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, … Continued

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 … Continued

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, … Continued

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 … Continued

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 … Continued

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 … Continued

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 … Continued

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 … Continued

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.” … Continued

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 … Continued