by OLIVIA NEAL Olivia Gatwood. New American Best Friend. Button Poetry. March 2017. pp. 60. “when they call you a bitch, say thank you. / say thank you, very much.” This is the powerful final line of Olivia Gatwood’s debut … Read more
by CHRISTOPHER RING Dry lightning lit on a ridge five miles off just as Jules crouched down to urinate. By sheer luck she had squatted on the southwest corner of the tower. Nothing told her to look that way, butshe … Read more
by TARAS V. MIKHAILIUK David Biespiel. The Education of a Young Poet. Counterpoint Press, October 2017, pp. 192. Part memoir, part imaginative recollection, David Biespiel’s Education of a Young Poet (Counterpoint Press, 2017) participates in two major traditions of Western literature. Unlike … Read more
by DANIEL HOLMES She told Thomas it started with the Golden Gate Bridge. Amy’s parents had taken her as a child: one of those cheesy trips to San Francisco where her dad labored to align their itinerary with that of … Read more
by KARAH MITCHELL Filip Springer, History of a Disappearance: The Story of a Forgotten Polish Town Originally published 2011. English translation by Sean Gaspar Bye, April 2017. Restless Books: Brooklyn, NY, pp 320 Imagine a medieval town in the countryside … Read more
by KAREN HARRYMAN 1. An overhand knot is usually tied at one end of a long marriage. When pulled tight it can be used as a stopper to prevent unraveling or slipping through one another. This is the knot at … Read more
by KYLAN RICE Gatherest by Sasha Steensen. Ahsahta Press, 2017. pp. 128 Sometimes I like to think of the poem as a child. The poet gives a kind of birth to a kind of offspring, a word. As it was … Read more
by NICHOLAS LEPRE They searched for Francine every Thursday afternoon, after school, in the hidden spaces of the neighborhood. They were halfway to the reservoir, the September sun at their backs, the green leaves beginning to brittle. Kenna in her … Read more
