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by Aimee Nezhukumatathil If by real you mean as real as a shark tooth stuckin your heel, the wetness of a finished lollipop stick,the surprise of a thumbtack in your purse—then Yes, every last page is true, every nuance,bit, and bite. Wait. I have made them up—all of them—and when I say I am married, it means I marriedall of them, a whole neighborhood of past loves.Can you imagine the number of bouquets, how manyslices of cake? Even now, my husbands plan a great mealfor us—one chops up some parsley, one stirs a bubbling poton the stove. One changes the…
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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…
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You know the line: it’s not you, it’s me. You were perfect, I swear. Couldn’t have asked for better. Even that one time you flooded out of nowhere, leaving me to drive to the auto repair shop with my pedals nearly underwater. Even when your cruise control stopped working halfway through my two-week drive to New York. Little things like these could never have stopped me from treasuring you, and please believe, they didn’t. You were my first way out. You were my first taste of freedom, my introduction to the idea that there are roads yet to be taken.…
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by Adrian Sobol The Moon demands to be takenseriously. Me too. So I write a letter,address it, lick the envelope shut. Dear Moon, come back, we have so muchin common. Let’s hang out sometime.I haven’t worn my floral dress since that summer in the commune,salting my body with sageto cleanse the houses inside me. The ghosts just won’t leave. They harbor.They feast. They say the sky is indifferentwithout you. Stars go quietone by one like distant ships. If I were a constellationI’d have burned outin front of everyone too. They’d call me Argosafter Odysseus’ dogwho waited to die until his master…
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By Maria Reva 5/5 Endling was my favorite read of 2025 so far. I discovered Maria Reva a few years ago when she had just published her debut novel, Good Citizens Need Not Fear, and I’ve been eagerly waiting for more since. Good Citizens was an interconnected short story collection that follows the residents of an accidentally uncataloged apartment building in Ukraine. The book’s characters and unusual style left quite an impression on me and I think about it often. Endling was no different. The plot is ingenious bordering on insane. I’m fairly certain no one else would have come…
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In the old days, Whiskey greeted her at the front door every morning. Fourteen-hour overnight shifts were no match for the cat’s crippling separation anxiety. Now, she was lucky to get more than one glimpse of her speckled brown coat per day. “Whiskey! Breakfast!” she calls, and cracks open a pink can of Fancy Feast, a feeble attempt at enticing the cat out of her hiding spot. James had never let her buy wet food for Whiskey, usually picking up one of those cheap, unappetizing orange-and-pink kibble mixes himself. It was one of the first parts of her daily routine…
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by Ada Limón Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflowerand snowshoes, maple and seeds, samara and shoot,enough chiaroscuro, enough of thus and prophecyand the stoic farmer and faith and our father and ’tisof thee, enough of bosom and bud, skin and godnot forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds,enough of the will to go on and not go on or howa certain light does a certain thing, enoughof the kneeling and the rising and the lookinginward and the looking up, enough of the gun,the drama, and the acquaintance’s suicide, the long-lostletter on the dresser, enough of the longing andthe ego…
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by Chloe Michelle Howarth 5/5 I purchased a copy of Sunburn at a bookstore called Novellette in Nashville halfway through my 10-day drive to New York City, and I could not have chosen a more riveting read to accompany me. Sunburn is a devastatingly beautiful (but not necessarily unhappy!) story of first love and repression. Everything about it was just gorgeous, from beginning to end. The characters, the connections, the setting, the imagery of the golden summer sun on skin. I was extremely attached to the main character, Lucy, and I saw a lot of myself in her. I’m obsessed…
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There was a game you played as a child: After swimming, lying fetal on your side on the hand-me-down towel, she outlined whispersof words along your spine. You never guessed right.You never held in your mind more than a singular shape, divine. Can you feel it yet? Three letters. God? Sometimes, and thenothers Satan, saint or demon. Like Lot’s wife, sacrificed on a whimto the memories of minor men for whom heaven is but a will to bend: rubble, amen! At least Eurydice had a name, as ordinarily mundane andincomplete as the 3:16syou prayed to, painstakingly finger-painted in dirt on the back of a trailer. Dust echoesashes. You remember Pompeii, where words froze in women’s gaping…
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by Tove Ditlevsen I love you because your spirit flickerslike a candle left by a window.I love you because when I think you’re mine,the flame blows out, and it isn’t so.I love you because you don’t carry onabout wedding bells and vows and things,a love like ours, so fleeting and precious,should not be bound by any gold rings.For I will never darn your tattered socksor see you trudge about with a frown,and you will never find me tired and glum,wasting away in an old nightgown.No, let us meet in the very late hours,and dance, dance, while others are asleep.Let’s ask…
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Emily Vance Brown 