Discountry ||| Radar
A wooded, bloodied word, a dozing black daisy. Into you out of my head how many times, out of air and earthward, bird with no throat, bird unopened. Unencumbered of my desire, your arms free of the frozen stream. To … Continued
A wooded, bloodied word, a dozing black daisy. Into you out of my head how many times, out of air and earthward, bird with no throat, bird unopened. Unencumbered of my desire, your arms free of the frozen stream. To … Continued
(Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2011) When I cracked open Stolen Pleasures, all I knew about Gina Berriault was that she was a California writer, a “writer’s writer” decked out with major awards but missing the name recognition to match. Before I … Continued
Pretty good work if you can get it, making paradises in abandoned banks stony exterior, marble interior, the registers like a failed carillon (toneless) striking all hours at all hours. Every noon the ghost attendants ghost-walk up to the kiosk, … Continued
(Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2018) At its core, The Surprising Place is a grim yet authentic exploration of the modern American Midwest and the unsatisfied desires that haunt its residents’ interior lives. Malinda McCollum guides readers through the … Continued
Out of a tin-cold, murmuring black wood Lightly you lope, pale deer, lifting A story from pages of snow Nothing turns in your eye they say Toward the tin-cold and murmuring black wood I bear a display case of blue … Continued
(New York: Other Press, 2018) Never Anyone But You by Rupert Thompson is an in-depth historical fiction following the surrealist photographers Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore through their first meeting in the early 1900s, their move to 1920s Paris, followed by … Continued
This is Polynesia in the mitten, hidden past the trailers where iron sky meets iron water. We tread beaches like two lovers tread the bedroom, moving slowly toward a point … Continued
(New Jersey: Serving House Books, 2018) Angela M. Brommel’s debut poetry chapbook, Plutonium & Platinum Blonde, is both a séance in the Mojave Desert and a haunting love letter to Las Vegas. It delivers us to the center of America’s … Continued
No one could tell us how we ended up here. The definition of glass is obvious. It’s glass. And we were‚ like‚ right inside it. A glass arm that had our arms inside. A glass hip. Glass pupils to keep … Continued
Look, up in the sky! Look what the culture is thinking of itself! Two orphans are up against it, ladies and gentlemen. And aren’t we all orphans in some way? Aren’t we all adopted? The illegal alien falls to earth … Continued
(Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2018) Before I moved to the desert, I lived in Seattle, and within walking distance from my apartment was a modest surf shop. I’d rent stand-up paddleboards and, with my small dog at the … Continued
(Warrensburg, MO: Pleiades Press, 2018) Years ago, I used to make scrapbooks. Actually, they were more like photo albums in which I incorporated scraps of things I collected on my overseas journeys. I affixed ticket stubs from museums and trains, … Continued
The family two docks down, their chatter straining over the talk radio blaring, in-laws, who never had kids, warning relative’s kids, “Too close, kids.” Me on my dock thinking No kids, so that’s the reason the kids are too close, but no breaks. The in-laws: “Stop it. Stop horsing around.” “Oh, go ahead, fall … Continued
for Tom Devaney On the eve of never forgetting I still want to run away from you together or not run but bite or register bionic judgment always … Continued
Heather Lang: Pete, congratulations on the publication of your short story collection, Little Black Dots, out with Chatter House Press. I know that “Little Black Dots” is also the title of one of the short stories in the collection, but … Continued
I. In March, in fifty degree weather, my friend convinces me to walk out across a frozen pond. He slams a log into it to show me it’s safe. He wants my help grabbing an old hockey puck. I … Continued
(Austin, TX: A Strange Object, 2018) Belly Up, the title of Rita Bullwinkel’s debut collection, feels like a wave of the hand, beckoning us to cross the threshold of a serving house, walk over to the bar, and lift a … Continued
In the minute it took to fetch the blue bowl from the kitchen to pick the just-ripe cherries, the blackbirds had come. They picked the branches clean, ascending into their own blue bowl. Lacking wings, I look for meaning. We … Continued
Some thoughts on Chemistry. 1. I’m the kid who loved Chemistry for the wrong reasons. I was dreamily somewhat interested in what we were studying, but I wasn’t very good in the lab. I probably dropped pipettes and fumbled beakers; … Continued
(New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2018) Kaethe Schwehn’s The Rending and the Nest is a visceral, transcendent tale about creating life out of no life in a post-apocalyptic world. The characters we meet struggle to create normalcy out of tattered fragments. They confront … Continued
It is difficult to make generalizations about Neil Gaiman’s books. His contributions to practically every literary genre have earned him a place in the Dictionary of Literary Biography as one of the top ten living post-modern writers. His work … Continued
Translated from the Icelandic by Lytton Smith (Rochester, NY: Open Letter, 2012) One day recently I was out hiking with my husband in the woods by our new house, and we came upon a stranger. At first he pointed in … Continued
Brandon Davis Jennings grew up as an Air Force Brat and enlisted in the Air Force in 2000. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, he was “augmented” to check for bombs at the entrances to the USAF base on Okinawa … Continued
Works Discussed: The Blessing of Dark Water by Elizabeth Lyons (Farmington, ME: Alice James Books, 2017) You Asked Me to Talk About the Interior by Carolina Ebeid (Blacksburg, VA: Noemi Press, 2017) Late Empire by Lisa Olstein (Port Townsend, WA: … Continued
Translated by Martha Cooley and Antonio Romani My father’s bookcase was divided by nationalities of the authors. “The French ones,” my mother would say with some solemnity, indicating the most considerable sector, and perhaps the one most congenial to … Continued
(Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2017) Adam Giannelli seizes the fine line between light and dark while exposing the movement through language in his book Tremulous Hinge. He is able to display the conflict of time and language in … Continued
(Baton Rouge, LA: Yellow Shoe Fiction, 2017) Balancing wit and wisdom, Lee Upton’s most recent short story collection, Visitations, is provocative and entertaining as it follows an eclectic cast of narrators in their journeys to self-discovery. Whether through the many … Continued
(New York: Catapult, 2017) I am stuck. At least that is how I feel most days. Trapped in a life far removed from the one I once dreamed. On good days, I fantasize about fleeing, where I’d go and how … Continued
No nail to spark the fires, no waists to nip in. There will not be cookery or starguide, no petite or hardiness in lace, hardly an elegance. No celebrities for the TV. No dogeared books on floral arrangement or patched … Continued
What I mean to say is depth can be illusory. If you wore red-cyan 3D glasses and leafed through me like a flipbook, you’d see there’s more to me than cartoon drunkenness. Before coming home late without my clothes on … Continued