“The great achievement of Cracked Piano is that its poems present psychological pictures of a person in loneliness,” writes reviewer John Zheng. (poetry reviews)
Author: Another Chicago Magazine
“She spends her days tending the grapes, and she runs a little gift shop in the village…Now that she’s simplified her relationships with people, she seems even healthier, even more herself.” (fiction)
“It was deemed very unfeminine to play the bridegroom…Girls would tease you and provoke you like a real bridegroom and laugh at your expense.” (fiction)
“Out west, we get our sunlight second hand, / when the East has settled the business of the day.” (poetry)
“mental illness is not trivial, not something that should be easy to write or read or talk about, and it’s important that she included elements…that might come off as excessive or overwhelming,” writes reviewer Hannah Page. (poetry reviews)
“The last traces / of what I have lived, / of what I have loved, / are vanishing at the mercy of the wind.” (poetry)
My brother, sister, and I climbed the steps of the fire escape at the local hospital, and our dad opened the door from the inside as we snuck into our mother’s room one by one, all too young to officially visit our mother. (nonfiction)
“Weird fantastic beings of a / Super-intelligence. Ruling a race of synthetic humans / and pitting them against mankind’s dream.” (poetry)
“You did not talk politics, except / to tell me we were being watched” (poetry)
“Faris’s book warns Republicans of their party’s coming apocalypse, but I think the Democratic Party should take note too,” writes Nick Rueth. (reviews)
“While the rest of the department read books, wrote papers, and graded student work, Tim and Rick printed out pictures of clowns.” (nonfiction)
“my mouth is full of blood, like a poppy growing in my mouth, it tastes like…the pennies I used to throw in wishing wells,” Content Warning: Sexual Assault (fiction)
“in soft squares, you try to neglect / your worries and shut down / the war-voices,” (Poetry)
There is no such thing as old water, but when I answered, “I’m as old as water,” my son’s eyes grew wide. He says that because water cycles, it’s all super old. (fiction)
O, America, a horse like us would have been glue by now. (nonfiction)
How I loved sitting on a barstool listening to James choose his words to perfection and pronounce them in a way that was subtle and glowing, as if they were wrapped in beautiful paper.
“People are not who they once were but actors in the great drama of life, informed by what they have seen on the screen,” writes Peter Valente. (Review)
“it’s still spring in Rome, a perennial incitement to live. We meet in Piazza Cavour, me with my selfish FFP3 mask, Luisa with her altruistic blue cloth one.”
“they are the ones not allowed the roles except / maids and gardeners and gangsters and prisoners”
“California has weathered him with sun and heat. Michigan has begun to change me, too. We’re two birds…both singing variations of the same song.” (Fiction)
“Each day the quick kick of the dream / empties another body / and the ghosts move through unkempt streets / named Lincoln and Delaware,” (Poetry)
“at recess the innocent school / children play and gambol in / pure non-denominational play”
“I dreamed the sun, very low, / painting me a mustache of sweat and coal.”
“I see that the innocent face/beneath the long-brimmed, straw hat/does not seem to know it is raining.” (Poetry)
“I wondered aloud/if on those odds days/where I felt like a hunted squid/that what I was actually feeling/was Light Cerulean Blue” (Poetry)
“‘I can ring you up for/what fits in the bag. The rest is your responsibility.'” (Poetry)
All the other cool calm quite sensible terms had stable gigs in respectable stories. (Poetry)
“20th century monk/High Priest of Art/The Legendary Master—/in his bare immaculate altar of a studio/in the heart of New York City” (Poetry)
“I know what it’s like to be had, to be misused and unused.” (Drama)
Humanizing the effects of Chicago gun violence, editor Chris Green chose a form for his latest anthology that mirrors the way a semi-automatic weapon fires. Interviewed by Donald G. Evans.
