames of someone else’s…
Mike ItayaTHE OREGON TRAIL 1884 Today I am eleven years born! We McClelland Family, Pa, Ma, Sis, and me (plus Joseph, our Mormon frontier scout), strike out from Independence, Missouri. The Oregon Trail is bright before us, our ox-pulled Conestoga…
Sara MaeBIOLUMINESCENCE The pregnancy scare skulks through bay grasses. It tips us over like cows & drains our peach liqueur. Flashlights under the bleachers illuminating grope & teen & tooth & wick, a stick rattling the jellyfish to yield shine.…
Melody WilsonSURVIVOR GUILT My sister slept in the laundry room, the door fastened by a cinch strap and a nail. She painted the cinderblock walls purple. Some nights tires would slide into the gravel drive and it was my job…
Gay DeganiA FEW NECESSARY HOUSEHOLD RULES FOR SYBIL Don’t talk. Don’t say a word. Keep your mouth shut. Unless he talks first. And if he talks first, listen carefully. Listen for his tone of voice, look up to see if…
Kimm Brockett StammenJUMPING OFF THE END OF THE WORLD Five years ago my niece and I stood at The End of the World, an infamous diving cliff near Kualanui Point just outside Kona, Hawaii. Far below us the ravenous Pacific…
Tom LaichasFLOUNDER i The fingertips know things. Their ridged whorls …. confess… the … whole.. body’s whereabouts. The fingernails know things too, and knew them even before the teeth. ii The left hand arrives like a visitant, held one arm’s length…
Kelly GrayTELL ME HOW TO BUILD AN AUDIENCE WHILE YOU MOVE YOUR ARMS AND LEGS LIKE SERPENTS & SCARVES IN THE DARK OF A CATTLE RANCH When I was a kid, I wanted to be famous. I don’t know what…
Danny Cooperflats hot sand and grainy glass yours is packed like clay me i grab some seashells and scrape to the bone doe deer’s ribs on hard cement honey fur still clean and pristine same wet pink thread of mine…
Anna Farro HendersonPACKING FOR AN OVERNIGHT AT THE STATE CAPITOL Minnesota State Capitol May 2018 the last weekend of the legislative session No one likes conflict, but with the smack of a fist I am a million particles of brilliant…
Nikolaj VolgushevMODERNA My shoulder hurt a lot after the second dose and the following morning I found a thorny vine had sprouted from beneath the Band-Aid. It clambered down my upper arm in an emerald coil. I drove back to…
Peter AmosNIGHTS WHEN I’M TIRED Mom fell asleep around Labor Day that year and the slumber was deep. Dad bagged the recycling, drove to school on weekdays, spread his papers across the living room floor in the afternoons, and asked…
Emily SteinbergMen O Pause For over a thousand years, menopause has been treated as an illness, something to be feared and fixed. Emily Steinberg’s Men O Pause visualizes the grim history of the treatment and attitudes towards menopausal women throughout…
Kathryn Silver-HajoTHOUSAND-WATT SMILE Sara nearly dropped the peeling tin box of Grandpa Teddy’s things when she pulled out the yellowed, cracked black and white of Grandma Bea sitting on the wheel hub of their ‘38 Chevy, chubby ankles crossed. Sara…
In the first sentence, "Jay, his stepfather—who was nice enough, if not a little too subservient"--does it seem like the 'not' isn't needed? In other words, the meaning is that Jay IS a little too subservient, so it should say "nice enough, if a little too subservient." Should we query the author on this?
Tricia ParkTHE DISTANCE FROM HERE TO THERE The other evening, on my way home from a violin recital in Gangnam, I missed a step and fell in the Seoul subway station. I caught myself on my hand, twisting my wrist.…
Sara DavisTWO STUDENTS WALK INTO A BAR I can’t believe you haven’t heard this story. I feel like we tell it all the time! Maybe not in class, no, but grad school isn’t all lectures and bad coffee. We do…
J. M. ParkerAUTOPSY OR, THE HOUSE OF YOUTH (LIKE A RUSSIAN MOUNTAIN) I kept a hand-written note, on creased but still clean typing paper, wedged into the pages of a book Dear Sweetheart― You’ve got the tv program and today’s…
Sarah SchiffLAB RAT VENGEANCE In the neuroscience lab where I worked as an undergraduate intern, we were studying what makes mice experience the sensation of fullness. You can just imagine who’d want access to those findings—the know-how to regulate people’s…
In the 1st section, 3rd sentence: "In fact, I would have swung for the gut, stole his air so he had to collapse into me." --Grammatically, this should be "stolen," but the author may have chosen the more colloquial "stole." Query?
Also in the 1st section, 4th paragraph, I fixed the em dash to make it consistent.
In the last section, first paragraph, I'm having second thoughts about this line: "with a first name and last initial like a partial staking. An object, a tool, more stamp than identity."
Staking or stalking? I think "staking," as in a claim, but want to make sure.
Chelsey Clammer29 REASONS WHY THERE WILL BE NO REPLY You didn’t visit me for fifteen months. I know, pandemic and whatnot, and we live three states apart, but why isn’t your lover in your “circle”? When we did finally see…
James DiazBUILDING BOATS, WRITING POEMS When building boats, we try to craft something that will hold us aloft, a durable vessel that can bear and balance the weight, and hold out against the waves. Some boats are perhaps more beautiful…
Interview by Michael McCarthyA Conversation with Amy Koppelman, Author of A MOUTHFUL OF AIR (Two Dollar Radio) I spoke with Amy Koppelman as she was finishing making her first book, A Mouthful of Air, into a feature film. Though she…
Dear June, A few weeks ago my wife and I were watching Noah, our two-year-old grandson, at our house. He was playing with some pots and pans on the floor of our pantry room, totally absorbed. I stepped out of…
John Wall BargerTHE ELEPHANT OF SILENCE Je suis maitre du silence —Rimbaud, “Enfance” I. At fifty, in the middle of the COVID pandemic, I drove my 1989 BMW motorcycle from Philadelphia to The Hambidge Center in the mountains of northeast…
Mark DanowskyYOU ARE A POET (Even When You Aren’t Writing) In Poetics, Aristotle essentially defines a poet as someone who has “an eye for resemblances.” This is a nice reminder to look up, both literally and metaphorically, look around, look…
Poetry by Andrew Levy, reviewed by Johnny Payne ARTIFICE IN THE CALM DAMAGES (Chax) The traditional identification of poet and prophet is acceptable only in the sense that the poet is about as slow in reflecting his epoch as the…
Laraine HerringSPECULATIVE MEMOIR: MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE I was eight years old when the tree spoke to me. My dad had just gotten out of the hospital after a near-fatal heart attack, and I would ride my bike down to…
Nonfiction by Patricia Hanlon, reviewed by Michael McCarthy SWIMMING TO THE TOP OF THE TIDE (Bellevue Literary Press) Six Ways to Look at a Marsh Swimming to the Top of the Tide, Patricia’s Hanlon’s delightful debut book, follows her through…
Terry RobertsRESEARCH AND WRITING: The Warp and Woof of Historical Fiction When I stand before a crowd of curious readers and talk about my novels, which are generally understood to be “historical fiction,” invariably someone asks a version of the…
Fiction by Natalie Bakopoulos, reviewed by Aleksia Mira Silverman SCORPIONFISH (Tin House) Scorpionfish by Natalie Bakopoulos begins with a return. Mira, a Greek-born academic in her late thirties, arrives in Athens after her parents’ funeral. She must sort out the…
Fiction by Nana Nkweti, reviewed by Juliana Lamy WALKING ON COWRIE SHELLS (Graywolf Press) The ten stories in Nana Nkweti’s debut short story collection Walking on Cowrie Shells offer tableaus of Blackness that are as varied as they are vivid.…
Dena SofferEMBRACE THE NELSON: Going Beyond the Pretty Narrative Voice In my first graduate writing workshop, David Gates told a true story about Raymond Carver working on a piece of writing that wasn’t going well. Carver worked and worked, experiencing…
Gayathri PrabhuNOTES TO A YOUNG WRITER: On (Re)writing, (Re)vision, Editing, and Other Random Terms The young writer asks me, the mentor whose name is vertical on book spines, a question about writing they wish would go away. No doubt they…
Beth KephartTHE FUNNY IN MEMOIR: Alison Bechdel, Dinty W. Moore, and Trey Popp A few years ago, a friend who had first come to know me through my books and was slowly coming to know me through myself—our emails, our…
Sara DavisEVER GIVEN Because the spring tide comes in on its own time, because the earth goes on turning and the moon goes on circling around us and the ocean eddies unevenly but inevitably between them, because the seawater rises…
Anika PavelAN UNFULFILLED DREAM Through the COVID-19 lockdown in spring 2020, people were buying everything in sight. During a visit to my local supermarket, the empty shelves were familiar. In my youth, in communist Czechoslovakia, empty shelves were a norm,…
Courtney Elizabeth Youngcleave. Here are the ways I have heard it happens: in bed, waking to wheezing, breathing in loose clumps lining your pillow. Out with friends, falling into your Cobb salad, your Pinot. In the pool, raking waters in…