by Shannon Frost Greenstein Reggie B Breakfast: Three (3) 24-ounce coffees One (1) cigarette Childhood was rough. Nature and nurture conspired to sabotage my brain. I never learned to care for myself; I never learned to care about myself. Lunch: One-half (1/2) Lean Cuisine Two (2) 20-ounce Diet Cokes One (1) Hershey’s Kiss Two (2) cigarettes The eating disorder stuck around. The darkness of deprivation and self-loathing defined the next decade. To overcome the voices whisperi

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

by Shannon Frost Greenstein Freddy Kearney It used to be that I enjoyed the scent of fire. It would remind me of fireplaces at Christmas, barbecues in the summer, camping trips and food we would cook over the flames. I liked the crackling sound, a sound I didn’t understand in the time Before was actually famine, the flames ravenous and hangry; it’s the sound of the fire eating through anything it can find for sustenance, because the alternative is simply not to be at all. I

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,

by Shannon Frost Greenstein Dennis Zhang Hail Mary, Mother of Grace, the Lord is with thee… I skip that one. St. Francis, please, help me… I skip that one, too. Please, God, don’t let him find out… That one piques my interest. I exhale, a puff of air between pursed lips like a tsunami of air, the flame blinking out and a meandering ribbon of smoke ascending toward the ceiling. Toward God. It gets a little darker; colder. I reach out, pluck the stout, waxy column from its gl