TRICH by Amanda Gaines
Amanda GainesTRICH You ask him to wrest his fingers into the base of your hair from behind you. To pull. To undo you, the cartilage of your throat cutting against your taut skin, neck arced like a bridge over stygian…
GUARDING THE NEST by Lori Miller Kase
Lori Miller KaseGUARDING THE NEST The robin eyes us from her nest. All it takes is a ruffling of the papers beside me to send her flying into the nearby redbud trees, angry wings flapping. I sit on the back…
THE WINK by Coralie Loon
Coralie LoonTHE WINK Lia woke to the sound of a rooster cawing. Again. The first time, she convinced herself she had imagined it. The sound didn’t belong here, not in the city, not in the suburbs, not even in the…
MY DAUGHTER’S SCHOOL IS CLOSED AFTER ANOTHER MASS SHOOTING IN AMERICA by Sarah Carson
Sarah CarsonMY DAUGHTER’S SCHOOL IS CLOSED AFTER ANOTHER MASS SHOOTING IN AMERICA So I drive us to the zoo in the closest faraway place, and as she skips down the path to the primate house, the entire savannah is her…
TENDER EXPERIMENTS WE COULD CONDUCT TOGETHER OR ALONE by Freesia McKee
Freesia McKeeTender Experiments We Could Conduct Together or Alone after Tyler Friend 1. We could go to Kwik Trip at 9:00 pm and pretend to shop while flirting over chicken tenders and red Gatorade. 2. We could go to Hilltop…
ULYSSES by Charles Scott
Charles Scott ULYSSES Ned Duncan arrived at the Cincinnati airport and took a taxi to the church in Madisonville where Darrell’s funeral was being held. In New York, in the years before Darrell got sick, they had lived together in…
APOLOGY & NEW CAREER IN FLOWERS by Jane Feinsod
Jane FeinsodTWO POEMS Apology And what of the child killed in a bathroom. And what of the others. Sorting the bookshelf and bleaching the tub. I worry I’m tumored. I mean that. In socks watching dog walkers. And what of…
A CRAFT CHAT WITH PATRICK STRICKLAND, by Andrea Caswell
Andrea CaswellA CRAFT CHAT WITH PATRICK STRICKLAND In this Craft Chat, writer Patrick Strickland reveals how questions about loss and (dis)location guided him through years’ worth of drafts and revision, leading to the published version of his riveting story, “Screaming…
NEVER READ CLEAVER’S WRITING TIPS: A Writing Tip by Merridawn Duckler
Merridawn DucklerNEVER READ CLEAVER’S WRITING TIPS I taught fiction at a writing institute. During our class on publishing a student mentioned flash fiction. You should, I said, explore every possibility. I always urged them to explore every possibility, I’d be…
HOW I’M RECALIBRATING FOR THE THIRD AGE, A Creative Nonfiction Craft Essay by Elizabeth Bird
Elizabeth Bird HOW I’M RECALIBRATING FOR THE THIRD AGE A Craft Essay on Creative Nonfiction Writing While “Third Age” certainly sounds more enticing than “God’s Waiting Room,” no matter what you call it, retirement brings creeping intimations of mortality. Time…
A CRAFT CHAT WITH ELAINE CHEKICH, By Andrea Caswell
Andrea CaswellA CRAFT CHAT WITH ELAINE CHEKICH In “Accidental Roommates” (Issue 46), writer Elaine Chekich creates a protagonist whose traumatic losses lead the reader on a perilous journey through the streets of Hollywood. Chekich spoke to senior fiction editor Andrea…
HITCHING A RIDE: A Writing Tip by Alex Barr
Alex BarrHITCHING A RIDE Sometimes the struggle to write a poem gets messy. You long to pour the churning gruel into some satisfying container. It isn’t always messy, but when it is, there’s a solution. Like an urchin sneaking a…
A ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION WITH SHANNON ROBINSON AND DARRIN DOYLE by Autumn Konopka and Emma Parzybok
A roundtable discussion by Autumn Konopka & Emma Parzybok A DISCUSSION WITH SHANNON ROBINSON AND DARRIN DOYLE Authors Shannon Robinson and Darrin Doyle sat down with Autumn Konopka and Emma Parzybok, Cleaver’s Book Reviews Editors, to discuss their new books,…
TIPS FOR RELUCTANT REVISORS: A Writing Tip by Andrea Caswell
Andrea CaswellTIPS FOR RELUCTANT REVISORS Ever dread having to revise a short story that’s not working? How about that essay without a main point? Me too. Revision is the reality check at the other end of a romp across the…
A CRAFT CHAT WITH MAXIEJANE FRAZIER, By Andrea Caswell
Andrea CaswellA CRAFT CHAT WITH MAXIEJANE FRAZIER In her story “We Laugh” (Issue 46), MaxieJane Frazier conveys a lifetime’s worth of emotion and transformation in fewer than 300 words. In this Craft Chat with senior fiction editor Andrea Caswell, Frazier…
WRITING A MEMOIR PARTLY ABOUT A PERSON I NEVER MET, A Craft Essay by Carole Duff
Carole Duff WRITING A MEMOIR PARTLY ABOUT A PERSON I NEVER MET I found the journals while cleaning closets during spring break. Six 9-by-6-inch books written by my new husband’s daughter, who had taken her life at age twenty-four. A…
SOMETIMES A REVISION REALLY IS A RE-VISION, a Craft Essay by Elizabeth Stone
Elizabeth Stone SOMETIMES A REVISION REALLY IS A RE-VISION When a former student died of AIDS and left me his diaries, I couldn’t unearth the real story I needed to tell—until I began wondering why my long-dead grandmother made a…
AND THEN YOU APPLY ICE: STORIES by Pamela Gwyn Kripke, reviewed by Ashlee A. Paxton-Turner
Stories by Pamela Gwyn Kripke, reviewed by Ashlee A. Paxton-Turner AND THEN YOU APPLY ICE, (Open Books) One of the most basic aspects of humanity is pondering the future—questioning who we are and what we will become. In the mid-1950s,…
FINDING THE RIGHT NARRATIVE DISTANCE: A Writing Tip by SV Bertrand
SV BertrandFinding the Right Narrative Distance When I teach my memoir class, my main goal is to help my students find the narrative tools and devices they need to see themselves as a character on the page. Even in memoir,…
WRITING TIMELY FICTION, a Craft Essay by Laura Leigh Morris
Laura Leigh Morris WRITING TIMELY FICTION Picture it: Twenty-five university professors in dresses and sports coats crouched in a dark classroom, waiting for a gunman to walk through the door. More nervous than we should have been, given this was…
YOU IN RANDOM ORDER: A Jesse Ball Exercise by Beth Kephart
Beth KephartYou in Random Order: A Jesse Ball Exercise Here’s an exclusive writing prompt from Beth Kephart, who recently conducted a masterclass for Cleaver called “The Art of the Telling Detail”. We are sharing this prompt from her workshop—if you…
MYSTERY LIGHTS, stories by Lena Valencia, reviewed by by Jennifer Nessel
Stories by Lena Valencia, reviewed by Jennifer Nessel MYSTERY LIGHTS, (Tin House) As the sun set across our campsite in Rocky Gap, Maryland, I turned to my friends, who had taken great pains to convince me to join them, and…
SMOTHERMOSS, a novel by Alisa Alering, reviewed by Alana Craib
A novel by Alisa Alering, reviewed by Alana Craib SMOTHERMOSS (Tin House) The Appalachian Mountains may be the oldest mountain ranges in the world. Dating all the way back to Pangea, they have grown and ached and evolved and mutated…
METAPHOR AS SEDUCTION, a Craft Essay by Henrietta Goodman
Henrietta Goodman METAPHOR AS SEDUCTION It sounds ridiculous—the first person to seduce me was T. S. Eliot. I was fifteen, in 11th grade English. Most of the poetry we read that year required a process of “translation” from antiquated to…
YOU CANNOT FORBID THE FLOWER, a novel by Elizabeth Lukács Chesla, reviewed by Benjamin Selesnick
A novel by Elizabeth Lukács Chesla, reviewed by Benjamin Selesnick YOU CANNOT FORBID THE FLOWER (Tolsun Books) Elizabeth Lukács Chesla’s hybrid auto-fiction novel, You Cannot Forbid the Flower, includes three different voices, each looking through the same historical period: in…
WELL BEGUN IS HALF DONE: A Writing Tip by J. Bradley Minnick
J. Bradley MinnickWELL BEGUN IS HALF DONE Okay, so this writing tip is not going to be very popular—particularly in a culture that yells “go-go-go-do-do-do” and imagines that people can attend to more than one thing at a time (which,…
BUILT AROUND THE FIRE, Poems by Nathan Lipps, reviewed by Dakotah Jennifer
Poems by Nathan Lipps, reviewed by Dakotah Jennifer BUILT AROUND THE FIRE (Stephen F. Austin State University Press) “Mourning doves linger beneath the basket of seeds waiting, discussing applications of empathy or economics, what poverty means” Miles to go before…
THE DEVIL FORM: A Writing Tip by Rob Greene
Rob GreeneTHE DEVIL FORM As a graduate student, my preparations to teach poetry to undergraduates made me hyperfocus on craft, and I ultimately decided to begin with teaching how to make an image. My full understanding of the makings of…
ZORAN by Alex Barr
Alex Barr ZORAN Even in the distance you looked foreign. Hair frizzed up above a frown, clown’s blob of a nose. Going very slowly, considering the relationship of the bicycle to each building you passed. Yes, a frown—you were always…
CREATION MYTHS by Harrison Candelaria Fletcher
Harrison Candelaria Fletcher CREATION MYTHS 1 – Coyote grasps at straws within adobe. careful as threading. an eye of a needle. seeking a key. within river clay. opening a door. finding a face. where to belong. where to rest. beating.…
ACCIDENTAL ROOMMATES by Elaine Chekich
Elaine Chekich ACCIDENTAL ROOMMATES Honorable Mention of the 2024 Cleaver Emerging Artist Award I hardly knew Quibble when I started sleeping on his couch. We’d served under Lt. Pablo in Afghanistan, but mostly we were on different details and didn’t…
BEDSIDE by Victoria Korth
Victoria Korth BEDSIDE When I say darkness, I mean everything I don’t understand, my mother’s breath in mine before I was born. In the dark, her breath pauses and mine goes on, pacing in its neutral candor. Can it be…
ARE THEY OR AREN’T THEY? by Meg Yardley
Meg Yardley ARE THEY OR AREN’T THEY? Leah was standing in the feminine products aisle. At least, she had always thought of it as the feminine products aisle until just now, when she realized it was also the condoms aisle.…
GETTING OUT by Robert Garner McBrearty
Robert Garner McBrearty GETTING OUT Everyone is getting out. They’re getting out. My dentist is getting out. The letters are familiar: After over thirty years of service, loving every moment of it, so very grateful to all of you… But…
SCREAMING EAST ON I-10 by Patrick Strickland
Patrick Strickland SCREAMING EAST ON I-10 I just want to get home, but home’s never quite where I left it. After work tonight, I glide along the streets of Simi Valley, nearly nodding off a time or two, in search…
BODY DOUBLE by Autumn H. Thomas
Autumn H. Thomas BODY DOUBLE A productivity strategy often used by people with ………….inattentiveness adj. ………….………….pollen sticking to stigma ………….………….brushed by genetic chance ………….………….the limb of the bumblebee ………….………….lackadaisically’d rigour mortis Coming home to the mansion of my mind Unable…
FLAME by Kate E. Lore
Kate E. Lore FLAME Honorable Mention of the 2024 Cleaver Emerging Artist Award The flame tastes rock but they don’t like it. Spit and sputter, they leave behind a black trail burn, an imitation of shadow, crude like a child’s…
WHAT USED TO BE MCCARRAN AIRPORT, LAS VEGAS by J.D. Isip
J.D. Isip WHAT USED TO BE MCCARRAN AIRPORT, LAS VEGAS The Spring Mountains out in the distance, if you’re lucky you’ll catch a sunset, the diminished edifices of glistening cassinos refracting a little of the glory in their windows where,…
FRAGILE, FRACTURE, FEAR by Mark Liebenow
Mark Liebenow FRAGILE, FRACTURE, FEAR Every evening, I make spaghetti and try out different seasonings in the sauce, including hot spices from the southwest, which you would have hated, or I pull out leftover chicken and eat it cold in…
VOICEMA[LE] TO MYSELF by Ash Trebisacci
Ash Trebisacci VOICEMA[LE] TO MYSELF Honorable Mention of the 2024 Cleaver Emerging Artist Award There’s this podcast that I love. The host’s voice is unmistakably, gorgeously trans. It purrs, crackles, ekes out phrases like a song I know by heart…
TELL ME IF IT HURTS by SV Bertrand
SV Bertrand TELL ME IF IT HURTS It happens again. But this time I am not busy dying, so I get to see what happens after. Dad is getting the car refueled, and I am sitting in the back seat while…
TWO POEMS by Brooke Harries
Brooke Harries TWO POEMS Transformer Miss him, …………or drinking coffee in bed, reading with a lamp at the bedside. Read an interview with Lou Reed. The one …………where he stops answering by saying Nothing I feel like talking about. Make…
WHERE HAS AMELIA GONE WHERE HAS SHE BEEN by Kindall Fredricks
Kindall Fredrickswhere has amelia gone where has she been amelia quiet as an attic ……………………….where is she? where is she? we crawl into her and chew ………………………………………………..make a clergy ………….of our teeth we search god hung over us fat and…
MEMORIZING ROMAN ROADS by Elisabetta La Cava
Elisabetta La Cava MEMORIZING ROMAN ROADS In the front yard of my grandmother’s house in Venezuela, behind a four-foot fence, stood a white metal pole. She didn’t hang a flag on it. I was eight years old and didn’t care…
BABY DOLL by Marlene Tholl
Marlene Tholl BABY DOLL Shanty Point Labor Day. Surging swells, pale over dark, an outlook off into forever. My husband Augustus was surfcasting for striper with an eel on the hook. He pointed out the now mostly submerged rocks that…
TRASH by Rick Andrews
Rick Andrews TRASH I’ve got bags full of trash she touched: a pamphlet from a state fair pumpkin carving booth. The pithy tops to Snapple bottles and Jones sodas. Maps, maps of museums, of Delaware, of Boston, maps of Paris,…
MS. ROBBERS by J. Bradley Minnick
J. Bradley Minnick MS. ROBBERS Ms. Robbers taught seventh-grade Spanish at Mann Middle School and was the reason for Bernie Markee’s infamy. Ms. Robbers was white, tall, unmarried, called herself a “Progressivist,” and believed she spoke Castilian Spanish perfectly, pronouncing…
APPETITE by Meg LeDuc
Meg LeDuc APPETITE Honorable Mention of the 2024 Cleaver Emerging Artist Award I have an insatiable appetite for self-loathing. I hate my body’s neediness, the way it presses its wants upon me, always petitioning for more, more, more. I hate…
SMALL WORDS by Anna Tomasulo
Anna Tomasulo SMALL WORDS We sit at the bar. Our glasses sit at the bar. He and I sat first and they followed. Something about the night makes me want to talk. So, talk I do, about other hes and…
WE LAUGH by MaxieJane Frazier
MaxieJane Frazier WE LAUGH After Sarah Freligh When we’re twenty, we laugh and laugh. For the men surrounding us as if we’re gold at the end of a rainbow. For the slurred compliments and bestial breath. From the corner booth:…