by MEGAN SWARTZFAGER Eduardo C. Corral, Guillotine (Graywolf, 2020), pp. 72. “Welcome / to la cagada,”– or, “the shit”– one undocumented immigrant trekking through unforgiving desert tells himself in award-winning poet Eduardo C. Corral’s second and latest collection of poetry, … Read more

by DEBORAH BACHARACH Dora Malech, Flourish (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2020), pp. 91 Dora Malech’s fourth collection, Flourish, uncannily mixes dark themes with playful language. The darkness can be found on the road the speaker travels en route to a wedding in … Read more

by Mary Byrne Atlanta. Springtime, 2004. Late each night, an hour came when the edges of objects and people went runny. It arrived in the interval between the last band’s last song and the closing of the bar. By then … Read more

by Daniel Kennedy Levin stared out the window. Despite what time had done to his mind, his sight remained sharp. Soldiers approached in the distance: a line of ants, moving through a pass in the mountainside. The vanguard of their … Read more

by JULIA EDWARDS Kathryn Nuernberger, Rue (BOA Editions, 2020), pp. 104. In an online reading series via Green Mountains Review, Kathryn Nuernberger declares that the closing poem in her new book Rue, “The Real Thing,” is “the closest thing a … Read more

by DEBORAH BACHARACH Pamela Sneed, Funeral Diva (City Lights Books, 2020), p. 148. Pamela Sneed is a Black lesbian scholar, activist, poet, historian, and professor, and she brings all this expertise to Funeral Diva, her new cross-genre book. The first two … Read more

by JESSICA CORY Natalie Diaz, Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf Press, 2020). pp. 120 pages.  “My brother has a knife in his hand. / He has decided to stab my father,” read the opening lines of the collection’s second poem, “Blood-Light.” … Read more

by Marisa Clogher My husband touches my belly in the mornings, and I pity him. He stretches his hand as wide as it goes and places it on my stomach, as if to say, This is a sacred thing; I … Read more

by Kara Moskowitz “Ow!” Evie sits on a chair in the breakfast room facing into the window, hands pressed down on her thighs, leaning forward expectantly. “Hold still then!” Tanya stands behind her, waging an assault on the tangles that … Read more

by Alice Shechter We heard a soft knock on the door. Kathy jumped to open it; she often took charge, the de facto Wendy to all of our lost boys, or rather, lost people, at the commune. Susanne stood in … Read more