Nonfiction

Nicole Herrero Color All Maps New by Jack Bedell, Mercer University Press, 2021 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer At one point the speaker of the poems in Jack Bedell’s deftly crafted and luminescent poetry collection, Color All Maps New , wonders about leaving his home of Louisiana and holing up in a clean, broken mountain range, as if to escape the primordial swampland. For the purposes of this review, let’s assume the speaker is Jack himself — a dangerous assumption — and that he

Arièle Bonte Mother Tongue Apologize by Preeti Vangani, RLFPA Editions, 2018 Reviewed by Scott Neuffer Some men don’t know how to use their tongues right, and it shows. The speaker of the poems in Preeti Vangani’s Mother Tongue Apologize finds enough power in the poetic beat of her own tongue — a master of three languages, in fact — to leave such men to the rubbish heap of history. Containing just under fifty knockout poems, this collection weaves the grit and dizziness of

Gwendal Cottin Ribald by Alina Stefanescu, Bull City Press Inch #44, 2020 Reviewed by Lannie Stabile “Your mom can die, but that birder will keep walking down the street, whistling as you piss your pants.” For such a tiny book, Alina Stefanacu’s Ribald , a micro-collection of essays, demands a lot of unpacking. Let us snap open Grandma’s antique trunk, and what will we find? A handful of gravel, a pocketknife, a stressed horse, a gauntlet and sword, a scream, a cold beer wit

by Nicole Oquendo Alex Simpson When I was small, a small certain version of irreparable me, a tiny furnace burning, we drove, always, past the airfield where the planes lived in their tiny houses. We’d pass my favorite restaurant on the way, but the idea of free chips, that crunch, that blessing, was nothing up against the stretch of wing, always flatter than I could stretch, and even less still compared to the spin of a propeller moving so fast you couldn’t lock your eyes on

by Scott Neuffer Someone gave me an Amazon gift card for Christmas, and I spent it on books. I’m sorry. Amazon is a monster, but if I didn’t spend it on books, I would’ve blown it on Nintendo 64 games, and then I wouldn’t be reading at all. The books I got were written by trampset contributors, all collected works of short fiction, all written by ingenious women…. Every Mask I Tried On by Alina Stefanescu, Brighthorse Books, 2018 This story collection bristles with restless

by Beth Gilstrap Maciej Karoń Last year, I picked ten or twelve green tomatoes. I love the craggy look of heirloom varietals and I stacked the little ones on top of their bulbous orange cousins to ripen on my kitchen windowsill. Few of my plantings from the first few days after C passed thrived. I thought the garden would bloom spectacular from the amount of emotion I left in that dirt. Lush. Heavy blooms. Straw mushrooms under the peppers and okra after a good rain. Ordinari

Alina Stefanescu Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her partner and several intense mammals. Her writing can be found in diverse journals, including Prairie Schooner, North American Review, FLOCK, Southern Humanities Review, Crab Creek Review, Virga, Whale Road Review, and others. She serves as Poetry Editor for Pidgeonholes, Poetry Editor for Random Sample Review, Poetry Reviewer for Up the Staircase Quarterly, and Co-Director of PEN A

Sagar Kulkarni Tragedy, Ecstasy, Doom, and so on by Kip Knott, Kelsay Books, 2020, $18.50 paperback Reviewed by C. Cimmone They tell you in school to write with careful descriptions in order to “project the reader to another place.” This task is easily achieved when writing long prose, but when writing short poetry, it can be a challenge. Fortunately, Kip Knott did not see this as a challenge when producing his poetry collection Tragedy, Ecstasy, Doom, and so on. Knott’s var

by Lettie Mckie Andy Arbeit In April, the reality of the pandemic fades into the background as my family deals with our own internal crisis. The house is in Kemsing, a southern English village in the Kent countryside. It is nestled on the slopes of the North Downs, a range of rolling chalk hills that stretch through the counties of Surrey and Kent to the coast at Dover. All the expected accoutrements of this idyllic location are in place from red brick cottages festooned with

by Madeleine Corley Donna McL Tara Isabel Zambrano takes us across different folds of time, realities, and human emotions in her new book Death, Desire, and Other Destinations from Okay Donkey. I’m delighted to have had the opportunity to dive into this collection, especially given Okay Donkey’s background of publishing stellar pieces and collections in the past. I can firmly say Zambrano marvelously adds to this trend with her book. Zambrano leads us in “Alligators,” a piec

by Kiyoko Reidy SC Jang I dream my mother a cicada: her flesh gone hard, wings pulling from her back, veins spreading translucent rainbow across thin membrane like oil over water. She rises, a false locust, thick-bodied and screaming, red eyes blank. Her scream, or song, a series of ribs buckling: the tymbal, crashing in on itself and refilling, the empty chamber of her new body echoing like drums in a cave. The crash and refill so fast the clicking rises to a steady hum, lou

Photo provided by author Chris L. Butler is an African American and Dutch poet, essayist, and historian from Philadelphia, PA. Chris graduated from the University of Houston-Downtown, where he earned a B.S. in Interdisciplinary Studies, History. He also graduated from Xavier University where he earned an Associate’s Degree in Liberal Arts. His work has been featured in The Journal of International Relations and Diplomacy, Versification Magazine, Perhappened Mag, Trampset Maga

by Cathy Ulrich Viktor Talashuk There is a ghost in this story. You will find it spiderweb-strung in the spaces between the words you can see. You will find it in the unspoken, soft things. Remember the first time you kissed someone, or the last. Remember waking in the night, twitch of shadow on the wall, your voice a ragged whisper, mom, mom, mom , how small your hands were then, how you slept in piles of stuffed animals so the killers, when they came, would never be able to

by Davon Loeb Kenneth Schipper Somewhere near the Mason-Dixon Line, close to nothing much—a Wawa, Johnny’s Farm, Smith’s General Store, Carranza Memorial, and the high school where I sat in the gymnasium as red as a peregrine’s eggs—between crosshairs, and hot house tongues, and diesel and carousel and steam—and where their heads were ready to blow, like twenty-gauged loaded barrels. But also in that gymnasium, one of the two of us could jump, definitely higher than the other

C D-X Audio Therapy by Reggie Johnson, published by Reginald Johnson, $14.85 paperback, 2019 Reviewed by Chris L. Butler Reggie Johnson’s Audio Therapy is a poetry collection designed for those who find refuge in music to cope with their mental health. Johnson’s chapbook combines a series of rhythmic free form flows, with a rapper’s delivery. The structure of Audio Therapy follows a question and answer format where Johnson provides an introduction to each poem. As the book

Rob Potter Collective Gravities by Chloe N. Clark, word west, $15 paperback, 2020 Reviewed by Ian MacAllen Few people would have predicted a global pandemic would plunge the world into a collective isolation with the specter of death threatening at every moment. Yet Chloe N. Clark’s debut story collection, Collective Gravities , offers a prescient examination of these anxieties. Several of Clark’s stories even go as far as manifesting the sense that she somehow anticipated t

by Katherine Morgan Erik Mclean I close my eyes, a sweaty canned margarita clutched in my right hand, and begin to dance about around my apartment. The MTV Unplugged version of Mariah Carey’s “Emotions” is blaring from my speakers. I’m drunkenly attempting to sing along, missing high note after high note but not giving a single damn about it. The can says “mango margarita” but tastes more like straight tequila with a whisper of mango, so it’s not as sweet as I would normally

Joel Holland The Meadow by Kristin Garth, APEP Publications, $14 paperback, 2020 Reviewed by Ambrose Hall A collection of poetry that begins in childhood, with chilling glimpses into small town abuse, and follows the young girl into adulthood, to awkward early sexual encounters, through her first serious BDSM relationship, to its heartbroken ending. The Meadow is an intense, sometimes painful ride of mixed emotions that build and build into a fevered, dark sensuality, reple

by C. Cimmone C. Cimmone/Olivas It was his last birthday we shared together: him, the two kids, and me. I picked up pizza on my way home from work. I stopped at the market for his green iced cake and a birthday card that simply read, “Happy Birthday to My Husband.” He enjoyed the frilly lines of the birthday card, and gave himself an extra dose of insulin after the birthday candles were blown out. I gathered the babies and he opened the front door. The day was still warm, but

Frida Aguilar Estrada Ways We Vanish by Todd Dillard, Okay Donkey Press, $14 paperback, 2020 Reviewed by Shannon Frost Greenstein What is grief? Todd Dillard’s debut chapbook opens with this line, not exactly a rhetorical question but something still unanswerable. What follows is the author’s attempt to understand, to understand what is left behind when someone is lost. Thus readers will experience Ways We Vanish , a collection which, on a fundamental level, regards absence