On "Tweet" by Sabrina Orah Mark (1151 words) ***

Mark is a poet, which is obvious from this piece, which plays with language more than anything else one would expect of a story. It's about following, about religion, about looking for something beautiful, about wanting to be beautiful like that something, about not knowing where to go. It is about life and about social networks. Read the story here at the Collagist.

On "One or Two Afternoons" by Lincoln Michel (1211 words) *****

I've long thought about writing a story in two parts, both of which involve the exact same dialogue but in utterly different contexts. I've never gotten around to that tale, and I'm not sure that I have at this point the two correct settings for such a piece. But I do like the idea of two pieces commenting on one another in a kind of parallel track. Although involving different sets of dialogue, Michel's piece is a cool tale of contrasts and of deceptions. What's more to a point in this tale is what isn't here, all the details left out. Violence between ex-lovers gets pit-for-pat treatment here, but on parallel tracks. Read the story here at the Collagist.

On "Three Songs" by Mark Walters (1178 words) ****

So in reading the first section of this story, I thought immediately of two things. I thought of a Dresden Dolls music video in which a CD is sent to different people; the video is for the song "Sing," and people sing to the song on the CD that is sent to them. I also thought of the power struggle for Byzantium in the time preceding Justinian's rise to power. I was reminded of that because essentially, Byzantium experienced a civil war based around two sports teams. Fans of one team beat up on the others. Here, a man sends a song out and gets wildy different reactions, reactions that create a schism in the community that eventually lead to its downfall. In fact, all three of the songs in this short piece rest in the idea that a piece of art can make so much of an impact that it can make or break a community. I'd like to think so, though I don't really believe that is the case with most art these days. Read the story here at the Collagist.

On "Going Down Like Little Jesus in Sun Hole" by Nathan Blake (2009 words) *****

Wow! Some stories use language in ways you haven't heard before, and some use words not only in new ways but in ways that somehow seem perfectly put together. Limp, wet cigarettes are pulled from between thighs in this story; they're worried away, ash brushing against a chest. And amid all this, someone catches fire, and someone else, and someone else. Love is a dangerous thing. Read the story here at the Collagist.

On "Now is the Time for Us to Be Sweet" by Molly Tolsky (3698 words) ****

Here's a story that managed to truly surprise me. The writing throughout is clean, the voice assured. I'd read this, I thought. I read stuff like this, and it is good. But I hadn't, because I'd never read a story that managed to do that and add a twist I didn't see coming. Literary story, sure, but quiet, not really. We're left wondering just who is the more affected by this relationship, the victim or the victimizer, and which is which. Read the story here at the Collagist.

On "Hoarding" by Michelle Latiolais (3758 words) ***

The writing in this story is immaculate from the first line through to the end. It's also a story with a kind of slow burn. What I mean is that it's a story where the pain of the protagonist is felt in the progression of sentences, as one is added onto another. The protagonist struggles to find her place in this new world, sans husband, sans young friends. She tries parties and how to guides. She tries just listening and watching the things around. But no matter, she is bound to the world that is left to her, and it is sad. Read the story here at the Collagist.

On "The Woman We Imagine" Andrew R. Touhy (964 words) ***

I'm reminded of a Cortazar story with this one, in which a man who goes with his family to look at a painting each day over the course of the piece ends up looking at his own family in the painting--in other words, slowly merges with the painting at which he stares. Touhy's description has something of that magical realism feel. In this piece, a woman seems very much to look like a bird, and our narrators, we come to see, aren't far off. Imagination meets the real world here at the Collagist.

On "Visitations" by Tina May Hall (3472 words) *****

My favorite story from Tina May Hall's award-winning collection is this one, available at the Collagist. In it, a woman discovers a dead squirrel stuck in her wall; her boyfriend, meanwhile, leaves for a trip. What follows is an attempt to rid the house of the squirrel, whose decomposition is stinking up the house. Or really, what follows is the discovery of a secret and the putting away of a few others. The squirrel becomes a metaphor for many of the events in the story itself--and a fitting introduction to a collection titled The Physics of Imaginary Objects, for it is about the implications for our lives of these objects we can only imagine. Read the story here at the Collagist.

On "The Most Girl Part of You" by Amy Hempel (3185 words) *****

Here's another story from the master, one who only puts out a couple of stories a year it seems. I'm reminded a bit of a tale about Paul Bowles versus his wife Jane Bowles. Paul wrote quickly, edited quickly, churned stuff out. He wrote some fabulous stuff; he also wrote some pretty lame stuff. Jane agonized over every word, but her one novel--Two Serious Ladies--is a masterpiece in every way, rivaling the best that Paul ever came up with.

If Hemphill is part of the latter camp, I could believe it, but I can also believe that such agony gives us lines like "May I challenge you to a dance?" Fantastic.

Here, in this story from her collection At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, a young gal with a close guy friend (one might even say she has a crush, the way she claims everything about Jack is "big") watches as her friend tries to come to terms with the death, the suicide, of his sick mother. Life for Jack seems to be going on about the same as usual, but it's not usual, and we know it and so does she, down deep. The two continue to hang out, but Jack is hurting--and hiding it. And yet, the story is one of a Phoenix, one about what rises from the ashes. Read the story here at the Collagist.

On "Turf" by Elizabeth Crane (3468 words) ***

I think it was the voice that first attracted me to Crane's work. (Okay, it was actually a book review, which made her work sound intriguing--but once I had the book, it was the voice.) Here she is at it again, with a slightly nerotic narrator (this one unidentified) who feels the need to explain and explain and explain everything--but in a way that is a pleasure to read. What happens when a dog walker meets a dog lover and the two don't get along? The neighborhood won't remain quiet. Read the story here at the Collagist.

On "Even If You Were Here" by Angi Becker Stevens (3508 words) ****

This is one of those stories with a great first line, a line that builds on itself and just keeps building until there are a lot of great lines and eventually a great story. I think of Rick Moody's "The Boy's Enter," for example; I don't think of Katherine Dunn's Truck (great first line, great first few pages, followed by a disappointing dull narrative, at least that's how I remember it from two decades ago). Stevens's story is particularly nice because it seems to capture the adolescent perspective so well: a girl without a father, without an older brother, trying to figure things (i.e., life) out for herself and discovering, in a sense, slowly, the trouble with love. Read the story here at the Collagist.

On "I Was There for the Team" by Kim Chinquee (305 words) ****

The track meet was mandatory at my school. It was a small school, and I suppose the idea was that few of us would have participated had the meet not been mandatory (at least until my senior year, when the participation in the meet was attached to a "beach party" on another day and suddenly people actually wanted to attend). I was, like the narrator in this story, no good at any of it. I ran the mile, since at least I could feel like I accomplished something, as opposed to coming in dead last in a 100k or something and feeling incredibly stupid. In fact, running the mile also offered one the ability to place sometimes, since so few others wanted to run it. Last, but third or fourth--not too bad. Here, Chinquee gets the feel of a good long run to those of us who aren't professionals, the way we're reading to hit the dirt--with our faces, not our feet. Scroll down to the bottom and read the piece here at the Collagist (while you're at it, why not read the other shorts ones too?).

On "Twenty Questions" by Jennifer Howard (114 words) *****

I first came across this story on a workshop site and loved it--a story told completely in questions. It's not easy. I've often started off writing a piece entirely in questions. It's a great way to free the mind, because you know, at heart, the story can't stay all questions, so you don't care about putting crazy stuff down. But try actually writing a story in questions--keeping it that way--that is another task, one that I have never been able to complete. Howard, however, manages to convey so much here--we don't need the answers. Read the story here at the Collagist, and then read the other two shorts as well ("It's You" is a great little flash piece itself that almost seems an answer to these questions.)