Emily Vance Brown

Recent Posts

  • “Say Mary, The Mother of God, Was a Drag Queen” by Chris Watkins

    Go with me. It’s just as likely as a virgin birth. So let’s live in a world where Joseph knew it was a miracle the whole time and didn’t have to be convinced by any angels. Let’s say he led the donkey proudly all the way to Bethlehem. Let’s live in a world— because we can in a poem— where no one said anythingabout the two of them being togetherand raising a child, and Herodonly wanted to kill baby Jesusbecause he hated babies,not for any homophobic reasons.Let’s keep Joseph a carpenterbecause they work with wood,but let’s give him well-manicured nails.Let’s…

  • “Toothache”

    Once a year, in May, we take his boat out on the lakeAnd pretend the other isn’t some kind of disappointment.He’ll tell me about his new home project, new paycheck, new motorcycle—the new fiancée’ll be there too. They’ll talk about God and GMOs and the vaccinesthat contribute to our decaying morality. I’ll nod and smile politely when they saythe homosexuals are infecting the country.I’ll remember how this time last week I was kissing a girl I met on Tinder in a cemetery parking lot—how when she leaned in to kiss me her teeth hit mine so hard I saw sparks.  She laughed…

  • Review of The Final Strife series by Saara El-Arifi

    I just finished reading a Young Adult trilogy called Ending Fire. It was pretty far outside of my comfort zone and will probably be the only YA I read for some time now, but I thought the worldbuilding was incredible, and I hope to read more of the author’s work in the future. The trilogy consists of three books: The Final Strife, The Battle Drum, and The Ending Fire. The entire series is fantasy, but the first one leans more towards the romance genre and incorporates traditional romance tropes, such as enemies to lovers and a love triangle. The first…

  • “there will be singing in the morning” by ire’ne lara silva

    and singing in the night singing in the days of want and singing in the days of plenty singing alone and singing with ghosts singing old songs and singing new songs we will remember songs we haven’t heard yet songs that haven’t been dreamt yet songs no one has found the words for songs sung on the road and songs sung in bed songs sung while weeping and songs sung while waitingsongs for breath and sun and light and moon and earth and water songs for sustenance we will sing impossible songs indecipherable songs songs that cannot be heard and songs that cannot be…

  • Jean

    Beyond the curve in the road, past the old post office with the barred-up windows and the dead shrubs slumped by the graffiti-covered mailbox, there was a house. It had not been a home in some time. A man lived there, alone, dying, while the ghost of his son sat in his car with the engine running in the front driveway. Jean had been sitting in the car for some time now. She turned the engine off, once, about thirty minutes ago, and put her hand on the handle for a moment. She couldn’t make herself open the door. So…

  • Review of Rouge, Bunny, and All’s Well by Mona Awad

    After reading most of Mona Awad’s repertoire and discussing them with friends, I’ve come to the conclusion that whether or not someone likes one of her books depends primarily on how much they connect to the situations being satirized. I have friends who are obsessed with Bunny, who thought All’s Well was boring as hell, and who love the fairytale-style of Rouge. Personally, I don’t like Awad’s writing style in general but I am intrigued by her method of choosing niche, personal subject matter that’s almost akin to telling an inside joke—if you get it, you get it, and if…

  • “Culpable” by Joy Sullivan

    I’ve always been haunted by choice. I want the city and the forest. Freedom but also babies. A home and the open highway. I love it when other people choose anything for me—dinner spots, weekend plans, hiking trails. It’s one tiny decision I’m absolved from making. To choose is to be culpable and as a former evangelical kid, there are few things I hate more than being culpable. But being unable to choose becomes its own choice. When youdon’t decide, a decision still arrives. Once I held the fleeting body of a farm cat newly struck on theside of a…

  • “Post Oak Ode”

    Reaching blindly in the dark, acornsstill grow roots, even when shut in a metal tinin a dark, dry room. I should know,I put them there. I was six years old andI wanted a forest in my closet. I counted outone hundred acorns from beneath the post oakin the front yard, and I waited, and I waited, andI waited, until I forgot what I was waiting for.And the acorns grew. I have been like the roots, too: blind anddirty, secret, forgotten, reaching out for a shapethat my body could fill, yearning for a groundto stand on. I was waiting for a…

  • Review of Like Happiness by Ursula Villarreal-Moura

    4/5 I picked this up from a bookstore down the street called Gladys Books and Wine. It was a random choice–I’d never heard of the title or author before–and I’m so glad I stumbled onto it.  Like Happiness tackles the same subject matter that’s been rising in popularity since the MeToo movement first started a few years ago, but it does so in what I find to be a particularly unique and compelling way. The story jumps back and forth between the narrator’s interactions with a journalist regarding her former ambiguous relationship with a famous author and her letter to…

  • “I Swear, Next Time I See You I’ll Be Funny” by Clementine von Radics

    I will make jokes at my own expense, be charming as a surprise. I will ask about your new life and Be Cool About It and I will not mention Memphis. Or how your hair feels in my hands. I will not mention the last time I saw you. My mouth, so far from yours, I saidI am afraid I will spend entire yearstrying not to need you.As if I wasn’t certain.As if this wasn’t my confession.