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Street Cred

October 1, 2015

Sometimes the TLR issue titles are esoteric because they are trying to capture the elusive theme that links all the stories and poems in a given issue. Sometimes the titles are trying to capture an elusive theme as well as … Continued

A Review of Lot Boy by Greg Shemkovitz

October 1, 2015

Chad Meadows

(Buffalo, NY: Sunnyoutside, 2015) You know that guy in your office? You know the one I’m talking about. That guy. The one that is always the last person to get in and the first to leave. The one that disappears … Continued

Correspondence from the Yellow Crane Tower: Translating 崔顥 (Cui Hao) ||| Drunken Boat

September 30, 2015

Jen Hyde

To Cui Hao: Their people mounted the yellow crane but who is freer at the top? The yellow crane has been moving for a while, or is already gone by the time my word arrives that white clouds have emptied … Continued

The Taste of Metal

September 28, 2015

Janusz Szuber

Translated from Polish by Ewa Hryniewicz-Yarbrough Endless trouble, this wind Here on the river black at this time of year When shallow ruts glazed with ice crackle. Digging into memory as if digging into the recesses of a walnut He looked … Continued

A Review of The Names of Birds by Daniel Wolff

September 24, 2015

Lisa Grgas

(New York, NY: Four Way Books, 2015) At some point or another, all of us will experience grief. It’s our natural response to the loss of someone or something we love dearly. At least that’s what the self-help books say, … Continued

Meals Men Have Made Me ||| Tupelo Quarterly

September 23, 2015

Cathleen Calbert

Broccoli eggs in bed after this boy managed to break through my nervousness and dignity so I’d actually have sex with him instead of simply canoodling on the couch for hours. The eggs were delicious, and he spooned them into … Continued

Sugar, Wine, Smoke and Glue

September 21, 2015

Martin Ott

sugar I wasn’t sure what to make of it when my daughter sat at the breakfast table with a cigarette butt in one hand and a Skittle in the other. Karen had attempted to hide them from me, clenching her … Continued

A Review of Bottle The Bottles The Bottles The Bottles by Lee Upton

September 17, 2015

Amelia Fisher

(Cleveland, OH: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2015) If you’ve ever driven down a mountain road at night, you have some idea of what it’s like to pick up Lee Upton’s new poetry collection Bottle The Bottles The Bottles The … Continued

Castle ||| The Awl

September 16, 2015

Heather Christle

A house is an elephant I live in I live in one room and death is also in it like a plant I forget sometimes to water With time I can forget anything Lost to me have been some lakes … Continued

Interview with Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

September 14, 2015

Minna Proctor

I was convinced, based on absolutely no evidence, that Rebecca Newberger Goldstein’s new book 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction would address the sublime (which I had designated the secret leitmotif of this issue). Making … Continued

A Review of A Popular Place to Explode by Eric Paul

September 10, 2015

Heather Lang

(Los Angeles, CA: Heartworm Press, 2015) Exactly how dangerous is it to stare at the sun? This is a question that I find myself asking throughout Eric Paul’s second poetry collection, A Popular Place To Explode. No, the book isn’t particularly … Continued

Chopsticks ||| Monkeybicycle

September 9, 2015

Ryan Boudinot

My cat is taking drugs again. I’m pretty sure he’s getting them from this neighborhood boy named Alex, a mouth-breathing white kid with cornrows. Chopsticks, my cat, is a 6 year-old tabby I adopted from a kitten rescue program after my girlfriend … Continued

A Review of Alexandrian Summer by Yitzhak Gormezano Goren

September 3, 2015

Jody Handerson

Translated by Yardenne Greenspan (New York, NY: New Vessel Press, 2015) Alexandrian Summer is a novel where the vibrancy of small sins and the relentless toll of everyday unhappiness surrounds and transforms the characters; where nobility fails to lift lives above … Continued

High Schools, or How to Be Asian American ||| from Guernica Magazine

September 2, 2015

Matthew Salesses

Edison High and Kwonsun Hakkyo In a way, my parents met in high school. They were pen pals for three years. As a graduation gift, my American grandparents agreed to send my father to Korea; eleven months after that trip, … Continued

Baked Ziti

August 31, 2015

Jeffrey Rotter

a couple names their child Baked Ziti then she is orphaned this is one example of the joke against humanity a man beside you on the train has been diagnosed with a learning disorder his doctor sends him home with … Continued

A Review of Oreo by Fran Ross

August 27, 2015

Amanda Sarasien

(New York, NY: New Directions, 2015) It may come as a surprise to many readers of Fran Ross’s Oreo, recently rereleased by New Directions, that upon the book’s first appearance in 1974, the story failed to find its audience. Oreo … Continued

The Smoker in Winter ||| 3:AM Magazine

August 26, 2015

Jackie Corley

Willowbrook Road is a fierce run of valleys and curves. The fog settles down just after dark, the temperature drops, and the cool dampness slides into the grass. The deer, the sloths, and the groundhogs come out - glinting at … Continued

Poem

August 24, 2015

Martin Glaz Serup

With the Versailles Treaty of 1919 the Danish-German border is the only one that is saved Some countries like Poland, e.g. change their size and form and placement under cover of night It is POles with headscarves it … Continued

A Review of The Physics of Sorrow by Georgi Gospodinov

August 20, 2015

Elizabeth Bales Frank

Translated from the Bulgarian by Angela Rodel (Rochester, NY: Open Letter, 2015) The unnamed narrator of Georgi Gospodinov’s inventive, ambitious novel The Physics of Sorrow suffers from “pathological empathy or obsessive empathetic-somatic syndrome,” most acutely in his childhood. “Over the years … Continued

a garden of arms ||| Word Riot

August 19, 2015

Kimberly Ann Southwick

this time, the fennel bulb won’t burn out, i tell you. her name is Naji and her voice is deep. the aloe doesn’t like the sunshine, but today, it likes her. the gold dots in the air agree, wheeing and … Continued

Headstands

August 17, 2015

Eric Barnes

My father is watching in amazement as my phone rings but I don’t pick it up. “You’re not going to answer that?” he asks, incredulous. “No,” I say. He’s seventy-one, reading the Times, wearing a black sweat suit and sipping … Continued

A Review of Vessel by Parneshia Jones

August 13, 2015

Jane Frazier

(Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2015) Parneshia Jones’s poetry collection Vessel celebrates life with story and with lyric. Jones grew up an African-American girl in Chicago, and these reflective poems carve out for the reader a portrait of a life and … Continued

The Girlfriend Game ||| Metazen

August 12, 2015

Nick Antosca

We’re getting a little bored, so I ask my girlfriend if she wants to play the game tonight. She says she does. I was hoping she’d say that. Every time we play the game, it brings us a little closer … Continued

Manners

August 10, 2015

Tod Marshall

Black oak chain-sawed into smaller logs, milled to board, sanded smooth in the barn, then doweled and fit with precision. Grandma’s buffet holds good china, stained glass in the doors, one pane cracked: to fix it would mean taking everything … Continued

A Review of Apollo in the Grass by Aleksandr Kushner

August 6, 2015

Jeff Knops

Translated from Russian by Carol Ueland and Robert Carnevale (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2015) In 1989, I was a sophomore at a small Midwestern college. My friends and roommates were largely apolitical and, if I am going to … Continued

When Someone Says I Love You ||| Poem-A-Day

August 5, 2015

Karyna McGlynn

the whole room fills up with iced tea, something gives: the sun peels from your window, a sugared lemon, whole, flaming, hanging there. You tell them they must: puncture your chest with a straw to suck all the empty out, … Continued

Singlet

August 3, 2015

Eliot Schrefer

We haven’t been friends for a while, you and I, but you should know I’ve been watching you. You’re growing your hair long—it looks good. There’s still that curl in front, though, the one you hated so much. Back during … Continued

A Review of Clean by Kate Northrop

July 30, 2015

Ryan Romine

(New York, NY: Persea, 2011) One blistery spring evening last year, I wandered into the Free Library of Philadelphia for a poetry reading. It was Monday. I sat between a throng of grad students and a pair of office workers, attempting to … Continued

The Great Paint Lake ||| H.O.W. Journal

July 29, 2015

Jen Werner

Madeline wore stockings, which Julia thought would’ve looked sexier if her shoes had a higher heel, or any heel at all, really. She must have walked into all rooms, including this one—Julia’s studio apartment—like a patient, silently clutching a purse … Continued

Although

July 27, 2015

Robyn Schiff

lobster is a delicacy to lobster, and possessed of the ability to drop and grow back claws, lobster is not known to feed off of itself. The temptations of self-sufficiency are great, but not great enough, nor is it the … Continued

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