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My Fave 5 – October 2020

My Fave 5 – October 2020

by | Oct 9, 2020

October 2020 Series Curator: Jonathan Cardew August Selector: Tommy Dean What’s rare, what’s bright, what’s new? This is what we ask a new writer every month in search of the best hybrid, poetry, and flash writing from the previous month. In this edition, we catch up...

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Bending Genres Reading for SMOLfair- March 5, 2021 at 9:00 p.m. E.S.T. This Friday, we have a great line-up for our Bending Genres Reading for the SMOLfair book fair event happening March 3- 7. Fiction Editor, Meg Tuite and EIC Robert Vaughan will be hosting a...
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What Are The Chances? by Robert Scotellaro (review by Paul Beckman)

In Robert Scotellaro’s latest collection of gems, “What Are the Chances” he tells us the chances that way only he could write of lovers, friends, family, and more in a way that leaves you shaking your head in wonderment with these fast-paced stories filled...
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Time. Wow. by Neil Clark (review by Jonathan Cardew)

Full disclosure: I am a complete and utter sci-fi nerd. Give me Star Trek. Give me LeGuin. Give me 2001: A Space Odyssey. Give me anything that is not of this planet/ space-time continuum-related/full of stars. So when I first came across Neil Clark’s small,...
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Demolition in the Tropics by Rogan Kelly (review by Alina Stefanescu)

Rogan Kelly. Demolition in the Tropics. Lewisburg, PA: Seven Kitchens Press, 2019. 28 pages. $9.00. Some readers expect to be punched in the gut repeatedly. Demolition in the Tropics is not for them. Rogan Kelly's poetic line is wistful, impressionistic, similar to...
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Death, Desire and Other Destinations by Tara Isabel Zambrano (review by Dan Crawley)

Tara Isabel Zambrano’s full-length flash collection, Death, Desire, and Other Destinations (Okay Donkey Press, 2020), illuminates, enchants. I’m awestruck with Zambrano’s effortless talent, her swings from stark realism to inventive magic realism. She is...
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Ghosts of You by Cathy Ulrich (reviewed by Audra Kerr Brown)

Audra Kerr Brown lives betwixt the corn and soybean fields of southeast Iowa with her husband and two children.

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Bending Genres Q & A with author Karen Stefano (What A Body Remembers) and Emily Bertholf

Q & A : Interview with Karen Stefano, author of What A Body Remembers. Emily Bertholf: Your latest book is a memoir about the life-altering night in 1984 when you were violently attacked on your way home from work and your long struggle of dealing with...
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The Green Mustang in Front of the House

(is a) Dead frog hard and rotting at the curb; unmatchedhubcaps. One might call "to love" April's first sunwhere the skin burns, the heart envelopedin the hardiest permafrost, an epic tundra'sdeath; the infinitive. Tiny bees flyin irrational patterns near my feet. He...
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On the incessant, inescapable, infinite, unraveling, meandering, indifferent and heartless road: A map

Here are the places we’ve traveled. To the valley in the palms of my hand. I place them down against the ground and feel the road vibrating through my skin, up my arms. The hum of it winnows its way into my bloodstream, through the musculature, into my soul. One night...
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Transitions

A student, once, wrote a story for introductory fiction workshop that ended as a young woman danced slowly with a girl described as beautiful in a shimmering dress that revealed a body that “seemed to be budding as they embraced at the song’s last note.” The student,...
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Bubbles

“The bubbleis what you make itlevying an emotional tax …as magical as a typicalDisney trip.”(Excerpted from “The True Cost of Life in the NBA Bubble” NY Times 9/2/20) * Curly haired Rachel Landau blew a bright pink Bazooka bubble bigger than a basketball. Just as she...
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Ghost of My Mother Along the Atchafalaya

When my mother heard the news we were moving south, she remembered pecan pralines and dirty rice, bayous and shrimp boats, and dark heavy drapes shut against stultifying heat.  She remembered nowhere to live along the Atchafalaya, U-boats staining beaches black...
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Zucchini Blossoms at the End of the World

The world had ended, even though she has done what was requested of her: stayed home, washed hands, worn a mask. The virus became a pandemic, and the Sickness spread. It spread because that’s what contagions do, but also because some were not allowed to stay home,...
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On Buying Playboy with Queer Men in the Bush Era

The year is 2004. We have invaded Iraq on a lie. Over 4,000 American troops will be sent to die in the desert. 9/11 is still fresh; the nation remains flush with its victimhood. I am a senior in college. I am rife with undiagnosed mental illness. I long for security,...
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Yellowstone

I lumber into the kitchen at 8:36 and begin my life. Everyone is already awake.  I am a small black bear among humans: wild and askew. “Fiiirst daaay of woooork!!” Naomi says to me. She’s unpacking her groceries: cold brew, chickpeas, organic shampoo. “How do you...
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Nicknames

The first thing you need to do when you meet a man is take away his name. Without a name, he only exists in your story. It started with Clammy Hands, in his late twenties, too eager to talk to your not quite legal (but almost) neckline as you shelved books at the...
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A Ritual of Belief

I find myself again in the cemetery where a man cuts tree stumps into animals – a bird, a bear, a woodpecker with its long beak pulled back ready to strike at the smallest head in remembrance of someone I’ve never met. I wonder if the woman buried next to my car would...
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A Big Test

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And then he thought to himself, gee, I hope it works this time. But I haven't done anything differently, so why should it?

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