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...
miCRo: “Girl 1994: Gawd.” by Faylita Hicks
Faylita Hicks Associate Editor Caitlin Doyle: “Girl 1994: Gawd.” by Faylita Hicks combines narrative tension with a kinetic command of diction. As Hicks’s forward-driving couplets propel us down the page, the speaker’s awe toward “Gawd” imbues her with a kind of...
![miCRo: “[It is undone business I speak of, this morning]” by Alexandra Teague](https://www.cincinnatireview.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Teague-400x250.jpg)
miCRo: “[It is undone business I speak of, this morning]” by Alexandra Teague
Associate Editor Caitlin Doyle: Alexandra Teague’s “[It is undone business I speak of, this morning]” asks us to confront the all-too-narrow distance between safety and danger in our daily lives. In her examination of the “ordinary spells against gravity” that keep...
miCRo: “The Flipping Years” by Kent Kosack
Assistant Editor Jess Jelsma Masterton: When working in the micro form, writers often struggle to distill a single scene or experience into a 500-word-or-less narrative. How does one establish a beginning, middle, and end while also including the backstory or...
