ALL EARS by Rick Bailey
Rick BaileyALL EARS A few weeks ago my father woke up almost totally deaf. He already had a significant deficit. For years he has worn hearing aids. One for each ear, they are a microphone, amplifier, and loudspeaker all in…
BLACK RAINCOAT, BLUE STOCKINGS by Anthony Wallace
Anthony WallaceBLACK RAINCOAT, BLUE STOCKINGS Nobody took Rhiannon there, and nobody took her home. She managed the whole thing by herself. When she woke up, it was dark outside. A light was on in the living room, and she could…
IN MY TIME by Shannon Viola
Shannon ViolaIN MY TIME I have a love-hate relationship with Hemingway. Sometimes when I’m writing, he’s over my shoulder. He seizes my hand and slashes the Latinate adjectives on my page while I wince and moan. He tugs at one…
WINGS TO GO by Jane Carroll
Jane CarrollWINGS TO GO There’s a chicken place on Ridge Avenue called “Wings to Go.” I occasionally wait for a bus across the street, and that sign always seemed to me a little too poetic for a wing place. It…
IN THE MEWS by Nicole Callihan
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PLACES TO WALK OUT TO by Gabriel Ojeda Sague
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MARCH 5, 1953 by Robert Wexelblatt
Robert WexelblattMARCH 5, 1953 The funeral was flowerless. Every early spring bloom had been expropriated by the KGB for their boss. Scarcely forty people dared show up. Charged with counter-revolutionary bourgeois tendencies, tormented and shunned by the Composers Union, his…
CONFESSIONS OF A FACEBOOK MOM by Melissa Duclos
Melissa DuclosCONFESSIONS OF A FACEBOOK MOM I’m with Teddy and Elliot, sitting on the floor amidst a pile of Legos and a stack of books, and I find my eyes wandering up to the shelf. My fingers get a little…
HOW TO MASTER SOCIAL MEDIA by Brennan Cusack
Brennan CusackHOW TO MASTER SOCIAL MEDIA Take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror because it’s got a frame like a photograph and you need the practice. Move around and play with angles until you find the most…
ON THE ROMANCE OF PARKLAND by J.C. Todd
J.C. ToddON THE ROMANCE OF PARKLAND for Erica Upstream, a shadow crosses the oxbow of a river whose flood plains are silted by paternal names of grant-holders. Their slaves tilled the alluvial bottom land, turning up flints and the bones…
JACKSON LISTENS TO THE BIRDS by Kathy Lou Schultz
Kathy Lou SchultzJACKSON LISTENS TO THE BIRDS for Jackson born 2/5/07 Memphis is a huff of spring grandiose pink blossoms about to pop a rainstorm lurking in the palpable air It’s you and me rounding the corners of Midtown lush…
A SAD, LOGICAL CAPITULATION by Justin Nicholes
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ALL GOOD THINGS by B.A. Varghese
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DEGENERATIVE DISEASES OF THE BRAIN by Juniper Green
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SHACKLED by Kim Suttell
Kim SuttellSHACKLED If it’s a fever you want, then I’m frenzied. What are you but an ice ax ear ache, an ice cleat hike down my throat, the churned Weddell Sea in my paunch. Hell, you’re the whole Antarctic. I…
DAFFODILS by Daniel W. Thompson
Daniel W. ThompsonDAFFODILS The main reason I drove four hours to be here was to sign a document giving me access to mom and dad’s security deposit box. Mom called it personal housekeeping. She said, you never know, Miles. What…
FLESH AND BLOOD by Jamie Lin
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PSYCHOGENIC FUGUE by George Moore
George MoorePSYCHOGENIC FUGUE Every time I leave home I begin a new life. I am a boy again, sometimes a girl. My memories are so discrete that they talk to each other, gather in rooms, develop friendships without knowing. My…
BEYOND RIVER, BEYOND CANYON by Michael G. Smith
Michael G. SmithBEYOND RIVER, BEYOND CANYON Once a year I backpack my ischemic-stroked brain and body into the Grand Canyon. To test. Observe. See what lost physical move I can do again. Metamorphosize. Twelfth trip: like the Earth, I have…
MIRABEL RIVER GIRL, CHAMPION SPELLER by Shannon Sweetnam
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THE MISER & POSSUM by Lauren Hall
Lauren HallTWO POEMS The Miser “He was never a nice man,” she confessed, rolling her stockings slightly below her knees. “Nobody liked him much, not even me.” Through the screen door, I can see my great-grandfather swinging an axe at…
PIGEON by Thompson Mayes
Thompson MayesPIGEON He was hot, too hot, walking on the sunny side of the hard stone streets through tourist stickiness of dripped gelato. He felt as wilted as the reddish-pink blooms that drooped out of the doorway, and he could…
BETTER by Molly McGinnis
Molly McGinnisBETTER I am salt and champagne. Salt and dirt and stars. Two-sided story, double-edged knife. Dinosaur bones and tambourines. I have walked into town by myself at dawn and seen my face reflected in the windows. I have danced…
SCORCHER by Alina Grabowski
Alina GrabowskiSCORCHER June had been eating a creamsicle on the front porch when she saw them. It was the third week of July and the entire house was sweating, drops of condensation sliding down bookshelves and chair legs. Her father…
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
Laurie BlaunerASSEMBLING AN ANATOMICAL LIFE To Annie I labeled all the dancers’ body parts and told them how to use them. I prepared resonant music, a prescription for feet that kaleidoscoped from room to room. I described what I wanted,…
DEPT. OF SPECULATION by Jenny Offill reviewed by Michelle Fost
Fiction by Jenny Offill, reviewed by Michelle Fost DEPT. OF SPECULATION (Alfred A. Knopf) Here’s an idea for a book party. Hold it in the Guggenheim. Set up an exhibit of all the pages of the book. Frame each page…
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
Fiction by Anthony Wallace, reviewed by Nathaniel PopkinTHE OLD PRIEST (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013 Drue Heinz Literature Prize) “Let’s leave Limit,” says Anna to her husband Phil, the narrator of Anthony Wallace’s story “Snow behind the door.” Limit is…
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
Nonfiction by William Helmreich, reviewed by Nathaniel Popkin THE NEW YORK NOBODY KNOWS: Walking 6,000 Miles in the City (Princeton University Press) and Poetry edited by Reuven Snir, reviewed by Nathaniel PopkinBAGHDAD: THE CITY IN VERSE (Harvard University Press) Writers,…
HERE COME THE WARM JETS by Alli Warren reviewed by Vanessa Martini
Poetry by Alli Warren, reviewed by Vanessa MartiniHERE COME THE WARM JETS (City Lights) Diving into Alli Warren’s Here Come the Warm Jets is at once exhilarating and slightly overwhelming. Warren pulls no punches with this collection. The reader is…
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
Cullen Bailey BurnsFLORIDA The pelican was a kite or vice versa in the way I was a wave in the body my mind made of ego and thread. How do we glue the ideas into order? In the gulf, warm…
ICELANDIC KISSES by Shane Joaquin Jimenez
Shane Joaquin JimenezICELANDIC KISSES The man in the fur coat paused in the electric blue of the porch light. He sniffed the air, as if trying to read some presence in the atmosphere and the ice particles. A blinding wind…
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
Jared Yates SextonYOU ARE BUT A PILGRIM VENTURING TO A STRANGE AND HONEST LAND On the cab ride in the driver turned and said, Did you know Hope and Despair are sister and brother and you their distant cousin? We…
blockage no. 8 by Marie Nunalee
Marie Nunaleeblockage no. 8 a bumblebee, Kamikaze pilot in disguise, balancing ancillary, damp sidewalk-situated, papier mache pinions flashing faintly. six coarse-haired legs flicker for the troubleshoot-detection of external demise; antennae circuits flip on, flip off, blow fuses red and bright.…
PEACE from The Names of Roses by Ann de Forest
Ann de ForestPEACE, from The Names of Roses Peace Rose: Just before Germany invaded France, a French horticulturist sent cuttings of his newest rose to friends in Italy, Turkey, Germany, and the U.S. to protect it. It is said that it was…
A HUNGER ARTIST by Henry Marchand
Henry MarchandA HUNGER ARTIST The medium is biological, human cells crafted in a sterile environment to simulate body parts: an ear, a finger, a foot. Clyde Averill has become renowned for his work, the first bio-artist to achieve such astonishing,…
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
Lori LamotheLEXICON I’ve forgotten the language of cities, of travel. I insert the room key upside down, stumble over a couch in the lobby, ride the wrong subway line, walk South instead of North. New York hems me in, surrounds…