THE MATHEMATICIAN’S SHIVA by Stuart Rojstaczer reviewed by Michelle Fost

THE MATHEMATICIAN’S SHIVA
by Stuart Rojstaczer
Penguin Books, 366 pages

reviewed by Michelle Fost

Stuart Rojstaczer’s debut novel The Mathematician’s Shiva follows a son mourning the death of his remarkably powerful mother. It’s a first person narrative, very chatty, in the voice of Sasha Karnokovitch, a professor of Atmospheric Sciences who studies the physics of hurricanes. Yes, his mother was something of a hurricane. Her death brings with it a kind of celebration of her genius, with a procession of mathematicians descending on the family to participate in the funeral and the seven days of shiva that the family observes afterwards.

THE USE OF MAN by Aleksandar Tišma reviewed by Jamie Fisher

THE USE OF MAN
by Aleksandar Tišma
Trans. by Bernard Johnson
New York Review of Books, 368 pages

reviewed by Jamie Fisher

One of the major themes in The Use of Man is the use of women by men. Most of Tišma’s men are womanizers, none more confirmed than the central character Sredoje. As a boy, he dreams of lording over "sweet-smelling" slave girls as a pirate brigand; as an adult, he uses his policeman status to coerce frightened women into sleeping with him. The other main character, Vera, attempts to save herself as war approaches by separating from her family, escaping with a local official to Budapest. She attracts him by tanning in the sun, relying only on “her own healthy, supple body, in which she had full confidence.” In the long, dismal postwar economy, she will eventually prostitute herself in exchange for gifts and favors. For preoccupations like these, the author has been accused, on occasion, of “eroticizing the Holocaust.”

THE ART OF DESPAIR by Allison Seay

The Art of Despair
by Allison Seay

I. Out of the Depths

Perhaps it is a weakness to rely only on my own poetic experiences or sensibilities as a way to talk about craft or as a way to teach. In writing this, I thought of all kinds of things I could write about, things I have discovered about form and experiment and figuring out what it means to write from a Real Place. To be self-referential is sometimes not interesting or helpful to another’s plight in art or otherwise, even if we intend it. I can only say how it has been for me. I can only say the truth as best as I know it and hope that you find some seed of truth you might use for your own work, or find some luminosity that might illumine your poems in a new way.

10:04 by Ben Lerner reviewed by Ana Schwartz

10:04
by Ben Lerner
Faber and Faber, 245 pages

reviewed by Ana Schwartz

10:04 is Lerner’s impressive follow-up to 2011’s Leaving the Atocha Station. It aspires to make more meaningful connections between art and life; philosophy and experience. Atocha sets a high bar. That novel’s protagonist, Adam Gordon, wandered through Madrid in 2004, lonely as an El Greco cloud, thinking about Lukacs while staring at Bosch; in the meantime, cultivating a precious skepticism toward any “real experience of art.” 10:04 updates Atocha—tries to push conceptually further its concern for the melding of art and life, and the critical possibilities of the novel genre; while bringing them objectively closer, making them more reachable.

WORKING STIFFS by George Dila reviewed by Jon Busch

WORKING STIFFS
By George Dila
One Wet Shoe Publishing, 42 pages

reviewed by Jon Busch

George Dila’s recently published short story chapbook Working Stiffs is a satirical romp through perverse worlds where power and profit constitute The Good. In such worlds, morality is thereby consigned a priori, as any action that serves power and profit. The stories contained in Working Stiffs are brutally honest, albeit zany, depictions of a universe existing under this moral teleology.

LITTLE ORESTES by Nick Kolakowski

Nick Kolakowski

LITTLE ORESTES
by Nick Kolakowski

When I was a boy, my father told me the story of Agamemnon, King of Argos, peerless butcher of the Trojan War. Agamemnon was arrogant, which Dad considered a sterling quality for a man to have, so long as he backed that shit up with mighty deeds. Dad might have earned a degree from a good college and spent his life building a library of thick books, but sometimes when he drank his speech tumbled back into that crude pit from which nobody in our family will ever escape, dug by generations of pissed-off roughnecks with vicious tongues...

STARING AT THE SEA by Julianna Foster

Several years ago I came across a story about a nor’easter that hit a small coastal town.

The morning after the storm, residents of the town reported having seen something they had never experienced before or since—fleeting visions, every one. Strange sightings out at sea, like clouds of smoke rising from the horizon, orbs of light and unrecognizable objects floating on the water. Yet, as soon as they appeared, they were gone.

YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS by Charlie Keys Bohem

YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS
by Charlie Keys Bohem

His Royal Highness was a tweaker who hung around outside the convenience store where we used to go to buy booze. He always had his hands shoved wrist deep in his pockets, and there was always a twenty four-ounce Miller Hi-Life in a brown paper bag sitting on the newsstand next to him. His face was covered in black, some mixture of sweat and ash that stuck in his stubble, and he wiped it often—long, greasy drags across his cheeks that left them dirtier than they had been before. The management let him stay because he gave them such good business.

FIGURES OF SPEECH by John Shea

FIGURES OF SPEECH
by John Shea

Philadelphia

Dear Joe,

It was great seeing you again last weekend. I don’t think Sharon and I have had so much fun in a month of Sundays. Sorry for the cliché. Which reminds me: I’d be delighted to write the rhetoric booklet you spoke about. It would be fun to trot out all those dusty figures of speech, half of which I can’t even name. Is there still a market for that sort of thing, with all these students who just ramble on or pour out their undiluted, unfiltered feelings onto the page? Rhetoric is a bad word to them, isn’t it? Well, if the offer’s still good, I’ll send up some pages soon. A few extra bucks would help tide us over. Sharon is feeling a bit glum about my tenure situation, and who knows what will happen if I have to start over somewhere else...

PARADISE, ATTAINED BY TOUCH Excerpts by Robert Lunday

PARADISE, ATTAINED BY TOUCH
Excerpts
by Robert Lunday

“When I woke up, I had no hands.”[1]

“One day I awakened on a planet with people whose hands occasionally disappear…”[2]

The future is handless.

My fingers are tied in tight knots, they’re strings; they’re cigarette butts littering the ground, and each one reminds me of some direction I’ve lost, each finger points out a path.

⋅

SILKWORM by Emilia Rodriguez

SILKWORM
by Emilia Rodriguez

They rode the bus at dawn and again before bed. Some of them talked, but Luz never did. It was easier to rest her head against the trembling glass and listen: Someone's husband came home drunk, Someone won at bingo, and Gloria’s daughter finally had the baby. Gloria reminded Luz of her mother: rotund, vivacious, and demanding. It was so unnerving to be around her, Luz wished there were an earlier route, or an alternate route she could take to keep from hearing Gloria’s voice. Luz was unable to conceive, and she dreaded the mornings when Gloria bragged about her daughter’s pregnancy, recounting every ailment from the swollen feet to the constipation. Gloria was so proud of the pregnancy you'd think she was responsible for it herself. And though Luz felt some jealousy at the news, the thought that Gloria might have to quit to help her daughter care for the infant made her smile....

IF YOU DO NOT KNOW by David Hallock Sanders

IF YOU DO NOT KNOW
by David Hallock Sanders
Excerpt from BUSARA ROAD, a novel in progress

“King Solomon was a very wise man. This we all know. How do we know this? Because the Bible tells us so! Right here in ….”

Pastor Hesborne Kabaka made a small production out of opening his Bible and reading from it.

“…right here in ’The Book of the Wisdom of Solomon.’ There you go – clear as can be!”

Someone in the congregation exhaled a soft laugh. The pastor shut his Bible....

THE HERD by Annika Neklason

THE HERD
by Annika Neklason

The cows are clustered together at the crown of the hill. From where Priya stands on the shoulder of the highway they look like shadow puppets, dark, shifting silhouettes backlit by the harvest moon. They seem small enough, insubstantial enough, at this distance to be knocked over by a strong wind, or even swept away entirely.

Beside her, Amo cups his hands around his mouth and moos at them. The low vibrato of the sound makes Priya shiver, but the cows are too far away; they can’t hear him. They don’t lift their heads....

NO-BAKE by Charles Ramsay McCrory

NO-BAKE
by Charles Ramsay McCrory

It would be Bridget’s first Christmas without alcohol, and mentioning this fact to her sponsor she was conscious of using the seasonal language of loss: “My first Christmas since the divorce,” “Our first Christmas since Rachel died.” Gratitude, or the pressure to feel grateful, compelled her to admit she’d been spared such tragedies. Trent had stayed married to her through Blendergate and the ensuing six weeks of rehab, and Selena, their daughter, would be meeting them by train from her college for Christmas dinner at Rob’s. She’d managed to keep the bakery (though one pushy counselor had cautioned her not to reenter the melee of the food industry), along with the upstairs apartment, and her hand had healed nicely, leaving just a few silvery crosshatches and numbness in her index tip. The blender was nonrefundable, but then she was only counting blessings....

OF PINHOLES & PEEPSHOWS by R.C. Barajas

OF PINHOLES & PEEPSHOWS
Pinhole Photography
by R.C. Barajas

[slideshow_deploy id='14638']
You can’t return to the days of Polaroids. Not really.

There are modern approximations - crafty mimicry that recalls the once ubiquitous family camera. I like the app Hipstamatic, a high-end photographic fast food that can reproduce the bygone look of analogue photography with the convenience of a cell phone. Then there are the dogged geniuses of The Impossible Project who recently reinvented the defunct self-developing film. But if you grew up during the days of the first Polaroid cameras, those instant snaps became forever entwined with your childhood. Here’s one of me with our cat, and our mother’s handwriting.

MELIAI by Heather Bourbeau

Heather BourbeauMELIAI* He knew where to find her, amid the Spanish moss hanging from trees, along the creek the locals called a river. He knew she sought the sensation of being at once small and large. As a girl, she…

VARIATIONS ON SECOND CHILDREN by Amanda Silberling

VARIATIONS ON SECOND CHILDREN
by Amanda Silberling

On Labor

The youngest daughters come stitched into birth
like the elastic waists of their mothers’ jeans, sewing
needles improvising under the skin. In theaters
we are sequels, second acts, thrift stores selling
shades of pink our mothers are told they need.

SKIN by GennaRose Nethercott

SKIN
by GennaRose Nethercott

You fall down a cement staircase & your skin drops away. It comes off like a suit. You fold your skin up & carry it home & hang it in the closet. Then you wrap yourself in unfinished quilt tops made up of band tees old lovers once wore. It’s as good a skin as any. For the first few months, you lie on the sofa waiting to heal. Every morning you undress the bandages & smother yourself in antibacterial petroleum jelly. Then you put the quilts back on.

THE SLOW ACTS by Sanaë Lemoine

THE SLOW ACTS
by Sanaë Lemoine

1.

In the autumn when the summer heat has burned to the ground, my father drives me to Elsa’s home before school. Her house is old and tall with peeling white paint. It reminds me of my mother’s flaking skin. Plump-armed vines crawl the walls and the windows fight for territory, small gaping mouths into Elsa’s house. Elsa hasn’t dressed yet and I help her with the buttons while her mother trots around naked. She is pale other than red elbows and knees from the cold weather. Their plumbing is rusty. I don’t know if the heat works. Their house is by the seaside and holds humidity year round. Its floorboards ripple from dampness and patches of black mold grow like soot in the bathroom...

ATROPHY by J.J. Anselmi

J.J. AnselmiATROPHY The last time I hung out with Tike, I thought, He’s become a husk of himself, but I immediately felt guilty for seeing him this way. This thought came up while we smoked a bowl in his car—after…

WE ARE ALIVE AS LONG AS THE SNOW IS DEEP by Ron Burch

WE ARE ALIVE AS LONG AS THE SNOW IS DEEP
by Ron Burch

You pound on the dirty living room window from outside. You want in and I leave the room. Bloodsucker, zombie, cannibal. You tell me that you will take me into the bedroom. You say you will make it worth my time. You just need a hit, a bump. I say I don't have anything. Leave me the fuck alone but you beg. My phone rings. I get email. You seem to be everywhere even though I see your shadow blighting the soiled brown window curtains. You send me naked photos of yourself, on your knees, your face not facing the camera. You did not take the pictures. Someone's fat thumb blurs the frame.

1973 & 1976 by Paul Enea

1973 & 1976
by Paul Enea

1973

Leo is lying face up on a mattress in a walk-in closet. The entrance is missing a door so a purple wool blanket, suspended from two nails, serves as a flap that keeps out the light but not the noise.

ORPHANS by Becky Tuch

ORPHANS
by Becky Tuch

Four in the morning and Maddie and I have nowhere to go. I said I was sleeping at her place and she said she was sleeping at my place and, well, now we’re in this diner. We’re both afraid to go home, me not wanting to wake my mom whose voice can be as shrill as hard rain and Maddie not wanting to bother her own parents, who’ve been having a hard time ever since her one brother ran off with the Krishnas and her other brother started buying bullet-proof car windows.

Hours back, we’d put on our platform shoes, took the F train to the city and stood in line for a rave. When the bouncer looked at my ID, which said I was sixteen, he turned us away, saying you had to be eighteen to get inside. Maddie protested, said of course we were eighteen, sir, there’s just a mistake. But he just looked us up and down with our round baby faces and our eyes that were hungry for something but too young to know what. He turned to the line, said, “Next, come on,” and we were shoved off to the side into the hot open night....

BERGAMOT by Alina Grabowski

Alina Grabowski

BERGAMOT
by Alina Grabowski

“I wish my sweat smelled as good as yours,” Nellie told her grandmother when she was little. She still remembered asking, sitting on her grandmother’s lap on the porch, carving a frozen Hoodsie cup with a wooden spoon.

Her grandmother laughed. “That’s not sweat,” she said. “It’s perfume. Bergamot.”

“What’s bergamot?” She liked the way the word was unfamiliar in her mouth, a new twisting of the tongue. She whispered it when she said it—it seemed like the kind of word that held secrets.

“A bit like an orange, a bit like a lemon. We don’t have them in the U.S., really.” Nellie hadn’t realized there were things that didn’t exist here. Everything, it seemed, was contained in the world that stretched from her house to her grandparents’.

INSIDE REX by Mimi Oritsky

INSIDE REX
by Mimi Oritsky
Oil on Linen

I was born in a small town sixty miles northwest of Philadelphia, Pa. called Reading. It was an industrial city on the Schuylkill River, full of brown-brick factories and heavy gambling with lots of strip joints. It usually appeared dark with silvery smoke in the air.

Fine art and culture were not nearly as popular as building automobiles, shooting squirrels, and drinking Olde Reading Beer. However, the town was surrounded by mountains and farmlands, and this landscape was filled with corn fields, milk cows, and small herds of sheep. It all appeared to me so much lighter and more colorful.

A RAIN OF SOUND by William L. Alton

A RAIN OF SOUND
by William L. Alton

My father and I sit on the steps of the house, the house I grew up in, watching snow fall and melt. A scrim of ice laces the yard with white ribbons. The street throws back diamonds under the lamp posts. I’m cold and my father loans me his sweater, the sleeves too long, the chest too wide. I can smell the acrid reek of his cigarettes on the weave...

MARKED by William Bradley

MARKED
by William Bradley

“These tattoos provide a very positive tool in the treatment of cancer. During treatment they are necessary so the radiation therapist can precisely pinpoint the area needing treatment. After treatment they provide a history of the patient's treatment areas to future healthcare providers.”
–John T. Gwozdz, M.D.

“The body never lies.”
– Martha Graham, American dancer and choreographer

For most of my life, I have tended to go along without giving my body much conscious thought beyond the necessities of nourishment, excretion, and libido. It’s really only when something is wrong—head congestion, leg cramp, shortness of breath due to the occasional panic attack—that I really think of my body. Even then, it’s usually to think of my body as something separate from me, something impeding my efforts to focus on what I want or need to be focused on.

A REPLACEMENT by Ingrid Claire Wenzler

Ingrid Claire WenzlerA REPLACEMENT On a narrow street in Berlin, all cobblestones, I remember turning, seeing first, the morning light on the rubble someone had swept against the curb and then, a child alone in a doorway. “What’s that you…

COMPOSURE by John Goodhue

COMPOSURE
by John Goodhue

As you remember, we were taught
how to skin the flesh from an ear

so to show that all things at some point
forget human form. The details hatch from your tongue

to mine like flies; there was a basilica of mangroves,
a green hue to the sun, the odor of burnt okra. There was

THE TERRIBLE SOFTNESS OF TONGUES by Chris Vola

Chris VolaTHE TERRIBLE SOFTNESS OF TONGUES How has it come to this, he would think, watching the images that flickered, MRI-slow, from the screen on his blanket-covered stomach. Regardless of how hard I try, I can’t seem to keep my shit…

NOTES ON CONSTANCY by Jesse Castaldi Keen

NOTES ON CONSTANCY
by Jesse Keen

Constancy is the dust bath of the wing
is the floating current is the hidden compass
and constancy is the blood drawn
for the starving beak. Can I ask you
says constancy and replies the triplet
slept no different from you or me.

DR. ZAUZE’S XYLOPHONE by Heinz Insu Fenkl

DR. ZAUZE AND THE XYLOPHONE
A Visual Narrative
by Heinz Insu Fenkl

“Dr. Zauze’s Xylophone” began as a postmodern prose piece in one of the many notebooks I kept while I was doing my Master’s work at the University of California, Davis back in the early 1980s. I was inspired by Sasha Sokolov’s A School for Fools, which I had read in Professor Daniel Rancour-Laferriere’s Soviet Literature course. Sokolov’s novella is told in the enjambed voice of a narrator who might have formerly believed he was more than one person—the entire narrative is characterized by multiple layers of reality and the malleability of time and identity. It had a profound impact on me as a writer, and so it was no surprise that “Dr. Zauze,” a name that comes up in Sokolov’s story, made it into my dream world nearly a decade later....

THE WEEKLY VISIT by Emanuel Melo

THE WEEKLY VISIT
by Emanuel Melo

Every week for the past five years, Jake has approached the front door after a slow walk from the bus stop. He gets off several stops away purposefully. The long walk to her house gives him time to decompress after a long day at work and ward off the resentment of duty that brings him here to her front door in the first place. The weekly visit, after his father died, to his aged and disabled mother, has begun to wear him down and now he shows up at her door as if in front of a trap he consciously, and dutifully steps into. He stays overnight, too, only to spare himself the exhaustion of a late night trip on the bus and then the subway and then another bus home....

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.

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