Fiction by Cristina Rivera Garza translated by Christina MacSweeney, reviewed by Dylan Cook AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF COTTON (Graywolf Press) Years ago, my grandmother showed me a dried out twig studded with fluffy, white bolls of cotton. She explained how she used…
A Poetry Craft Essay by Jacob Butlett THE THREE CLASSICAL CATEGORIES OF POETRY AS VENN DIAGRAM The Narrative, the Dramatic, and the Lyric are broad classical categories of poems. For some, they may seem “too technical” to understand, let alone apply…
Krista Puttler A LITTLE SECRET Sometimes the first draft is… the one. Okay, before you throw your red pens at me (you still print out your drafts and edit by hand, don’t you?), hear me out. Obviously, the first draft…
Nonfiction by Kate Zambreno, reviewed by Anthony Brown ANIMAL STORIES (Transit Books) Somewhere between the latest Crumbl cookie line-up and a bombed-out building, I pause my scroll to look at Moo Deng, the plump pygmy hippo that first went viral…
A Craft Essay by Emma RowanNO “I” IN CNF ? A Less Reflective Approach to Creative Nonfiction Could I be the only CNF writer, the only memoirist, who doesn’t like to talk about myself? Or even worse, my feelings? Let…
A Craft Essay by Erin MurphyALL THE THINGS: WRITING CATALOG POEMS Whatchamacallit used to be my favorite candy bar: the perfect combination of peanut butter crisp coated in a thin layer of chocolate. Then Hershey ruined it in 1987 by…
Sawyer Lovett FOUR WRITING TIPS IT’S SAFE TO IGNORE Write every day. Who has the time in late stage capitalism? There are a myriad of reasons this might not be possible for everyone, especially for marginalized people, parents, and people…
Creative Nonfiction by Sara Quinn Rivara STILL LIFE WITH WOMAN * My sisters and I covered our parents’ minivan in maxi pads as we drove through Ohio, a thin line of cigarette smoke easing from the open windows. Our parents…
Fiction by KSM GROUNDED It wasn’t possible that Gerard had written the note himself. First of all, he’d never spent much time in the Art Books section. And second, it wasn’t his handwriting. But when he pulled the book off…
Visual Poetry by Cindy HillUNTITLED MURAL, ACRYLIC ON FOUR VERTICAL METAL PANELS, 6′ x 8′, c. 1979 …we cover the universe with drawings we have lived.–Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space I. Bedroom Mural I stand on a rockpromontory looking…
Visual Narrative by Clifford Thompson CONNECTICUS DIGGS, Cultural Detective Episode 4: Letters Clifford Thompson’s books include What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man’s Blues and Big Man and the Little Men: A Graphic Novel. His newest book, Jazz June: A Self-Portrait…
Poetry by Robyn Schelenz INTELLIGENCE The developer seized the land during blue winter cold but Jacob’s cows didn’t know. They returned. The shepherd placed metal in his teeth; grass still grew for a thousand other mouths. When I climb the…
Poetry by Jim Stewart IN WHAT CITY DID YOUR PARENTS MEET? The Oyster Bar closed awhile in the pandemic. Before trips to Beacon I went by there with my son, whispered corner to corner in the hallway outside. My Dad…
Flash by Emily RinkemaMAYBE THIS IS WHAT THE END IS LIKE “We could eat the dog,” Sam says. He takes a piece of bread and mops up the sauce left on his plate. It’s his favorite, a roasted red pepper…
Flash by Claudia Monpere GHOST ROOFERS Their bid is high. But I sign. I’ve never worked with a ghost company before. And Ghost Roofers offers a special product; on scalding days their roofs spray cool mist through ceilings and walls.…
Fiction by N.D. Brown SUICIDES Mitchell moved into his mother’s double-wide in time to sign up for Freedom Run High School’s summer football program. The sprints were called “suicides,” and when seen from overhead, the football players’ movement along the…
Flash by Bobby Crace NATIVITY The nativity scene between Denny’s and CVS is still up in February. A strip of grass has forced the characters into a straight line behind a Cabbage Patch Doll strapped to an Igloo cooler. Mary…
Flash by Kevin Spaide LEMON CAKE The cat watches as you eat a piece of the lemon cake you bought this morning even though you know how to make lemon cake and have, in fact, made hundreds of them. At…
Flash Nonfiction by Preeti TalwaiBIRTHDAY PARTY The craziest thing about a C-section is that you don’t feel anything from the chest down, but you can still move and speak just fine. So you make small talk with the nurses who…
Poetry by Simon Parker CARAVAGGIO’S WOMEN In the queue for Caravaggio flesh is made marmoreal a woman in a white dress our baroque beacon who should guide us to a wedding feast where gods are drunk and fallen angels are…
Flash by Louella Lester THE DOCTOR SWEEPS IN On his way past the assistant’s desk he claws my folder from the counter, calls my name, hovers silently for a minute, then lands his oversized feathered feet in front of me,…
Visual Poetry by Elizabeth Johnston Ambrose MASH (A CENTO GAME FOR POETRY LOVERS) M— “The mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night”1 A— “An apartment….the hall…
Flash by Beth Gilstrap THREE MICROS from There Is News Along The Ohio River XII. There is news along the Ohio River: a boy, toddler drunk, walks ahead of his parents whose body language suggests distance, a slow dying of…
Visual Poetry by Katrina Roberts BOX OF AIR Katrina Roberts’s books of poems include Likeness (full-color); Underdog; Friendly Fire; The Quick; How Late Desire Looks; and Lace (chapbook); she’s editor of Because You Asked. Her visual/verbal work appears in publications such as BOMB, Ilanot Review,…
Poetry by Ivy Hoffman EVERYONE HAS CANCER Today at camp, the kids write Andrea Gibson quotes on paper and fold them into airplanes. One of the kids asks me how to spell cancer, waving his arms, a cloud in his…
Flash by Barbara Westwood Diehl FOUR MICROS Scavengers We end our marriage with burnt toast. We end our marriage with cold casserole. We end our marriage with undercooked meat. Untouched. Before, we buttered the toast and ate the blackened bread.…
Fiction by Terri Lewis LEAVING THE STAGE When night fell and lights dimmed, the dream of watching my last play gathered in the shadows and I’d begin to moan. My anguish wasn’t stage fright—that was for the actors—but for the…
Creative Nonfiction by Vivienne Germain FALSE COGNATES OF A REAL ILLNESS actuel ≠ actual En faisant confiance à ce qu’on pense qu’on sait à première vue, on acquiert une sensation de compréhension actuelle. Translation: By trusting what we think we…
Poetry by David John Rosenheim HOTEL RABBINICAL Whisper a benediction to the fly cupped in your palm and release it to the open pane it is grateful for the pale night under its wing A lamb on the slope…
Fiction by Marc Kaufman BRIDGES Rebekah Aronson’s bridge was next. It didn’t look like much, though several of us in class, the 7th graders that also knew her from Hebrew school, had our prints all over it. Fearing we hadn’t…
Fiction by Andrew V. Lorenzen OFF-SCRIPT Long before the fall, before the riots and the unrest, long before it all really began, I experienced a bout of insomnia while backpacking through Southern Asia and began to illegally phone bank voters…
Flash Nonfiction by Aurora Bonner BEDS The cabin is cold after the fire dies mid-night. I watch the rise and fall of my father’s steady breath, just beyond his red whiskers and long black hair. My brother is nestled with…
Flash Nonfiction by Sydney Lea FALLING SHY / NOSTALGIA Falling Shy My boyhood house is not the home of my heart. That wouldn’t surprise you if you knew some things I know, though I won’t examine any of them and…
Autumn Konopka A PROMPT FOR THE REST OF US A few years ago, Cleaver’s Newsletter Editor Layla Murphy offered a prompt for those among us who aren’t necessarily inspired by the holiday season. This year, I’ve decided to steal inspiration…
Nonfiction edited by Mirha-Soleil Ross, reviewed by Willow CampbellGENDERTRASH FROM HELL (LittlePuss Press) From 1993 to 1995, four issues of the zine Gendertrash From Hell were assembled and distributed by genderpress, a project of Canadian activists Mirha-Soleil Ross and Xanthra…
A Writing Tip by Polly Walker Blakemore CLEAN THE HOUSE. CLEAR AWAY WRITER’S BLOCK. I loathe being creatively blocked, but I have a few strategies for dealing with it. Sometimes the most effective is doing something that has nothing to…
Interview by Julian Shendelman A CONVERSATION WITH WARREN R. BASLA, Author of The Blade of Milan (Winged Victory) The Blade of Milan, set in 13th-century Italy, follows Rebecca Guarna as she carves her way free of a gritty past and…
Sharon White THINK LIKE AN ARCHITECT I’ve been thinking about architecture a lot lately. Probably because I’ve been watching Grand Designs on BritBox to wind down after dinner. The houses are amazing inventions that jut out over gullies, or along…
Fiction by Anu Kandikuppa, reviewed by Emily Webber THE CONFINES (Veliz Books) I was initially drawn to Anu Kandikuppa’s debut, The Confines—a short story collection about women in India and the U.S. facing cultural restrictions and a male-dominated hierarchy—because I…
Interview by Autumn Konopka IT’LL PROBABLY GET WORSE: A Conversation with Poet Leonard Gontarek, Author of Ain’t No Angel Gonna Greet Me (BlazeVOX [books]) For more than 20 years, I’ve known Leonard Gontarek as a staple of the Philadelphia poetry…
Marnie Goodfriend THE PERMISSION TO FORGET WHEN WRITING THROUGH PERSONAL TRAUMA A few years ago, I visited Homosassa, Florida, after my mother’s death. She disappeared from my life when I was 12, so I didn’t know much about the life…
Nonfiction by Maddie Ballard, reviewed by Ellen Prentiss Campbell PATCHWORK: A SEWIST’S DIARY (Tin House) Maddie Ballard’s debut, the memoir Patchwork: A Sewist’s Diary, offers extended reflection on a significant recent period in the author’s life. Using spare first-person prose,…
A Craft Essay by Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo HOW TO WRITE A LOVE POEM FIRSTS My first poem was about shooting stars. I was eight and inspired by a notebook with an illustration of a star flying across the pink-lined pages. I…
A Writing Tip by Tim Weed UNLOCK NEW ENERGY WITH MULTIPLE POINTS OF VIEW Point of view is one of the most important choices a novelist makes, yet many writers don’t give it the attention it deserves. The wrong choice…
Interview by Autumn Konopka YOU CAN ONLY BE ONE PERSON: A Conversation About Vulnerability vs. Pseudonyms with Memoirist Nicole Dubois Nicole DuBois considered herself “the quintessential twenty-first century liberated woman”—a successful professional, self-sufficient individual, devoted mother, committed wife. By the…
Fiction by Banu Mushtaq translated by Deepa Bhasthi, reviewed by Mehruba Chowdhury HEART LAMP (And Other Stories) As a Muslim woman, I am frequently frustrated by the way Western media perceives and portrays our lives, often obscuring the complex realities…
Farin Martinez WHEN THE PAGE GOES BLANK: HOW WALKING UNLOCKS NARRATIVE Your protagonist won’t move. Your plot problem sits immobile on the page, and despite hours of desk time, you cannot write your way through it. You’ve tried outlining. You’ve…
Poetry by Carissa Natalia Baconguis, reviewed by Adam Michael Finney SACRED AND PERISHABLE (Nine Syllables Press) In Sacred and Perishable, Carissa Natalia Baconguis, elevates queer friendship through the story of Carlos and Dian. With a non-linear narrative arc that oscillates…
Interview by Amy Beth Sisson GO ABOVE YOUR NERVE: An Interview With Linda Norton About Cloud Of Witnesses: Essays, Poems, Collages (BlazeVOX [books]) Linda Norton’s latest book, Cloud of Witnesses: Essays, Poems, Collages, contains essays about life, literature, and writing;…
Interview by Abby Alten Schwartz A CONVERSATION WITH JOCELYN JANE COX, AUTHOR OF MOTION DAZZLE (Vine Leaves Press) Motion dazzle: a form of camouflage found in nature, where high-contrast patterns, like a zebra’s stripes, confuse predators by distorting the perception…