Cincinnati Review

The Father, Deceased He appears in a hospital hallway. On the front porch of her home in Phoenix, with a clipboard in his hands, polite and distant, like he might ask her to switch internet service providers. Passing by on the sidewalk in Riley, the town where she grew up. Leaning out of his yellow …

Shruti Swamy’s “In Blue” captures a sense of shifting identity at the core of new motherhood.

Every six minutes another word is dropped from the lexicon. Who says there’s no use anymore for woolfell,the skin of a sheep still attached to the fleece? And when did we stop calling tomatoes love apples?I need somewhere in the world for there still to be a fishwife who understands the economy of fleshgrown taut …

The velvet ant is not velvet, not ant. It is a wasp, grooved with sting. If scooped into the muzzle of a lizard, the velvet ant (not velvet, not ant) jackhammers. Its whole body is ammunition. They call it cow killer. Yet it is beautiful, too: encased in orange & white thistle. Spotted red & …

Danni Quintos’s “Milkfish” begins with the simplicity of a mother’s pregnancy craving for milkfish.