Nonfiction

by Mileva Anastasiadou Sharon McCutcheon At first, the earth is cut into pieces. As if it were a steak hard to chew. That certainly takes you by surprise, you and everyone else, and feels surreal, like living in a dystopic film, a film you may enjoy viewing, yet the remote is stuck, you can’t change channels. You aren’t your usual self, after you turn into a tiny molecule of that tiny piece, only some pieces are bigger than others, safer than others, and you look around, seei

guille pozzi Lovely Daughter of the Shattering by Patrice Boyer Claeys, Kelsay Books, $14 paperback, 2019 Reviewed by Sury Ghosh “I love you,” I told him as I kissed him good night. He said he loved me too, and went on to ask: “Mama, do you love me more than you love yourself?” Not knowing what the right answer is to that question, I only repeated what I said to him earlier, that I loved him, very much. As a mother of this young person, I had often found myself in situations

Doctor Tinieblas Saturday Night Sage by Noah Lekas, Blind Owl, $15 paperback, 2019 Reviewed by Travis Cravey Noah Lekas’ collection begins and ends with travel. In between we are told some amazing stories about work, philosophy, and the Midwest. We will deliver art to the wealthy in New York and wait impatiently with others for the factory bell in Racine to free us. The subtitle of the collection is “narrative poems of mysticism and menial labor,” and Lekas delivers powerfu

by Mark McConville Lloyd Morgan/CC Green Day as a band were cascading into the void before they released their smash hit American Idiot in 2004. After its monumental surge, the band’s relevance was reinstated. Through time, many older fans turned their heads and started to rekindle their praise for a band that created a mediocre record four years prior. Warning damaged Green Day’s reputation. Although it did have its hits, it didn’t enforce the same aura as albums such as 1

by Liz Wride William Warby Thanks to a redhead in a Union Jack dress, many people see the 90s as the decade that defined “Girl Power,” and I’m not one to disagree. While The Spice Girlscoined the phrase, they weren’t the first ones telling girls they could be whatever they wanted to be. That message didn’t come from a girl group, or even a human being, but a bundle of computer chips in the form of 8 and 16-bit games consoles. I’m talking about the NES (Nintendo Entertainment

by Shannon Frost Greenstein Michal Dolnik My son prefers people of color. He is four, and on the autism spectrum, and preverbal. He’s also uncannily bright, incredibly sweet, and effusive with affection. Now, you might be wondering, if he’s preverbal, how I have any idea about his preferences, but I counter: Any special-needs parent of a nonverbal child, or any parent of an infant who is still preverbal, knows intimately what their child likes, dislikes, adores, and detests,

moises ferreira Let the Buzzards Eat Me Whole by Ingrid M. Calderón-Collins, Another New Calligraphy, 2019, $16 paperback Reviewed by Scott Neuffer My wife tells me not to talk about it: her trauma. She survived the dirty wars in Peru. If you talk, you die, she tells me. People don’t talk about it. The dead are dead. The living go on. Sorry, it’s not my place, I say. But these ghosts. I can feel them. Why are so many Latinx immigrants haunted this way, knowing nothing but e

by C. Cimmone Brooks Leibee Yesterday I went into a jewelry store with a friend. She was looking for fancy bracelets and rings. Harmless it seemed. Mundane, almost. The front door was grand and silver. Glass cases filled the room — horizontal and studied with downward gazes of shoppers. The salesmen’s pressed suits, black and tight, were a great contrast to the cream carpet beneath their feet. We meandered between cases and smiled politely at intense patrons of the diamond ev

Stanisław Krawczyk Humiliation by Paulina Flores, trans. by Megan McDowell, Catapult, 2019, $16.95 paperback Reviewed by Scott Neuffer There is nothing more human than being humiliated, the feeling of being undone, when the careful constructs of the ego unravel in bewilderment. The word itself comes from the Latin “humilis,” meaning low, from “humus” or earth. It’s as though humiliation returns us to the primordial pain, clips our skyward wings, inters us once again in the m

by Mike Holland Mykyta Kravčenko I’m what’s known as the DOA Officer. It’s a misnomer; I’m not sworn to uphold the laws regarding animal welfare. What I do is pick up dead animals throughout The County. I drive a pickup truck modified for this purpose that I call the Dead Truck. One of its features is a camper shell so folks won’t see the bodies and carcasses, remains and parts in the back. No one wants to look at this stuff. But that isn’t really true: when I’m on the side o

by Alex Simms Samuel Oakes I’d stolen one hundred dollars from Mom’s purse yesterday evening. Her purse sat there in the dark, underneath the dining room table, like an encased artifact in a museum at night. I flicked the fringe on its sides, expecting it to tingle and clamor throughout the house. I positioned my arm like a crane and reeled my hand down to fish around the inside. I took whatever first felt like money — thinner than a credit card but not as noisy as receipt pa

by Rylie Cooper Lisa Anna I know we broke up six months ago—and it’s not that we don’t keep in touch—we see each other rather frequently, at least three times a day. But we used to see each other ten times a day, sometimes more, sometimes we’d spend an entire day together. You’ve seen me at my best, my worst, and those in between phases where you and I both know that something is wrong, but anyone who doesn’t know me would find it safe to assume that I’m “thriving.” Do you re

by Matt Muilenburg Ahmad Budhi I game-planned in the midst of ecstasy, laying my work shirt over the dresser so I wouldn’t have to iron out creases before returning to the back half of my nine-to-five. I kicked off my cheap loafers and peeled down my dress socks, leaving them at the foot of the bed for quick retrieval. Laurie, then my fiancé, had already laid her workplace casual over the closet door and awaited me beneath the comforter, the taste of the leftovers we’d hurrie

Tonmoy Iftekhar The Crossing Over by Jen Karetnick, Split Rock Review, 2019, $10 paperback Reviewed by Sury Ghosh Jha Jen Karetnick, in her chapbook of poems The Crossing Over , writes about what is arguably one of the most heart-wrenching events of present times, the migrant exodus across the Mediterranean Sea. Karetnick gives a boat a voice, and all of the poems are written as an experience that the boat has or has not. The poems draw a sequence that starts with the birth

by Virginia Watts Theo Laflamme The problem with concrete: it has a long lifespan and it’s hard to get rid of. You can’t burn concrete. You can’t dissolve it. The only thing you can do: find a solid that is harder and denser, chemically speaking, and start bashing away. I am thinking of the Colossuem here: Roman Cement. In dawn’s light, each gladiator may only choose one weapon. The giant with the golden teeth, the missing eye, the bloody kneecaps, steps forward, scans the of

by Vel Prozorova Niko Photos Between the grapefruit mornings and arterial nights, little happens but the wind and the endless pulse of growing roots; because though the water comes sometimes, and doesn’t, more often, life hasn’t left this place just yet. There has always been a constant state of liminality, here. Once, there was a fence. There for no other reason than to use dead wood to surround the still-living. Curious bodies climbed it with ease, pressing close with breat

by C. Cimmone Carl Beech We come here when everything has left. We walk along the broken topped jetty to purge our mind, but the seagulls nip at our stumbling bodies. The waves taunt us with the mirage of being washed back out into sea. Forgotten trees wash up on the shore and we kick at them like fragile children longing for attention. We come here to belong to nothing — to no one. We come here when all hope is lost. We put our back to the sea and know when the money from ou

by C. Cimmone Isabella Fischer That day draws itself in my mind like a broken piece of plywood — jagged angles and wisps, spiny picks and thick chunks — being forced back together by angry, exhausted hands; but I will try to tell you the story without conjuring sadness or sympathy. I will tell you about the two rosaries and you can let it sit and weigh, but only for a few seconds — and then you must release it back out into the universe. Let it rest. Let the story of the rosa

by Mara Cohen Hiroshi Tsubono I can’t recall a single conversation with my brother, Danny. Not a solitary one. Here’s a sampling of what I do remember: taping the Halloween decorations on the living room windows, sneaking into the pool at the Writer’s Manor Hotel before it was demolished and dancing the west coast swing at the Black Angus steakhouse. But what did we discuss while we did these things? Our favorite plot twists on Star Trek? Whether Geraldine Ferraro was a viabl

by Rick Kempa Alex Holt Flagstaff to Tucson to Flagstaff, Going Home Road, Road away from Home — my parents,’ that is; I had none, unless it was this concrete strip I travelled restlessly, relentlessly, sometimes recklessly in the decade of my twenties, south-bound, north-bound, nowhere-in-particular bound. Bumble Bee, Rock Springs, Bloody Basin, Stoneman Lake : In how many notebooks did I write these names, scribbling in the dark in the trucker’s cab, making him nervous, or