Nonfiction

by Janet Albaugh Who's Denilo?/Unsplash Either she was up early or still up. The pain throbbed all night. She went to the bathroom sink and washed her hands, dried them with a trousseau hand towel and bent toward the mirror. The blisters were worse, ugly and angry looking. Some were just appearing on her lower lip, a raised dot of red, others a few days old had a red ring around a blister of pus. Others swelled at the corners of her mouth, clustered free form, blooming a cela

Dom Fou Time as a Sort of Enemy by Tyler Dempsey, Gob Pile Press, 2022 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer Tyler Dempsey’s new story collection snaps with dark energy, leaving the texture of dried blood on the mind’s fingers. The eight stories in the collection range from a scrappy, elliptical prose style to more sprawling stream-of-consciousness constructions, and they plumb settings from the Midwest to Mexico City to the advent of Internet life. What could be called satirical in thes

by Michelle Guerrero Henry How-Soon Ngu Move back home after three college semesters away. Get the first job you can. Your father is furious you moved back. Agree to be a companion to a short, elderly woman whose brown eyes light up when she smiles; observe the constellations on her round freckled cheeks. Listen to her mischievous laughter when she asks, Guess where I’m from? Lean in when she whispers about the song of her Jamaican accent, about also being Chinese, about all

by Maxwell Suzuki martin bennie In Ancient Egypt, it was believed that acne was created from the scattershot of leaded lies. Each one for the lilt of the boy’s tongue. And even a palm full of pustules would instill skepticism in everyone around him. # Two Truths and a Lie: 1) I was prescribed a healthy dose of Clindamycin in my youth to cure acne vulgaris and prevent any future lies from warping my skin. 2) I find pleasure in the excessive popping of puss in the reflection o

by Emily James Dzordzoe Noamesi When the girls are asleep, the sounds come back. The neighbors clinking corona lights into the recycling bin after a long afternoon, the hum of the air conditioning that keeps shutting on because of a cracked bathroom window, the dog scratching the throw blanket to get it set for her to lay. The girls are asleep, and now there are sounds, and I’m leaning into my husband’s arms on a tufted couch, his index fingers rubbing my back. The tears come

Nick Fewings Best Microfiction 2021 edited by Meg Pokrass, Gary Fincke and Amber Sparks, Pelekinesis, 2021 Reviewed by Kate Blackwood Why to read Best Microfiction 2021 is clear enough: here we have in one volume 102 of the most remarkable small fictions published in the past year, thoughtfully chosen and artfully arranged by guest editor Amber Sparks and series editors Meg Pokrass and Gary Fincke. And 2021 is a particularly exciting time for microfiction, with several of t

Fazly Shah One Person Away from You: Stories by Andrew Bertaina, Moon City Press, 2021 Reviewed by Andrew Gretes Andrew Bertaina’s debut short-story collection, One Person Away from You (winner of the 2020 Moon City Short Fiction Award), is the answer to the counterfactual: “What if Proust wrote flash?” Like Proust’s wayward narrator, Bertaina’s characters are simultaneously pursuing and pursued by the past, and it’s precisely this position (smack in the middle of the tempora

by Nick Olson insung yoon We pulled into Chuck and Mary’s with all my earthly possessions packed on, around, and behind me. Left an eight year relationship, put in notice at my job, and I was set to leave the state next day. Clean slate. Chuck wasn’t an uncle. Technically a second or third cousin through marriage, but the age difference made him feel like an uncle. He fought in Vietnam, and I was eleven years old when 9/11 happened. I wasn’t yet sober, so I drank with family,

The Northern Line: Stories by Mike Lee, Atmosphere Press, 2021 Reviewed by MK Sturdevant “I could see the hole. I knew it was a plane.”— from “The Details of Time” I made a decade-long career out of understanding and teaching seventeenth-century early modern philosophy. I know exactly what to say about the year 1641, but until reading Mike Lee’s collection of stories, I had no idea what to say about 2002, or 1997, or 1988, years in which I actually existed (a category of exi

Fer Troulik Cabinet of Wrath: A Doll Collection by Tara Campbell, Aqueduct Press, 2021 Reviewed by Katharine Blair In my early twenties I worked for a year in a convent-run Home for Unwed Mothers, which is odd given that I was neither religious nor living in the Victorian age, but need does as need must and at that point what need needed was money for school. I’d be a mother myself two years later. Wed, if you’re nosy, like I tend to be. Any birth story — ask me, if you like

by Kristin Distel Arnab Dey A crumb of the communion wafer I shouldn’t have taken wedged itself in the crevices of my molar. Shunted between the uplifted hands of my father and grandmother, I tried to sing along— holy, holy, holy Lord, God Almighty, early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee —but the words vaporized in my mouth, my tongue a rushlight. Between verses, I slipped out of the beachside tabernacle and stepped into the murky lake water with my church shoes sti

Scott Neuffer Salamat sa Intersectionality by Dani Putney, Okay Donkey Press, 2021 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer In their debut poetry collection, Dani Putney renders the American West new. Blending a philosophical, musing mind with a deep love for concrete particulars in a landscape — namely the geology and flora of Nevada —  Salamat sa Intersectionality offers an utterly beautiful and transformative revision of the strange place we both call home. Divided into three sections,

by Kirsten Reneau Shot By Ireland I remember useless things, facts that never offer anyone anything. How a giraffe’s heart weighs 25 pounds; that a fire chaser beetle spends its entire life looking for flames; that there are two kinds of lightning—positive and negative. How lightning always becomes before thunder; that is, the crash, the sound of a thousand plates breaking, must come after the light. I remember the moments I almost died, be it drowning, a semi-trailer not che

Ganapathy Kumar Medusa Retold by Sarah Wallis, Fly on the Wall Press, 2020 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer Greek myth can be cruel to women. Take Medusa, for instance. Abused by the gods and turned into a monster. Weaponized to turn others to stone. Scotland-based poet Sarah Wallis inverts this myth in her highly imaginative coming-to-age chapbook, Medusa Retold . Meet Nuala, the heroine of this long-form narrative poem. A “headstrong girl with her outsize feelings for the sea and

by Scott Neuffer Олег Мороз Sarah Cavar is a fresh force in modern lit. Those familiar with their work know they bring vivid poetic energy to the page along with a scalpel-sharp analytical mind — the mind of a literary theorist deconstructing notions of gender and identity mixed with the sensibility of a surrealist poet. Cavar has two new prose chapbooks that together offer a deep dive into the human psyche — riveting and unforgettable. A Hole Walked In , Sword and Kettle Pre

Liana S Love and Endless Love by Lilia Marie Ellis, giallo, 2021 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer The two epigraphs of Lilia Marie Ellis’ bold and beautiful chapbook, Love and Endless Love , come from Corinthians and Virginia Woolf’s The Waves . Like both these texts, Lilia’s book has an epic spiritual scope as the poet confronts pain and cruelty with an amazing spirit of resilience. Formalistically, these poems reveal a distinct style, shaped almost as stream-of-conscious prose po

Patrick Pierre Letters to My Lover from Behind Asylum Walls by Robin Sinclair, Cosmographia, 2018 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer As a Bipolar I individual, now treated, I often recall my visits to the state psychiatric ward, the phantasmagoric experience of losing one’s mind. It’s hard to describe to people who’ve never been through it. It’s like your subconscious vomits, a purge of the soul, and you bend to the force of your own hallucinations. The objective world waits on the p

by Kate Raphael Ivan Bandura I ventured to Rooftop Quarry only once. My college boyfriend was visiting me in Bloomington, Indiana where I was languishing through an endless August at home before my senior year. I waited outside Arrivals in the family minivan for him to emerge from the Indianapolis airport, then drove us back into agro-suburbia, feeling with each passing soybean field that I had less and less for us to do, my planned activities too quaint and Midwestern to sug

by Adedayo Agarau Isabella Kara interlucent adj in·​ter·​lu·​cent | \ ¦intə(r)¦lüsənt also -)l¦yü- \ Definition: shining or glowing between or in the midst of other things The relationship between a body and a poem is that each is an entity capable of movement, having the ability to love, protest, plead, begin, and end. The difference, however, is that a poem does not die. Each sentence, enjambed or not, stacked upon each other in a poem like towers of babel, is a movement t

Teo Do Rio Softening by Olivia Braley, ELJ Editions, Magpie Series, 2021 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer Not sure why I’m getting déjà vu writing this review right now, but the feeling is strong. Maybe because Olivia Braley’s Softening , her debut prose chapbook, has universal appeal. Maybe it gets there through steady illumination of a particular pain, the hallmark of a great writer. At twenty pages, Softening is short but impactful, a series of crystalline vignettes written in