ARACHNICIDE by Ray Scanlon
Ray ScanlonARACHNICIDE An organ pipe mud dauber is building a nest in the ornamental tin-roofed wren house Cheryl hung by the door. I hear her stridulating at her masonry work, and see her carry a small ball of mud into…
ASSEMBLING AN ANATOMICAL LIFE by Laurie Blauner
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DEPT. OF SPECULATION by Jenny Offill reviewed by Michelle Fost
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THE HYPOTHETICAL GIRL by Elizabeth Cohen reviewed by Michelle Fost
Fiction by Elizabeth Cohen, reviewed by Michelle Fost THE HYPOTHETICAL GIRL (Other Press) Like so many of the characters in Elizabeth Cohen’s fifteen incisive stories in The Hypothetical Girl, Emily in the title story is truly suffering. Her affliction is…
THE DISMAL SCIENCE by Peter Mountford reviewed by Nathaniel Popkin
Fiction by Peter Mountford, reviewed by Nathaniel Popkin THE DISMAL SCIENCE (Tin House Press) It seems fitting that Peter Mountford’s novel, The Dismal Science, is being published just as certain global emergent markets—Brazil, Turkey, India, South Africa, and Indonesia, nicknamed…
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EARLY EARTH by Isabel Greenberg reviewed by Stephanie Trott
A Graphic Narrative by Isabel Greenberg, reviewed by Stephanie Trott THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EARLY EARTH (Little, Brown and Company) There is no sole way to tell the story of our planet. Whether one chooses to uphold a belief rooted in…
THE OLD PRIEST by Anthony Wallace reviewed by Nathaniel Popkin
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BLOOM IN REVERSE by Teresa Leo reviewed by Anna Strong
BLOOM IN REVERSE
by Teresa Leo
University of Pittsburgh Press (Pitt Poetry Series), 104 pages
reviewed by Anna Strong
From the dedication page, Teresa Leo’s Bloom in Reverse props itself against the fence between the living and the dead. Dedicated to the living but in memory of Leo’s friend Sarah, the poems carry the dual burden of trauma and memory. How do we process, how do we articulate trauma? If we’re at all like Teresa Leo, we recognize that in art, in poetry, we remember the the Sarah Hannahs of the world and bring them into a collective consciousness. She is not forgotten.
Donald Hall wrote an astounding collection of poems chronicling his wife’s cancer and death, Without. Bloom in Reverse reads much like that collection—in each poem, we feel the keenness of the “without,” the strain of recollection, the reconstruction of the smallest moments of friendship and intimacy in the clearest language accessible to the speaker. Many of the poems are two-line stanzas, heavily enjambed and riddled with fragments, clauses that build and build on each other only to be let go in a kind of sigh—we feel the struggle to hold onto whatever memories come to mind, only to realize that that’s all they are. The ending of “She Said: It’s Not that Things Bring Us to Tears, but Rather, There Are Tears in Things” struck me as the most poignant of these conclusions:
The New York Nobody Knows by William Helmreich and Baghdad: The City in Verse edited by Reuven Snir reviewed by Nathaniel Popkin
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HERE COME THE WARM JETS by Alli Warren reviewed by Vanessa Martini
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MERMAID: A Memoir of Resilience by Eileen Cronin reviewed by Colleen Davis
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SCATTERED VERTEBRAE by Jerrold Yam reviewed by Kenna O’Rourke
Poetry by Jerrold Yam, reviewed by Kenna O’RourkeSCATTERED VERTEBRAE (Math Paper Press) Jerrold Yam’s second poetry collection was titled with care: like the image of scattered vertebrae, these poems are at once beautiful, dark, and disturbing. Yam weaves family life,…
CARDBOARD PIANO by Rina Terry reviewed by Shinelle L. Espaillat
CARDBOARD PIANO
by Rina Terry
Texture Press, 102 pages
reviewed by Shinelle L. Espaillat
We tend to equate the word “prison” with concrete, metal and despair, ostensibly as means of change or as a tool of rehabilitation. In her new collection, Cardboard Piano, Rina Terry reveals multi-layered evidence of the transformative power of art versus stone. Anyone who is familiar with Stephen King’s prison stories, The Green Mile and Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption (or at least with the movie adaptations thereof) expects to question the prison system and to explore the humanity of both the inmates and the guards. Terry’s words push the reader to consider the realities of an in-person search for and confrontation of that humanity, in all its potential glory and obloquy.
The opening salvo, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Inmates” offers a kaleidoscope through which we can feel the entire collection. Terry challenges our accepted notion of rehabilitative space as cyclical: “There is only one/direction. Single file/through metal detector.” Parole notwithstanding, the suggestion is that for most who enter, there is no hope, and what’s more, the system-keepers believe that as well. After all, “an inmate/is and inmate/is an inmate.” The guards do not see what Terry sees, the one man who holds on to his sense of self enough to iron his uniform, or the baptism trough as cleansing agent.
SUPERLOOP by Nicole Callihan reviewed by Anna Strong
Poetry by Nicole Callihan, reviewed by Anna Strong SUPERLOOP (Sock Monkey Press) The startling beauty of Nicole Callihan’s SuperLoop lies in the balance the poems strike between the specificity and universality of childhood memory. The strongest poems take us deep…
LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY by Ivy Hughes
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FLORIDA by Cullen Bailey Burns
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ICELANDIC KISSES by Shane Joaquin Jimenez
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TESTIMONY AFTER THE VARICOCELECTOMY by Peter LaBerge
Peter LaBergeTESTIMONY AFTER THE VARICOCELECTOMY My mother changes the bedpan, the evidence of life. Stomach, definition of withhold, overripe plum I did not purchase. I would never crave this heaviness, the way she folds over my body with braided fingers.…
THE FERRY by Emma Greenberg
Emma GreenbergTHE FERRY “So your mom told you about the new houses?” “Yup.” I lunged too aggressively for the volume control and my seatbelt tensed and slapped me back into my seat. The second verse of “Livin’ On A Prayer”…
from x y a && by Pattie McCarthy
Pattie McCarthyfrom x y a && a couple of breaks of sunshine over the next couple hours, what little sun shine there is left. a view that outranks me : two baseball fields, two bridges, the dome (golden) of a…
YOU ARE BUT A PILGRIM VENTURING TO A STRANGE AND HONEST LAND by Jared Yates Sexton
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blockage no. 8 by Marie Nunalee
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PEACE from The Names of Roses by Ann de Forest
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A HUNGER ARTIST by Henry Marchand
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TELESCOPES by Kristen Sharp
Kristen SharpTELESCOPES In a dress with sequins the color of champagne, her legs like bone, she crouched on the beach and dug her hand under the packed wet sand. The New Year had been mostly Manhattans and whiskey-gingers and drunk…
LEXICON by Lori Lamothe
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THIS TOWN IS YOUR TOWN TOO by Anne Dyer Stuart
Anne Dyer StuartTHIS TOWN IS YOUR TOWN TOO The next morning at Paige’s, too many mamas were there. I didn’t know why they’d stayed. It made me feel like Mama was anti-social, which she was. But more than that, it…
MESOPOTAMIAN RUINS and WEDNESDAY NIGHT IN THE JUKE by Jesse Minkert
Jesse MinkertTWO POEMS Mesopotamian Ruins Eras apply dust victorious harden over masonry. Accomplishments in architecture and death; lives of sleep and food and shit removal. Dust sweeps off the table water in a flask, a bag of emmer. Thirsty soil…
PORTRAITS OF AGE by Donna Festa
Donna FestaPORTRAITS OF AGE Interviewed by Anastasiya Shekhtman Where does your fascination with faces come from? When I was a young girl, I went with my mother on a regular basis to visit her sisters. She was the youngest of nine…
Once Again, Different Now, and Moratorium by Jessica Morey-Collins
Jessica Morey-CollinsTHREE POEMS Once Again A woman glances at her watch, one hand resting on the grip of a wheelchair, wherein is ensconced her mother. Both wear khaki sunhats and sea-foam green respiratory masks, coral shirts. Squawks and wing beats…
R IS FOR RESTLESS by Christine Hamm
Christine HammR IS FOR RESTLESS Palm Beach, a fake emerald bracelet scratching your wrist. You crawl to the bed, the industrial carpet rubbing its cigarette stink all over you. You remember the man’s hands, the scars and words scrawled across…
WHEN SANTA CAME TO CHERRY HILL, NEW JERSEY by DC Lambert
DC LambertWHEN SANTA CAME TO CHERRY HILL, NEW JERSEY You could hear the sirens blocks away, and if you didn’t know, you’d think it was a real emergency. Santa Claus had trouble keeping balance, so the fire truck took it…
THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL by Anthony Wallace
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IN THE ABSENCE OF CULINARY MENTORS by Kaori Fujimoto
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IN THE MID-OUGHTIES by Sam Cha
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LEMON TUESDAY by Jo Beckett-King
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BIRTHDAY POEM by Monica Wendel
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Christmas 2009 by Catherine Mosier-Mills
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LOOK, HERE by Lisa Piazza
Lisa PiazzaLOOK, HERE For this, I use my grandfather’s axe. Pull it carefully from behind the dead cat’s carrier in the garage, where it rests dusty and dull, subdued by seasons more or less come and gone. More because fifteen…
FRANCESCA by Mohammadreza Mirzaei
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HOW A HEART by Sean Lyon
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EXILED FROM TRUTH: NINE ALLEGORIES By Dmitry Borshch
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Five Paintings by Tish Ingersoll
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YVONNE IN THE EYE OF DOG by Kathryn Kulpa
YVONNE IN THE EYE OF DOG
by Kathryn Kulpa
If God looked for Yvonne would he find her? If God looked down, past stars and satellites, through storm clouds thick and grey as dryer lint, would he see Yvonne in a stolen van, Yvonne in a darkened shopping plaza with Ma’s Diner and A-1 Hardware, Crafts Basket and Pets Plus?
Yvonne is down on options, down on her luck. Listening to the sighs and snores of her dog asleep in the back seat, the beat of rain on the roof. Her world the smell of wet dog. Her face in the mirror, hair wild, curling in the damp. Everything about her seems high-contrast, vampirish. Face white, except for that bruise her cover-up won’t cover. Tired eyes. White eyeliner is the trick for that, Teena had taught her. No white eyeliner in Yvonne’s make-up bag. No black, either. Almost out of tricks. She pats more cover-up on her eyelids, feels the oils in the makeup separate.
BLOODSUCKERS by Zach Fishel
Zach FishelBLOODSUCKERS Having sliced mosquitoes From the air all week, he sits with mail Neglected like the quiet granite Of New Hampshire. The enormity of moths is felt here. Thinking of the letters. That even in this loneliness there is…
BLUE SANTA by R. Daniel Evans
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PHENOMENON by Donna Vorreyer
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TOURIST by Barbara Nishimoto
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THE BIRTHDAY PRESENT by Lynn Levin
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VINYL by Brian Druckenmiller
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