ASK JUNE: The Wedding-Wrecking Sister and the Loose-Lipped Teacher

Ask June Cleaver

Dear June,

Zeb, a guy who works at my office, just gave notice because he got a job teaching art at a private school. Today when we were all sitting around after our monthly all -staff meeting—which is one of the only times I’ve ever seen him, since he’s in another department and building—somebody asked him about the school. After telling people where it is, how many kids go there, and so forth, he summed it up as “a fancy school for spoiled fucked-up rich kids.”

PLAYING CATCH WITH STRANGERS, essays by Bob Brody, reviewed by Colleen Davis

Playing Catch with Strangers consists of a long series of short essays. Most were written for print or online publications and not originally intended as book chapters. They are clean, straightforward, and easy to read. They are also salutary—in the sense of promoting better mental health and positive emotions. Brody reminds us of the many gifts that life offers to those who pay it close attention.

THE RADICAL ELEMENT: 12 Stories of Daredevils, Debutantes, and Other Dauntless Girls, edited by Jessica Spotswood, reviewed by Maureen Sullivan

The Radical Element: 12 Stories of Daredevils, Debutantes, and Other Dauntless Girls is an anthology of feminist fiction, celebrating what editor Jessica Spotswood calls in her introduction the “quiet badassery” of young heroines taking charge of their own identities. This collection is a follow-up to A Tyranny of Petticoats: 15 Stories of Belles, Bank Robbers, and other Badass Girls, also edited by Jessica Spotswood. Similar to the first volume, the pieces in The Radical Element span a wide range of historical time periods and geographic locations, from 1838 Georgia to 20th century Boston. A brief author’s note follows each story, with additional information on the historical context or the inspiration behind the work.

BAD JOBS AND POOR DECISIONS Dispatches from the Working Class, a memoir by J.R. Helton, reviewed by Robert Sorrell

The jacket of J.R. Helton’s memoir, Bad Jobs and Poor Decisions: Dispatches from the Working Class, shows an assortment of loose black-and-white sketches: a marijuana leaf, a packet of cigarettes, a typewriter, crumpled beer cans, lines of (presumably) cocaine, a gun, a cockroach. Among them, figures emerge: A man’s face covered in huge beads of sweat, a woman with long dark hair shown from the shoulders up, a pole dancer. These images appear regularly in each of the seven long anecdotes that make up Bad Jobs, working as signifiers of a place, time, and social class. The place is Austin, Texas and the time is when the tail end of the 1970s met the Reagan 1980s.

A CONVERSATION WITH KIM MAGOWAN, AUTHOR OF UNDOING FROM MOON CITY PRESS. Interview by Yasmina Din Madden

If you’re a fan of short fiction, it’s likely you’ve come across Kim Magowan’s witty and layered stories in one of the many venues her work has appeared in. I met Kim a few years ago, and since then she’s become a go-to writer for feedback on my own work. Additionally, Kim’s innovative flash stories, particularly those that experiment with form and structure, have been an invaluable resource in the flash workshops that I teach. Last month, Kim’s collection, Undoing, winner of the Moon City Short Fiction Award, was published by Moon City Press, and next spring her novel, The Light Source, will be published by 7:13 Books. Magowan’s female characters, who often engage in what many might consider taboo behavior, are complex, intelligent, difficult, and compelling women.

THE PRICE GUIDE TO THE OCCULT, a young adult novel by Leslye Walton, reviewed by Brandon Stanwyck

For a novel about witches, magic, and family curses, Leslye Walton’s The Price Guide to the Occult has a lot to say about humanity. More than a century ago, a witch named Rona Blackburn landed on Anathema Island, where she was met with fear and vexation from the island’s founding families. Determined to rid their island of her “as the tide erases footprints in the sand,” they burned her home down. So she, naturally, cursed their entire bloodlines

PLAYING WITH DYNAMITE, a memoir by Sharon Harrigan, reviewed by Brian Burmeister

Who we are is a complicated thing. Interactions influence perceptions, and perceptions influence memories. Having lost her father in a tragic accident when she was only seven, author Sharon Harrigan attempts to unravel the mystery of the man her father was in the powerful new memoir Playing with Dynamite. “I was relieved when he died,” her brother wrote her in an email. “It’s terrible to say, but it’s true.”

TEETH by Claire Stamler-Goody

He started with her teeth because he was sick of the expensive foods she’d eat: crusty breads, chewy steaks, stubborn fruits bitten off their pits and stems. When he first told her, she was outraged and not at all compliant. But he knew her better even than she knew herself. She would come around, and she did. She was in pain for weeks but never complained. They ate soup three times a day and saved about fifty dollars a month.

VACATIONING AFTER THE DIVORCE by Jessica Lampard

The floor of my Honda is maps stretched wide, the radio all static as I pass rusted mailboxes, farmland, orchards. Leaves are flushing orange—soon much of this scenery will break and fall. The plummet of fruits from boughs, the thick perfume of ripeness.

BLUE BOY by Joseph Bathanti

Gloria Mastroantonio’s hair, like long coils of blood sausage, clung netted to the back of her head. Tucci, she said, was a bastard for opening that dive next door. Go-go girls in cages dangling from rafters. Streetwalkers with skirts up to their asses. The projects puking tizzones into the avenue. Drinking, doping, carousing all night. In the morning, sidewalks treacherous with smashed quarts of Colt 45. She’d give them Black Power. Time to stick the For Sale sign in the yard and poor-mouth out to the suburbs like the rest of the greenhorns.

SUNSPOTS by Julia Leverone

The hair the doctors cut to clear
from underneath the stitches,
long and light,
marbled my black shirt.
As with solar flares
storming, I was learning and losing
hot shapes rapidly,
cultivating the worry
sparking my scalp, my nape, my spine,
and on around

BEFORE ROSES MEANT FIRE by Kathryn Nuernberger

A rose means many things and only some of it is love. Desdemona means innocence. Sir Galahad, humility. Give Dainty Bess to show appreciation. Silver Shadow for admiration. You Only Live Once for gratitude. Eleanor is the lavender of love at first sight. So too is the plum of Night Owls. The Middlebrough Football Club is the cultivar for desire and enthusiastic passion. Its particular shade of orange is as ridiculous as a riot. Red as Satchmo, red as Happy Christmas, red as City of Leeds. Red means enduring passion. From the beginning a rose meant there was an old poet who thought himself unreasonably clever and was obsessed with the virginity of much younger women. From the same, but less quoted beginning, roses meant fire.

THE NURSES by Verónica Jordán-Sardi

They were the only friends I had. All of them had palms that changed colors when they stroked my hair, picked up an iron pot or peeled yucca. I remember one of them with more love than the rest—her palms turned purple when she showed me her lifelines. She was never able to show me her life, though. She would turn her hands up and the bright point of an amethyst’s reflection would lacquer her palms. At one point, I think there were five.

REFLECTING by Youssef Helmi

It was one of those days, those clear May days, where the clouds are short brush strokes of white, the sky is that one shade of blue, and the water is so clear the world above and below becomes one on the surface. We were walking by the river and we saw ourselves in the water, laughing and living. We saw ourselves, and we stopped and waved and yearned. We wished to be them–what made them better than us?

SENESCENCE by Jonathan Cardew

It was midnight or a little after when the octopuses emerged from the ocean. They were doing it all along the beachfront. Suction-cupping their way away from water. Their bodies like a curtain’s hem—fluttering in the foreign air.

THE CHILDREN by John Sibley Williams

John Sibley WilliamsTHE CHILDREN Back when play carried less grief, our darkness ruined only a half-acre or so of the light. The rest was all tire swings & spring-bound horses. Leaping over cracks in concrete to save your mother’s spine.…

TRAIN FOR GLORY by Roy Bentley

After the Washing of the Feet, an old woman gets up.
She reaches into a basket. Takes out a couple of snakes.
The sound of rattlesnakes? Pennies nickels dimes poured
from a Mason jar, if loose change was as unpredictable as
an Old Testament God or a job in a mine where generations
exhaust hope. She drapes a snake over each palm and thumb,
welcomes a show of fangs. The pleats of her skirt are starched
and each reptile, in turn, starts to rub against the crenellations.

FIFTY-FIFTY by Avery Bufkin

Her doctor said he’d sign us up, you know, for the trial. That either she’d get the real drug or the fake one, and we wouldn’t know which, of course. But fifty-fifty, you got to think that’s a pretty good shot and all. I said that to her in the car afterwards. “Pretty good shot,” I said. “I think we’ve got it.”

SUDDENLY by Mary Crow

at park's edge a storm appeared returning from its tour of Vienna, and the car sped away

in dust devils, leaving me behind with existing treaties to dream some heroic stand while

rumors of air raids rose like smoke above the city and buildings burst into flame for the

greater good, pianos power-diving our forgotten empire-ah, but then you were

SHAFT by A.E. Weisgerber

The Torn Hat operates as a lunch counter from 10 am to 2 pm. The wood is petrified and glossy, like the Legion Hall’s. Walter arrives. The special is a ham sandwich, a pickle, a glass of beer with a refill for two dollars and fifty cents. The butter is in an open dish. Walter is a man’s man. He will talk about the Yankees, the traffic, Gordon Parks’s film. He delivers bread. Walter’s got a route. He saved five men in Korea. They are not close but they are best friends. His wife—he loves her—tried to throw away his fighting knife once, was tired of seeing it at the dinner table. He made her dig it out at the curb. He threw away his Purple Hearts. Those he let go. He likes to smear a little butter on the rim of his glass and keep his head down.

PULP by Jules Archer

I go grocery shopping for Mom. Her face bandaged, she remains in the car and hands over the list. She has done it to herself and yet, being seen in public is not an option. She tells me to only buy grapefruits if they're less than a dollar a pound. I buy them anyway. I take the scold.

GUTSHOT by Thomas Barnes

The lucky streak ran out when the air rifle went off.

I felt the little ragged hole in my shirt. It didn’t feel like anything at all. Too small to be significant. Johnny let the air rifle swing to his side, the ends of his teeth glittering. Kali fell off the stump she was sitting on. They were all waiting for me to do something. I heard blood in my ears. Maybe they’d thought I’d keel over and die, I’m thinking.

THE BROWNIES AT WORK by Nance Van Winckel

Nance Van WinckelTHE BROWNIES AT WORK Welcome to Cleaver’s brand new genre, INTERMEDIA, where word and image intersect to create newly mediated spaces between the literal and the figurative—part word, part image, and deviantly part-way! And what better way to…

SECOND THOUGHTS by Karen Zey

Schools were opening in less than a week. The five-year-old boy in front of me had autism. He couldn’t speak. His eyes flitted like hummingbirds over the hundreds of colorful toys and books in the classroom. The boy’s father, Mr. Nassar, sat stiffly on a tiny chair next to his son. He had come to register the child for regular kindergarten.

THE WALL by Susan Knox

I’ll do it, Love,” my newly retired husband, Weldon, said when I mentioned our book collection needed cleaning. It took him two years to finish the job. I knew the books were getting dirty again, but I held my tongue—I didn’t want to dust them.

SPLINTER by Susan G. Bouchard

It’s what your arms did when you fell on them, your bones osteoporotic from the decades you haven’t spent taking care of yourself.  You like to say that you get more than enough calcium from all the cheese you eat, but it’s childish logic for a mother to offer.  We both know why this happened.  We knew the inevitability of this catastrophe, we just didn’t know how it would manifest itself.

AFTER TODAY by Sarah Walker

Jake pulled up in a red Toyota truck. It looked brand new. He rolled down the window and grinned. His teeth looked like they had been bleached, and his dark hair was a little longer at the top, short on the sides.

I walked to the passenger door, climbed inside. He set his hand on my shoulder and squeezed, his smile still huge, but I laughed and shrugged so his hand fell away. I adjusted the seat, sitting as far back as Jake and rolled down the window. The only way to keep things normal was to pretend like nothing had changed, and he caught on, ripping down the dirt road so fast we didn’t have time to think about anything but the speed.

FILTER FEEDING by Ploi Pirapokin

Hours before the British surrendered, Japanese soldiers entered the school being used as a hospital at the front lines. They bayoneted wounded soldiers incapable of hiding, gang-raped the nurses, and mutilated every single person inside. Carcasses were left out like empty s

WHAT MATTERS IS OUR HANDS by Mars Hu

Mars HuWHAT MATTERS IS OUR HANDS: after Charlottesville: anti-racism protesters It’s not that your mother was afraid herself, or of your teeth, or of everything you curl your body towards. Your mother is shivering the way mothers do when their…

THE RED MOON by Mark A. Nobles

Mark A. NoblesTHE RED MOON My father turned into the driveway a little too fast, just like he always did. The Studebaker’s engine growled and the spring shocks squealed as my mother held her breath and closed her eyes, and…

gravy strain by Davy Knittle

thin a little ice for me
but keep the slip

melt slouches melt-ward
and it's regular bad

is it time yet
I think it's not yet time to

wear my feelings but also
read them: top them on a pizza

pour them in a sinkhole
drink them from a fountain

UNDERSONG by Martha Zweig

Martha ZweigUNDERSONG Dawn: eight neighborhood bullies congregate spoiling to tweak a perfect day. They stalk tinfoil glints in the gutter & dangle dead moles. Arise & go to Innisfree, wattles & daubs! Poetical lovers there surround one another & bristle…

COLONIZING THE WORLD by Cliff Saunders

Cliff SaundersCOLONIZING THE WORLD i. The walking stick: an unlikely mast a bit long-in-the-tooth. ii. Good news: red doors beckon from the North Pole. They’re out there, and so very conflicted. iii. Frozen in time: the dark freeway where nature…

TWO FLASH PIECES by Taylor Lorenzo

When you reach the top, do not ring the bell. Keep climbing. Don’t stop until you have broken through the roof. The air will be cool when you take your first gasp of breath on the other side. You will notice you have not broken through the shingles of the roof. Instead, you’ll find yourself in clean-shaven grass. In front of you, there will be a golf ball tee. Place your chin on the tee and let go of the rope.

FRANCES by Maria Brandt

Frances had skipped two periods before she realized what was going on. “I’m lucky,” she bragged to Sarah over milkshakes at the corner store, “I haven’t had my period in eight weeks, no tampons for me, I beat the system.” Sarah’s mouth dropped and that’s when Frances became aware of the extent of her self-deceit. Now, just days later, she sits cross-legged on the floor in Jack’s bedroom shuffling a deck of cards while Jack moves laundry from the washer to the dryer in the basement, his parents in the city at a hospital benefit.

MISVENERATION OF THE SAINT OF LOST THINGS by Nikki Stavile

Toni is a German shepherd. She shares my father’s name. She’s choking on Italian leather shoes and I take her out on the front porch. The utilities man brandishes the shutoff notice. He mistakes the red Fiat X-19 for my father’s girlfriend. The prospective tenant mistakes me for my father’s secretary. In the house, there is a flaming oven, which I mistake for a family argument. My baby sister totters from the half-baked rum cheesecake. I mistake her for my father’s ex. My father mistakes my middle sister for a lesbian. He mistakes me for a Christian. He presents me with a low-cut striped blouse.

1968 by Matt Muth

For three nights we watched Vietnam
documentaries, mom slipping
into the TV, the TV blooming
the blossom of '68
back at her. What an age
it is: Detroit shoveling
the ashes, her brother

TWO POEMS by Lee Sennish

Cars backed up to where the geraniums
manned the empty lifeboats in the square,
we went to see the grounded whale.
The shale bit through our sneakers.
Maggie up on your shoulders,
the sunset spilling its grenadine

MIXED MEDIUM ART by Stuti Pachisia

Stuti PachisiaMIXED MEDIUM ART Scenery 1: The sky is a permanent state of dawn, or dusk, if you will, and I have been having a hard time breathing. This, the inability to breathe, I mean, began long before the sky…

TOMB SONG, a novel by Julián Herbert, reviewed by Katharine Coldiron

What an odd book Tomb Song is. It contains prose both beautiful and profane, extensive self-awareness and a troubling level of self-ignorance. Its author and its narrator blur together into an entity that is never quite one or the other, and it doesn’t distinguish between fiction and nonfiction with especial meticulousness. That is, the narrator and the author have the same name, the same wife and child, the same job, and the same literary accomplishments. It remains undefined whether, in what passages, and to what extent Herbert has fictionalized his life to write this book, which a reviewer in a Chilean newspaper called “an elegy to his mother.”

FOUND IN TRANSLATION: How my Memoir of Life Overseas Turned into a Novella, a Craft Essay by Ele Pawelski

Slipping my reality into fiction was not overly difficult for two reasons: first, the story was taking place some years after I’d left Kabul. While I could picture the Kabul, I’d lived in, I also knew it had changed as the Taliban continued to creep up and in. Second, once I attributed a personal anecdote to a character, I found I no longer owned it. Rather, I sought ways to transform it, playing with the facts to fit the narrative. This was the case for all the characters, including the aid worker, who I fashioned after myself. In most cases, I wanted to add details that I didn’t remember to enrich the descriptions or create tension.

Join our other 6,259 subscribers!

Use this form to receive a free subscription to our quarterly literary magazine. You'll also receive occasional newsletters with tips on writing and publishing and info about our seasonal writing workshops.