miCRo: “See Through” by Alex Myers
My brother is seven and I am five. This is the unbridgeable expanse between us. It will always be that way. Another expanse between us, back then: he is a boy and I am a girl. He knows things that I don’t know. Like about the dicks on the urns.
miCRo: “Artifacts I” by Alyse Knorr
In Alyse Knorr’s “Artifacts I,” white space serves many dual purposes that may, at first, seem contradictory.
miCRo: from “What I Want in a Sister Wife” by Christen Noel Kauffman
In this excerpt from “What I Want In a Sister Wife,” Christen Noel Kauffman defies expectation on the level of the line, image, and content.
miCRo: “Postpartum” by Kate Sweeney
Kate Sweeney Associate Editor Caitlin Doyle: In "Postpartum," Kate Sweeney approaches the subject of motherhood in fresh and bracing ways. Sweeney’s tonal deftness, an accomplished combination of humor and austerity, imbues the poem’s imagery with layers of...
miCRo: “Details” by Marjorie Maddox
Marjorie Maddox Assistant Editor Jess Jelsma Masterton: In Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction, Charles Baxter discusses how counterpoint narratives bring about implicit conflict. Two different perspectives are woven together in order to build tension through...
miCRo: “Pasarea Paradisului / Birds of Paradise” by Molia Dumbleton
[Editors' note: This will be our last miCRo until early April; we're taking two weeks off for spring break and the AWP Conference. Hope to see you there!] Molia Dumbleton Associate Editor Molly Reid: For this week's miCRo, Molia Dumbleton leans into strange, which is...
miCRo: “Telling” by May-lee Chai
May-lee Chai (Bob Hsiang Photography) Associate Editor Caitlin Doyle: In “Telling,” May-lee Chai explores how the stories passed down in a family can traverse the devastating intergenerational effects of domestic violence within multiple narratives that portray the...
miCRo: “Rosemary Is Fine, Thank You, How Are You?” by Angie Ellis
Angie Ellis Associate Editor Molly Reid: In Angie Ellis's story, the narrator insists on protagonist Rosemary's well-being through the use of a passive-aggressive negation ("Rosemary does not avoid her reflection in the hall mirror when she passes. She is not afraid...
miCRo: “Pectin” by Gretchen VanWormer
Assistant Editor Jess Jelsma Masterton: For me, much of the pleasure of the lyric essay comes from what Sven Birkerts dubs “counterpointed perspectives” in his craft book The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again.
miCRo: “Reorient” by Diana Khoi Nguyen
Diana Khoi Nguyen Associate Editor Caitlin Doyle: In “Reorient,” Diana Khoi Nguyen explores the dissonance between surfaces and interiors: “I carry my body, but not like a briefcase. My body takes two cases: Vietnamese American. You can see one, but not the other.”...
miCRo: “The Horses Are Ready and They Need to Go” by Christopher Citro
Assistant Editor Jess Jelsma Masterton: Much has been written about productive ambiguity.
miCRo: “The Collectors” by Stephen Kampa
Associate Editor Caitlin Doyle: In his poem “The Collectors,” Stephen Kampa explores a far too common figure in American life, “a nearly / incomprehensible boy” who walks into a “fear-flung classroom” with a gun. In taut language layered with complex and often...
