* New to Little River or behind in reading? Find all the previous chapters here. ~ Nine-year-old Olivia Schillings was breathless with the anticipation of sharing news. “Mama?” “Yes?” Abigail answered her daughter without looking away from the pan of brownies she was pulling from the oven. “Emma’s crying.” “Why?” Abigail turned to look at…
Book Review – Wild Words: Four Tamil Poets
Wild Words: Four Tamil Poets | Translated and edited by Lakshmi Holmström This is a powerful collection of poems by four Tamil women, all of them ostracized not too long ago for writing what was called vulgar poetry. Upholders of ancient Tamil tradition demanded these books be burnt, and these women be stopped from writing…
Serial – Little River – Chapter 7
Titus sat quietly across the small table from Jamie in his downtown apartment. “Titus?” Jamie gently prodded. “What’s wrong?” Titus clasped his hands together on the table top. “I’m just waiting.” “For what?” “You called me at work and asked me to come over to talk.” Titus looked sadly at his boyfriend of eight years….
Book Review – Stay With Me
Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo Yejide and Akin have a happy marriage for the most part; they fell in love while at university, they continue to remain in love. But there is a child-sized hole in their lives, and to fill it up with a living, breathing child, Yejide will do everything. New medicine…
A Word from the Editor
We are thrilled to bring you another issue this week with fabulous work by three talented women writers. Tori Popowich paints a vibrant picture of the moment when we realize our parents are just people in her creative nonfiction piece “Bees, Pirates and a Switch.” In her lovely short story “Bird”, SD Pitman takes us…
Issue 4.3 – Nonfiction
She recalls the first time she saw her parents as people. Not the perfect figures of her picturesque childhood. But real-life, living, breathing people. With feelings. With flaws and fractured hearts. It happened all at once, like the unmasking of a superhero. Still, there was nothing super about it. The world felt larger and the…
Issue 4.3 – Fiction
The building did not allow dogs. The building did not allow cats. Nobody could ever really love a fish, and hamsters and mice and gerbils died too young. So Kasey asked her parents for a bird. “A bird?” said her father. “The damn thing would keep us awake squawking for sure.” “I’ll keep it…
Issue 4.3 – Poetry
The ending is not new, yet still I hesitate to face the remains of time resurfacing as I clean out closed drawers, sort through sealed attic boxes. Framed photographs, love notes, cards of congratulations—the ephemera that summons nostalgia unwanted, of facing cancer in our twenties, of climbing the Rockies, of August walks for ice cream,…
Serial – Little River – Chapter 6
Caleb set his bag on the end of the bed in his uncle’s guest room. Titus’ house was small, and only had two bedrooms. They had agreed the boys would both keep their belongings in the guest room, but Travis would sleep in the bed and Caleb would sleep on the living room sofa. “You…
Book Review – The Wal-Mart Book of the Dead
As its title suggests, vignette collection “The Wal-Mart Book of the Dead” by Lucy Biederman (Vine Leaves, 2017) serves as a bridge between two worlds: the living, or at least those with real-life experience working at or otherwise depending on a Wal-Mart, and the gods, those unseen architects and beneficiaries of American Late Capitalism. A…
thesame.blog 