On "On the Surface" by Barron T. Byrnes (1295 words) ****

Split a story into fragments and make the reader reconstruct it. It's a strategy I found really exciting during my college years, but I've strayed farther away from such words as I've gotten older, falling more for straight stories. Byrnes's piece, however, is a throwback to that earlier fascination of mine. The story isn't so much one of a straight plot, therefore, but an accumulation of motifs and images--oceans, beaches, death, funerals, bodies, love. How do these all come together? Well, it's up to the reader to put the pieces of the puzzle in place. This one's worth a second read, here, at Super Arrow.

On "What Will Happen" by Colin Bassett (361 words) ****

The title of Bassett's story tells us what the piece is going to meditate on. It's a piece of quiet desperation, with each line hinting at some other bigger trouble just outside the scope of the story, just "waiting to happen." And we wait. We almost begin to feel the awkwardness and trouble ourselves. Reading the story, I suppose, is kind of like working or living with someone with a personality disorder, the discomfort that that creates, how things are all right now, but you know, at any second, everything might change. Read the story here at Super Arrow.