Courtney Thorne-SmithGIRL ON FIRE She is bent over the sink. The ends of her long dark hair dip in and out of the bubbles as she circles the sponge slowly over the already clean pan. “What’s wrong?” he asks. “Nothing,”…
Soheon RheePAPER MACHE ON THE DRAIN The day of Chuseok, I remember that you wanted to cut my dress and how you made confetti of silk on the basin with the remaining the cloth of my hanbok jagged. I had…
Dylan CookPLENTY OF FISH Matt felt the morning dew jump against his legs as his feet flattened the seagrass in his way. He had his fishing pole slung over his shoulder like a bindle and his tackle box swinging at…
KC PedersenA PIERCE OF ANGELS Light airs! Light airs! A pierce of angels! Theodore Roethke …it is not the skill of the hand / That writes poetry, but water, trees, / And the sky which is clear to us even…
Tracy Rothschild LynchSPONGE BATH The no-nonsense, middle-aged Filipino nurse tells me, pushing up her smudged glasses, that I need to clean up a bit down there. She waves her tiny hands dramatically around her own groin area and then shuffles…
A Graphic Narrative by Myriam Steinberg, illustrated by Christache, reviewed by Brian Burmeister CATALOGUE BABY: A MEMOIR OF INFERTILITY (Page Two) The graphic memoir Catalogue Baby shares the deeply personal fertility journey of Myriam Steinberg. Compelled to leave her career,…
Poetry by Ae Hee Lee, reviewed by Juniper Jordan Cruz DEAR BEAR (Platypus Press) Dear Bear begins with the gripping dedication, “For Daniel, to the end,” and from there, takes its readers to the end of the world it introduces.…
Nonfiction by Krys Malcolm Belc, reviewed by Beth Kephart THE NATURAL MOTHER OF THE CHILD (Counterpoint Press) Krys Malcolm Belc—nonbinary, transmasculine, and talented—begins his memoir with an Irish dance—“all jumping and pounding, the tight black laces against my calves, the…
Ellen Prentiss CampbellRESONANT PLACES: Houses We Live in, Homes that Live in Our Writing Memory and imagination cast spells. Fiction is inspired by places as well as temps perdue. Many of us have dreamed last night that we went back…
Marnie GoodfriendFUND WHAT YOU FEAR I lie in bed, my eyes fixated on the fruit trees outside my bare windows. I do not have insomnia. I am bone tired. Recently, my pain is nocturnal. My body waits until my head…
Kate PetersonAT A CAFÉ IN VICTORIA, BC TWO GREY-HAIRED MEN TALK ABOUT LOVE She’s in the garden all the time and I’ve got my bridge, and the next thing you know you’re living different lives. One asks the other, If…
James MillerLAST GESTURE We eat on the porch when evening heat recedes. Lamps hang from the oak. The Conrad novel rests between us—eighty-nine pages left to speak aloud. As you reach out for a drink, we see a tiny frog,…
Constance McBrideSENSITIVE SKIN: Ceramics “Everyone wants to have an illusion of themselves, that they’re a bit attractive, but the older I get it seems more important to be absolutely honest and direct.” — Chantal Joffe When I was a kid…
Laura TanenbaumLITTLE GRIEF SONG, JULY 2020 “But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged into our personal weather They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove along the shore, through the rages of fog where…
Nick OlsonSAN ANDREAS HEAVEN I remember back in the day Nick used to try to get to Heaven. Heaven was a glitched-out place in San Andreas where nothing made sense or seemed quite real, and Nick would come home most…
SENSITIVE SKIN: Ceramics by Constance McBride “Everyone wants to have an illusion of themselves, that they’re a bit attractive, but the older I get it seems more important to be absolutely honest and direct.” – Chantal Joffe When I was…
Jennifer HaydenFALL OF MAN a visual narrative Scroll down for an interview with Jennifer Hayden by Cleaver Visual Narrative Editor Emily Steinberg Hayden is the author of The Story of My Tits, the Eisner-nominated graphic memoir about her experience with…
Valerie LovelandI AM THAT GROUP OF PICTURES OF SPIDERWEBS MADE BY SPIDERS ON DIFFERENT DRUGS Scientists call everything an experiment, …………………….even when ……iit is actually a meme even when …………………………..it is actually a spiderweb beauty contest Scientists don’t realize even…
Ann de ForestAMMONITES mountains once were ocean evidence coils beneath our feet prehistoric curlicues not yet nautilus not yet snail not yet calcified turban washed up on the beach ………………………void of any tender ……………………………….creature barely old enough to remember tasmanian…
Ali KojakI’M NOT SORRY They say I should write you a letter. As a goodbye, they smile sadly, for closure. They say closure like it’s a literal thing I can touch, can put in my Amazon cart and click, it’s…
Lorette C. LuzajicLEPIDOPTERA Pheasant Falls, end of the line. There is only a diner and smoke shop at either end of a triplet of small houses. On the other side, city-potted geraniums and a path to the waterfalls. An arrow…
Jason JobinTRADE CRAFT On the walk home from the bakery, spelt loaf in hand, I look back—because this is the part of town where you look back—and see a guy. He’s late thirties, soft looking, salt and pepper hair, very…
Michelle Renee HoppeFISH FEEL NO PAIN My little brother held a trout, a rainbow burning bright enough to eclipse reflections. The fish did not reflect, but the stream did, and he took a mighty brown watery rock to spill the…
David GalefWEBSITE INSECURITY QUESTIONS What was your first pet’s favorite color? How many pets have you neglected since then? This is about your father, isn’t it? How often do you think about sex? What did you drink on your first…
Anne PanningPANDEMIC MOTHER’S DAY, STOKOE FARMS, UPSTATE NEW YORK Cost of admission: purchase of two dozen apple cider donuts, delivered to cars by a masked grandmother. As part of the donut deal, you earned drive-through privileges to view exotic animals.…
Sandra FlorenceGIRL IN THE ENCHANTED KINGDOM We are playing Concentration. First, she finds the Jacks and then the Queens. Her head was lopsided when she was born, and she stared up at me with rolling grey eyes. I unwrapped her…
Sarah BergerLOOKING UP One thing I did when I was twenty was fall in love with a Roman Catholic boy and get all confused. I was a half-Jew-half-gentile quasi-Lutheran atheist, led as in a trance to the burly God of…
Todd Clay StuartCHERRY BOMB The object of the game is to see how long we can hold a lit Cherry Bomb in our hand before tossing it away. Ray-Ray Campbell claims he’s champion of the fucking world. Took the title…
Claire OlesonADDING APPETIZERS She was sitting on a stool in the basement of the restaurant watching the octopus spin. It was on a cold/cold cycle in the washing machine. This was how they tenderized it, Ellis had told her, overjoyed…
Gabby CaponeTHE LOBSTER It was winter, mid-December, much too cold to leave him there—the lobster, on my porch. I don’t know how he got there, whether he’d walked or hailed a cab. But it was snowing, and he looked so…
Rebecca EntelWE’VE WAITED FOR VACCINES Of when my father had polio, I’ve heard disjointed details but no narrative. Scalding baths, quarantine, how many adults held him down for the spinal tap, the iron lung, paralysis that one day disappeared. In…
Shuly Xóchitl CawoodMAKING THE READER FEEL SOMETHING. PLEASE. SHOW AND TELL. “Show, don’t tell.” An old piece of writing advice, generally good advice, but sometimes hard to know how to do it well. Also, confusing, because telling is often part…
Fiction by Doireann Ní Ghríofa, reviewed by Beth KephartA GHOST IN THE THROAT (Biblioasis) “This is a female text,” Doireann Ní Ghríofa asserts as her story begins. A rouse. A prayer. A persuasion. A female text because Ní Ghríofa suffuses…
Interview by Michelle RossDan Crawley, Author of STRAIGHT DOWN THE ROAD, a novella in flash Dan Crawley’s novella-in-flash, Straight Down the Road, was highly commended by judge Michael Loveday in the 2019 Bath Novella in Flash Award and published by…
Fiction by Chloe Gong, reviewed by Kristie Gadson THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS (Simon Pulse, Simon & Schuster) Chloe Gong’s These Violent Delights is a vibrant reimagining of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, taking place during the Roaring Twenties in Shanghai of…
Margot DouaihyQUEER (PRIVATE) EYE: Crafting a New Hardboiled Sleuth “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.” —Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep There’s arguably no writer more emblematic of the hardboiled…
Fiction by Jordi Nopca, translated by Mara Faye Lethem, reviewed by Michael McCarthy COME ON UP (Bellevue Literary Press) At first, it’s a promise. Come on up! It’s a pledge made to every up-and-comer in Barcelona. The city provides a…
A former student (now a writer and a teacher) finds himself in his once-teacher’s memoir. A conversation ensues about mirrors, facsimiles, and blankness.
Bailey BridgewaterAVOIDING / EMBRACING: Strategies for Writers with Anxiety Disorders Ah, writing and mental health conditions—a power couple in the collective imagination of what influences how artists create. Biographies, movies, TV shows, and even books have reinforced the idea that…
Sandy SmithWhat I Learned from Jennifer Egan’s Use of Sensory Detail On a friend’s repeated urging to read Jennifer Egan’s 2010 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Visit from the Goon Squad, I went to my small local bookstore. They had no copies…
Jane Rosenberg LaForgeSISTERHOOD: How the Books we Both Read Helped Me Write My Sister’s Life into Fiction When my sister, Susan, was still in elementary school, a family friend gave her a book for her birthday, The Wizard of Wallaby…
Nonfiction by Elissa Washuta, reviewed by Eric BuechelWHITE MAGIC (Tin House) In Elissa Washuta’s book of linked essays, White Magic, she writes about her substance abuse candidly, describing getting high with cough syrup as a teenager in her school’s bathroom…
Melinda ScullyA BOOK BY ANY OTHER NAME: ON TITLES AND DATING Imagine a reader is on a blind date with your book or short story. Maybe a friend set them up, or they ventured out for a local singles speed-dating…
Claire Rudy FosterLA BALEINE I did not know anything about whales until I became one. In the first trimester of my pregnancy, I transitioned, changing into a creature that was part meat and part ocean. My pregnant body was flush…
Sydney StewardTHE MOMENT I KNEW I LOVED _________ My Grandmother I look up from my phone, scouting the street signs for a match—Madison Avenue. I turn left, quickly glance across the road for oncoming traffic, and press on. The air…
Maya Savin MillerCHRIST (OR MAYBE JOHN LENNON) IN A PRISON WAITING ROOM In small town Georgia, the prison plays Christmas music over the waiting room speakers on the Fourth of July. My mother hands my brother and me two dollar…
L. L. BabbWHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL YOUR LIFE? In a minivan borrowed from Connie’s sister, Connie and Lori were on their way to the town of Locke. Connie drove, keeping her eyes straight ahead. So far there had been…
Morgan MotesHEAVY BREATHING IN NIGHT: Paintings Morgan Motes’ work is a visual representation of the feeling of being alone in nature. It is an expressionistic attempt to return to a sublime and nuanced world often left out of our technologically…
Louise BarrySLOW STARTER 1. I stand at the kitchen table, poking at a lump of raw bread dough. “I don’t understand why it’s not rising,” I say. My roommate wants to be helpful. “Sometimes it’s the temperature of the room,”…
Darlene EliotCATCHING AIR Kevin rolled his ankle on August 25th and never stopped talking about it. The steep hill, the bearings, the cross street of killer cars, the way he caught air before landing on the compost heap placed-there-by-God so…