miCRo: “Child-Witch” by Hussain Ahmed
Assistant Editor Maggie Su: This searing poem by Hussian Ahmed centers around the issue of child witch hunting in Africa. If accused of witchcraft, a child can be subjected to abuse, abandonment, trafficking, or rape. Ahmed skillfully imagines the rich interior...
miCRo: “The Gift” by Mark Wagenaar
Assistant Editor Maggie Su: A writing professor once told me that novels span decades, short stories last weeks, and microfictions are concerned with eternity. This adage holds true for Mark Wagenaar’s “The Gift.” At just four hundred words, the story details a...
miCRo: “I Was Banned in Trinidad, Colorado,” by Maureen Seaton
Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: The prose poem was born in rebellion, from surrealistic parents. It grew up nourished by juxtapositions, associative movement, a direct statement followed by a non sequitur. It studied intermediate lyrical techniques and the...
miCRo: “What a Ghost Can Do” by Cady Vishniac
Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: We're big fans of ghost stories here at The Cincinnati Review; Assistant Editor Molly Reid explained that well in a blog post last fall, highlighting stories from issue 14.2 that fell into that category. Since then, we've also...
miCRo: “River of Grass” by Kelle Groom
Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: As I prepared this post for publication a few weeks ago, I wondered if this poem would seem too timely on its publication date. Kelle Groom's "River of Grass" includes specific details that remind us of the tragedy at Marjory...
miCRo: “Star Girl” by Becky Hagenston
Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: Becky Hagenston's "Star Girl" feels like a cousin to another piece in our miCRo series, Doris Cheng's "Earthling," a story that features a teenager who thinks she might be an extraterrestrial. In Becky Hagenston's hands, the...
miCRo: Joshua Kryah’s “Jonson, They Say”
Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: What does a English Renaissance–era writer have to do with contemporary race relations? In this poem, Joshua Kryah brings together a reconsideration of the playwright and poet Ben Jonson, who once killed a man in a duel, and a...
miCRo: “Honeycomb” by Lisa Fay Coutley
Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: This piece is part of a unique new genre: the literary nonfiction short-short, alive with detail, and immediate in its use of the present tense. "Honeycomb" is narrated by a child (with a skillful indication that the events...
miCRo: “In This Poem, I Noun” by Devon Balwit
Managing Editor Lisa Ampleman: Today's miCRo is a lively poem with surprising turns of diction and syntax, as nouns mutate into verbs and adjectives. As the title indicates, the poem is aware of itself as poem but isn't limited by that conceit; it's not a...
miCRo: “The Sun” by Alex Dimitrov
Assistant Editor Caitlin Doyle: In “The Sun,” Alex Dimitrov explores both the beauty and peril inherent in the sun’s “exacting brightness,” a light that simultaneously brings revelation and threatens annihilation. Dimitrov’s sun acts as a figurative gauge of...
miCRo: “Gary, Child Paleontologist, 11” by Jonathan Riccio
Associate Editor James Ellenberger: What young kid isn't enthralled with the world of enormous old bones that were once thunder lizards? In mixing dinosaur-themed language and imagery with that of baseball, Jonathan Riccio urges us consider the many histories...
miCRo: “Animal/Apology” by Jenifer Lawrence
Assistant Editor Molly Reid: This piece of flash nonfiction pulls no stops. Despite the apology of the title, Jenifer Lawrence lays the scene for us with raw, unapologetic honesty. Through juxtaposition—a dead decapitated seal found on a beach and a fraught...
