Beautiful Smokelong Quarterly: Part One

Have you seen the new look for Smokelong Quarterly? It’s stunning. I’m so proud to be a part of this issue. I’m back from AWP and just getting all the stories and interviews read. Man, it’s impressive. As always. I wanted to talk about the stories, but time and exhaustion do not permit proper reviews, so I thought I’d pick out some bits from each to tempt you to go read the stories if you haven’t yet had a chance. Nine today and the rest in my next post…You won’t be sorry! The stories are phenomenal.

from “The Pool Guy” by Jessica Alexander: “Do you like it? He said like what. I said my body, Thomas. Touch it. He did not budge. It’s not a body. I said it’s a crack in a house where the TV plays all day.”

from “The Dentist’s Parrot” by Ann Hillesland: “While shooting x-rays, the doctor puts a lead blanket over the parrot’s cage. The parrot likes the muffled dreaminess—it reminds him of his rainforest home’s heavy air, so different from this air-conditioned chill. He closes his eyes and imagines the thick brown river, the shaggy heads of trees, green imprinting the sky.”

from “Alphabet War, Alphabet Letters” by Shannon Sweetnam: “Her dreams are simple, but unpleasant—bang she is shot, the bomb explodes crash goes her home caving in upon her, yet she does not wake crying because there at the foot of her bed is her favorite Siamese cat, there in the distance, the sound of Father talking quietly to Brother in the kitchen, the smell of coffee, the knowledge they have returned.”

from “Moon Wishes” by Mark Jabaut: “A bloated, pale orange moon bent the horizon like an overweight tightrope walker.”

from “At Night, By the Creek” by Ashley Hutson: “We have been pretending we are brave so long we believe we are brave. Bravery is like a sport we practiced until everyone said we were aces. We are young, I notice. We are always young.”

from “Six Ways to Break Her” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam: “Her father sculpted her from melted vodka bottles in his workshop where he slept and ate and molded this daughter from his mistakes.”

from “Wayne Kumai, Novelist, Centaur” by Matt Bell: “Our Wayne Kumai’s bio is getting dangerously close to being too personal. He tries to adjust his course. This is a professional statement, he thinks, not a tell-all biography. Stick to the basics. Magazine publications: Cryptozoology Lit Review, Centaur v. Fawn, Casa del Caballo. He writes a quick sentence about not having an MFA, for increased credibility with his intended audience, then deletes an additional sentence about the institutional insularity of today’s writers.”

from “The Replacements” by Kirsten Clodfelter: “Lemon is drawn to their mother shape and smell, climbing without any prodding into soft laps warmed by cashmere sweaters in bright colors she longs to taste.”

from “Discipline” by Michael Don: “Though Harold made it through an entire war, and only had one bad ear, the good one too good for his own good, the one I must have shouted into. I tried hard but couldn’t imagine anyone or anything able to harm Harold, so I imagined him even angrier, my head a basketball as he dribbled it off our dining room table. A flash of light and then I remembered the Shabbat candles, and my mother who lit them coughed.”

Aren’t those gorgeous? Part Two to follow!