by HANNAH ROBERTS   Kaveh Akbar, Pilgrim Bell (Graywolf Press, 2021), pp. 80. “Regarding loss, I’m / afraid / to keep it in the story, / worried what I might bring back to life,” Akbar admits in “Soot,” the opening …

by Alex Wichert   I sat in my three-star hotel room and wondered about the best way to kill someone. I hadn’t planned for this—the plot, in fact, was intended as comedy—but certain symptoms of doubt had crept in with … Read more

by SARAH LOFSTROM Katharine Coldiron, Ceremonials (Kernpunkt Press, 2020), pp. 134. A novella inspired by the 2011 Florence + the Machine album of the same name, Ceremonials is an ethereal dreamscape of a text. It embodies sensuous transformation in its … Read more

by ELLIE RAMBO Walter Serner, Last Loosening: a handbook for the con artist & those aspiring to become one (Twisted Spoon Press, 2020), pp. 189. The “Last Number” from Walter Serner’s Last Loosening, recently translated from German by Mark Kanak, … Read more

by Joseph Rakowski Deer season was planned to open in a few weeks, and it was time Lorenzo took his eleven-year-old son to the store to get him his first long gun. He figured this would give him enough time … Read more

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