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CHRISTMAS LIGHTS IN A TOWN WITH A POPULATION OF 500 by Neil Boyack

CHRISTMAS LIGHTS IN A TOWN WITH A POPULATION OF 500
by Neil Boyack

In the flat, heavy heat, I was walking home from the Christmas dinner in our small country town with my wife. There was a cool change trying to affect the heatwave that had made everyone sweat and complain for the past week and as a result there were muscles of blustery wind, and random flashes of lightning tailed by crunching thunder; a thunder that really never ended, a continual electric sound like a large concrete ball rolling around on the wooden floor of an old Scout Hall.

SHARPIE by Jason Newport

Rowena moves the side of the Sharpie gradually down the bridge of my nose, taking a turn over my nostrils and across my lips. I pucker. The Sharpie glides around the bulge. I try to see the mark on the wall. “Don’t,” she commands, pressing my chin back into place so the Sharpie can complete its journey around my jaw and along my Adam’s apple. When the line ends, she lets me step back with her to look. My amorous silhouette graces the ladies’ room wall in Harp’s Bar. We’ve already done Rowena’s outline in the men’s room, beside the paper towel dispenser. I grin at her, I think, or near her. Her hair is orange lava. She frowns at me, concentrating, raises the Sharpie, zeroing in across the myriad quantum reaches of space, time, and chance, and Sharpies a big black dot on the end of my nose.

SHARPIE
by Jason Newport

Rowena moves the side of the Sharpie gradually down the bridge of my nose, taking a turn over my nostrils and across my lips. I pucker. The Sharpie glides around the bulge. I try to see the mark on the wall. “Don’t,” she commands, pressing my chin back into place so the Sharpie can complete its journey around my jaw and along my Adam’s apple. When the line ends, she lets me step back with her to look. My amorous silhouette graces the ladies’ room wall in Harp’s Bar. We’ve already done Rowena’s outline in the men’s room, beside the paper towel dispenser. I grin at her, I think, or near her. Her hair is orange lava. She frowns at me, concentrating, raises the Sharpie, zeroing in across the myriad quantum reaches of space, time, and chance, and Sharpies a big black dot on the end of my nose.

PERFECT DISCONTINUITY by F.J. Bergmann

PERFECT DISCONTINUITY
by F.J. Bergmann

My, what a day we’ve had! Nothing like forgetting
whatever it was we had to do and wherever it was
we had to be, achieving perfect discontinuity with
the rest of the universe, a day late and a dollar short—
well, it runs into 5 figures if you listen to the IRS—
I prefer to listen to death metal, which if you crank up
loud enough can make whatever’s going on inside
your head seem mellow and serene in comparison,
and it also seems to facilitate driving real fast
on strange roads in the dark, as a sort of bonus.

LOST by Andrea Jarrell

LOST
by Andrea Jarrell

It’s like this: a few weeks ago, my husband got me one of those step counters and now I’m obsessed. On the night in question, he happened to be out of town. I had yet to reach my 10,000-step goal, so I leashed up my two mutts and told my 16-year-old son I’d be back in half an hour. The night was cold. The dogs were excited by the scent of deer scat in the air.

APPLES ON THE CUTTING BOARD by Gabrielle Campagnano

APPLES ON THE CUTTING BOARD
by Gabrielle Campagnano

It started a simple gesture—
my father poet queried about missing verba question about
peeling apples best
and when to leave them alone.

The sun ripened over
our kitchen window
and soon we were picking
seven tons of fruit.

EMERGENCIES, IN THE EVENT OF by Melissa Ostrom

EMERGENCIES, IN THE EVENT OF
by Melissa Ostrom

You cannot outrun it. Stand and wave both fists. Hide your palms. Speak softly. If it charges, curl up on your side, tuck in your head and project beach ball harmlessness.
Feel free to breathe. This is no respiratory contagion. But avoid open sores and exchanging bodily fluids. Maybe cancel your trip.

POLAR BEARS by Colleen Davis

Colleen DavisPOLAR BEARS I hadn’t spent a winter with my mom since high school. What I recalled from childhood winters was sweet: snow forts and sleigh rides that ended with hot cocoa. It never occurred to me that my parents’…

IF NOTHING CHANGES by Angelique Stevens

IF NOTHING CHANGES
by Angelique Stevens

I was twelve and sitting in the back of the Number 5 city bus with a bag of cheap Christmas presents when I saw my dad stagger up the steps. I was about to call to him but stopped myself. He had fumbled with his change too long to be sober. I slunk in my seat and tried to make myself invisible. He lurched his way to the front, talking and spitting as he moved. I watched him from behind my propped-up arm and wished it were any other night but Christmas Eve.

IN A SPRAY OF SPARKS: Emotion, Sincerity, and the “Skittery Poem of Our Moment” by J.G. McClure

J.G. McClure Author Photo

IN A SPRAY OF SPARKS:
Emotion, Sincerity, and the “Skittery Poem of Our Moment”
by J.G. McClure

Pick up any fashionable poetry journal and you’re likely to see an example of what Tony Hoagland has called the “Skittery Poem of Our Moment.” Such a poem does not simply lack coherence; it actively resists it....

The characteristics are familiar: leaping from thought to thought, sharply-written-but-largely-nonsensical phrases, quirky humor, an assertive-yet-evasive voice, and so on. We move from talk to skin to cities to tubas to friends, never afforded the chance to stop and consider any one element. The mode is so widespread as to be instantly recognizable: it is what many readers likely think of immediately upon hearing the phrase contemporary poetry....

SAY IT AGAIN, BUT BETTER: RESISTANCE AND REVISION by Devi S. Laskar

SAY IT AGAIN, BUT BETTER:
Resistance and Revision
by Devi S. Laskar

Writers get writers’ block. Happens to everyone at one point or another. It happens to some writers every solstice, every month, every fortnight. I struggle every day.

Thanks to a recommendation from an old friend, I’ve been reading Steven Pressfield’s really great book, The War of Art, which talks about resistance and how we as writers get sucked in to the war of Doing Anything But the Writing That is Most Important to Us.

Resistance, as Pressfield calls it, comes in many forms, including but not limited to: fear, self-doubt, self-dramatization, victimhood, isolation and general unhappiness.

Brief Eulogies at Roadside Shrines by Mark Lyons reviewed by Jon Busch

BRIEF EULOGIES AT ROADSIDE SHRINES
by Mark Lyons
Wild River Books, 216 pages

reviewed by Jon Busch

“...they just stick him in the ground with no stone, no nothin’. That ain’t right I say to myself.”

This short passage from “He Sure Do Want to Fly”, one of the many superb pieces in Mark Lyons’ most recent short story collection, Brief Eulogies at Roadside Shrines, summarizes the intent of the work precisely. With the assurance and ease of a well-worn traveler, Mr. Lyons escorts the reader on a voyage through the lonely corners of North America, erecting descanos—roadside memorials—along the way. Each story, in its own manner, is an offering to the Gods of forgotten souls, or as the eponymous hero of the story, “Arnold’s Roadside Café” eloquently states, “The Great God of Roadkill.”

The collection pulses with a tragic calmness akin to the writings of Carver or Cheever. Beneath every scene and absurd occurrence lurks a temperate sadness. While the explored themes of isolation, loneliness and death are heavy, the electric tone of the prose persistently enthralls. Here is Lyons’ energy and command of voice revealed by Blue-J, the protagonist of “He Sure Do Want to Fly,” describing a The Rancho, a rehab facility:

THE MISEDUCATION OF THE POET: High School and the Fear of Poetry by J.G. McClure

J.G. McClure Author Photo

THE MISEDUCATION OF THE POET:
High School and the Fear of Poetry
by J.G. McClure

When I was an undergraduate taking one of my first poetry workshops, my poet-professor joked that “high school is where poetry goes to die.” I chuckled, thinking he was simply making fun of the melodramatic effusions of teenage writers.

I’ve since come to realize that what he was getting at is a much more systemic problem: that the way we’re taught about poetry in high school (the last time that many people will likely ever read a poem) bleeds the living energy from poetry and teaches students that the art is nothing but the dusty stuff of a museum of antiquities.

I’ve since come to realize that what he was getting at is a much more systemic problem: that the way we’re taught about poetry in high school (the last time that many people will likely ever read a poem) bleeds the living energy from poetry and teaches students that the art is nothing but the dusty stuff of a museum of antiquities.

ORPHANS by Hadrien Laroche reviewed by Jamie Fisher

ORPHANS
by Hadrien Laroche
translated by Jan Steyn and Caite Dolan-Leach
Dalkey Archive Press, 130 pages

reviewed by Jamie Fisher

Orphans starts with an advisory warning from the translators. Orphan, they explain, has a slightly different meaning in French: orphelin describes not only a child who has lost her parents, but a child who has lost only one parent.

The explanation is necessary, but also somewhat inadequate. Looking back along our linguistic family tree, orphan shrinks and dilates to cover so much more. In Latin an orbus is “bereft”; in Old English ierfa, an “heir,” with close ties to “suffering” and “trouble”; in Old Church Slavonic, a rabu (think robot) is a “slave” or “servant.” When we work our way back to Proto-Indo-European, orbho means “bereft of father,” but also “deprived of free status.” Orphan begins to sound simultaneously like someone who has lost his parents and someone who is inescapably tied to them...

IN THE EVENT OF FULL DISCLOSURE by Cynthia Atkins reviewed by Arya F. Jenkins

IN THE EVENT OF FULL DISCLOSURE
by Cynthia Atkins
CW Books, 95 pages

reviewed by Arya F. Jenkins

Questions about the past, memory and legacy interlink with everyday images that haunt the reader in Cynthia Atkins’s second volume of poetry, In the Event of Full Disclosure. Atkins’s poems arch into a tree extending way beyond herself, into family, society, and community, while inviting the reader to share in her concerns. If there is wholeness and power to be achieved, the poet seems to be saying, it is recognizing one’s humanness and interconnectedness...

BLOWIN’ IT by Wintfred Huskey reviewed by Claire Rudy Foster

BLOWIN’ IT
by Wintfred Huskey
The Head & The Hand Press, 355 pages

reviewed by Claire Rudy Foster

Although the motif of the try-hard hipster wore thin over a decade ago, it’s still being trotted out in popular films, cartoons, articles, and so forth. The accusation of hipster-ness, which is distinct from being “hip,” at least where I live, is a serious one.

Hipsters are characterized by a blissful ignorance that borders on denial. (Peter Pan was probably the original hipster.) A hipster appropriates the costumes of other characters and blends them, creating a deliberate pastiche of playful yet ironic cultural references....

ON THE ABOLITION OF ALL POLITICAL PARTIES by Simone Weil, translated by Simon Leys reviewed by Ana Schwartz

ON THE ABOLITION OF ALL POLITICAL PARTIES
by Simone Weil, translated by Simon Leys
New York Reviews of Books, 71 pages

reviewed by Ana Schwartz

When Albert Camus heard that he had won the Nobel Prize in 1957, he ran and hid. Averse to the frenzy of the press, he sought refuge in the home of a friend. He landed at the apartment of the family of Simone Weil in Paris’s 6th Arrondissement. Another friend, Czeslaw Milosz, in an essay on Weil, recalls that home fondly. He notes the humble, ink-stain-covered kitchen table, and he recalls the generous hospitality of Mme. Weil, mother of the young philosopher. He all but represents the quality of morning light illuminating the desk at which the young Weil would do her thinking. He never directly states that by 1957, Weil had been dead for almost fifteen years....

TOTEMPOLE by Sanford Friedman reviewed by Derek M. Brown

TOTEMPOLE
by Sanford Friedman
NYRB, 419 pages

reviewed by Derek M. Brown

It is commonly held that the figure at the base of a totem pole is the least significant, but if we are to believe the young craftsman-cum-love interest of Sanford Freidman’s protagonist, Stephen Wolfe, this figure is the most vital, as it provides the final chapter to the structure’s story.

Originally published in 1965, Totempole was revered and reviled for its unbridled depiction of a bourgeoning homosexual at a time when such themes were limited to the context of a cautionary tale. Unless the protagonist arrived at a much deserved tragic end, such works were thought to encourage morally untenable behaviors and corrupt the reading public. This work, however, provided a beacon of hope for those who thought themselves condemned....

Bolaño: A BIOGRAPHY IN CONVERSATIONS by Mónica Maristain reviewed by Ana Schwartz

Bolaño: A BIOGRAPHY IN CONVERSATIONS
by Mónica Maristain
Melville House, 288 pages

reviewed by Ana Schwartz

“Companionable Fictions”

The first section of Roberto Bolaño’s 2666 describes a small but ardent group of academic literary critics who dedicate their lives to the work of an obscure German author, Benno von Archimboldi. Almost five hundred pages later, in the last section, “The Part About Archimboldi” Bolaño finally introduces the author. In between stretch many strange adventures, but most are not directly related to the work of the author. But neither, really, was the first part, “The Part About the Critics.” Instead, Bolaño narrates the friendships and rivalries of four dedicated readers. If not for the table of contents, the fictitious novelist would appear to be merely the occasion to build a story out of these otherwise unremarkable lives. Actually, for the characters, Archimboldi, who keeps evading their grasp, really does turn out to be an excuse for them all to sustain richer and more companionable lives....

PANIC IN A SUITCASE by Yelena Akhtiorskaya reviewed by Michelle Fost

PANIC IN A SUITCASE
by Yelena Akhtiorskaya
Riverhead Books, 307 pages

reviewed by Michelle Fost

Late in Yelena Akhtiorskaya’s debut novel, Panic in a Suitcase, a character recalls a classic tale “about the lady who goes to see the rabbi and complains that life is so terrible with her slob of a husband and the crying children in a tiny apartment with such neighbors you start to think it might be better to be homeless, and the rabbi advises the lady to get a goat…” In the version I remember, the rabbi continues recommending that the lady bring another animal, and then another, one at a time, into her very crowded house, until finally, when the family is suitably miserable, he recommends getting rid of all the animals. Back to where they started—the original crowded condition—suddenly feels luxuriously spacious, and the family can’t thank the rabbi enough.

THE WOMAN WHO BORROWED MEMORIES by Tove Jansson reviewed by Jamie Fisher

THE WOMAN WHO BORROWED MEMORIES
by Tove Jansson
Trans. Tomas Teal, Silvester Mazzarella
NYRB Classics, 283 pages

reviewed by Jamie Fisher

Early on in a story in the new collection of Tove Jansson’s work, The Woman Who Borrowed Memories, a man named Stein takes over a celebrated newspaper strip. “Tell me something,” an older cartoonist asks him. “Are you one of those people who are prevented from doing Great Art because they draw comic strips?”

“Not at all,” Stein assures him.

“Good for you,” the man replies. “They’re insufferable. They're neither fish nor fowl and they can't stop talking about it.”

HOW WE CAME UPON THE COLONY by Ross White reviewed by J.G. McClure

HOW WE CAME UPON THE COLONY
by Ross White
Unicorn Press, 24 pages

reviewed by J.G. McClure

Ross White’s first chapbook, How We Came Upon the Colony, transports us to a strange world where the contemporary and the ancient commingle, and where nothing is ever quite what we first expect. Take “Downturn,” which opens:

What’s gone remains gone. When the Library at Alexandria
burned, scroll lit scroll. Whole languages died there.
The Colossus at Rhodes, felled by earthquake,
was eventually disassembled under the orders of the caliph,
carted off by camel, and smelted like scrap....
...

CONQUISTADOR OF THE USELESS by Joshua Isard reviewed by Jon Busch

CONQUISTADOR OF THE USELESS
by Joshua Isard
Cinco Puntos Press, 249 pages

reviewed by Jon Busch

Joshua Isard’s Conquistador of the Useless is a novel of vertices, exploring the terrain of transitions, where cultural ethos and personal identity evolve in phase. It is this vague middle ground, the no-man’s-land between good ol’ days and dreary futures, where our protagonist Nathan Wavelsky traverses in apathetic strides. The use of this structure manifests in an insightful and poignant exploration of meaning and meaninglessness in contemporary life. What does it mean to live outside the narrative arc?

The novel opens with Nathan and his wife Lisa moving out of the city of Philadelphia and into the suburbs. The move marks a return to the land of his childhood and the end of his rebellious twenties. But Nathan isn’t home in either world. He is neither young nor old, urban nor suburban. The era of his young adulthood has concluded and the shifting cultural tide presents him with the uncomfortable truth that all of his once grandiose, youthful angst has accomplished nothing—the experiences which once felt unique and infused with importance were, in fact, no more than the standard benchmarks of growth that all young people pass.

Augustus by John Williams reviewed by Ana Schwartz

AUGUSTUS
by John Williams
NYRB Books, 305 pages

reviewed by Ana Schwartz

“Notable Romans”

Those who studied Latin in high school or college might recognize the feeling with which Georg Lukacs introduces his Theory of the Novel. Although the book was published a century ago, it still holds valuable insight into the pleasures of reading. In the introductory sentences he describes those happy ages when the world and self were each visible with sharp distinction. Discrete they were, but also intimately familiar to each other. Lukacs’ framework is present in the first lists of Latin vocabulary; these collections of words alert contemporary readers to a world in which a word meant itself and at the same time more than itself. For example, ferro—iron—could denote the reliable metal; it could metonymically represent a sword made out of iron; and it could metaphorically represent any object of potentially harmful strength. These vocabulary lists imply a world in which such figures were useful, a world in which they could and would be deployed with practiced subtlety, perhaps in response to iron-willed violence.

OFFICE SUPPLIES by Brian Clifton

Brian CliftonOFFICE SUPPLIES In the back, a Formica table waits on off-white industrial tile. We clock- out, pull paperclips from our throats: purple ones, yellow ones, metallic, pink. Our mouths never seem satisfied. We cough them up enough in jagged…

THE CONVERSATION by Robert Pulwer

Robert Pulwar

Robert PulwerTHE CONVERSATION “Are you an anti-Semite?” I looked up from my mother’s crumbling copy of Journey to the End of the Night, which I had pilfered during my last visit home. I was so shocked to hear that someone…

MACARONS by Shannon Sweetnam

Shannon Sweetnam

Shannon SweetnamMACARONS We were in the Clotted Cow when we got the call. “I found four thermometers, but they’re all rectal,” Dad shouted over the phone. “Rectal?” I asked, as I licked buttercream frosting off my fingers. “What do you…

WHAT THE CLOUDS BRING by Chila Woychik

Chila Woychik

Chila WoychikWHAT THE CLOUDS BRING Five years ago, the eastern part of this state was submerged—a Midwestern Katrina. Waters from a snowy winter mixed with an especially rainy spring and ran down our rivers, the Mississippi, the Iowa, the Cedar,…

DEADBOLT by Alicia L. Gleason

Alicia L. Gleason

Alicia L. GleasonDEADBOLT I always end up back at the apartment on 12th street. We moved in on a dim Saturday morning. Remember how you found that kinked key in the cabinet beneath the sink? A key someone before us…

FEIGN & CUT by Tony Tracy

Tony TracyFEIGN & CUT Indian summer a shroud of humidity that hangs in the form of crystalline vapor over the striped field. Flaming sun falling backside, burning from a ridge of distant pine. Its ruby trajectory caught in a canvas…

METEMPSYCHOSIS by Caleb Murray

Caleb MurrayMETEMPSYCHOSIS John Henry made circles with his bare feet on the carpet. The overhead light was on a fader, which was set low and gave the room an almost hazy affect. Against one wall was a purple couch, its…

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