Spanning decades and distance, generations of women move through each other’s lives in Rebecca Hart Olander’s second full-length poetry collection, Singing from the Deep End. Opening with “Cape Ann,” “a cape named for a mother, / and a queen,” the speaker in this poem...
Infomercial for Soft Things (Alcibiades) Alcibiades—Athenian playboy, politician, and general who switched his allegiances between Athens and Sparta during the Peloponnesian War—embraced wantonness and excessive luxury. He had the planks of his ship taken out to...
Although I’ve been a mother for over two decades, I’ve only rarely found myself pulled toward creative nonfiction about parenting. But when I recently came across Mothers and Other Fictional Characters by Nicole Graev Lipson, I picked it up immediately. The title...
Osasere Ewansiha: How was the writing process of Dancing Between the Raindrops different from your novel, The Talking Drum, or other works? Lisa Braxton: I wasn’t working on a full narrative. I was not attempting to write like I did in fiction, (like my novel) a story...
Someone, somewhere once referred to Saint Prisca, or Pricilla, as “the one who wouldn’t die.” According to legend, this young girl, baptized by Saint Peter, was ordered by a Roman emperor to make a sacrifice to the pagan god Apollo. When she refused, men beat her and...
Sons, Daughters. Ivana Bodrožić. Seven Stories Press; April 2024. $21.95. “It’s a hit-and-miss,” was a recent explanation of LGBTQ+ tolerance in Croatia. The statement was uttered during an official conversation about the country, surprising all who have been lulled...
Bradley steered his Chevy S-10 through the dark to the back of the Campbell property to drop off the deer. He saw Dewayne back there discussing something into a cordless phone, pacing across the open-aired shed where deer and other game were processed. In a past life...
Michael Chang’s fourth collection, Toy Soldiers (Action, Spectacle Press), is part prayer, part pop culture generator, and a scathing anti-ode to our justice system. Of our Supreme Court, they write, “the cardinal sin of poetry (no stakes) has been a pattern and...
One I know it’s cliché to start with the face in the mirror, but Cassiopeia, how can we begin any other way? Your high cheekbones, arched eyebrows shading ochre eyes, stately nose, and strong chin. Your hair, sometimes blonde, sometimes chestnut, coiled atop your head...