On "Make Do" by Molly Laich (3604 words) ****

To be young and too early focused on serious things is to scrap it all and return to some highly questionable activities. Nathan Barnes isn't doing drugs, but it seems that he wants to be. He might have a hot girlfriend and live in a nice place, but he misses the sketchy times of his past. Old times call. I love how this piece is so nonchalant about everything. It's like we're hanging out with the weirdos ourselves, and then, the big moment arrives, and we're in there too, wondering what will happen, excited not to know. Read the story here at Corium.

On "Beauty Forever" by Barry Graham (1331 words) ****

This one is all in the voice. It's about a kid who isn't all there but used to be. It's about a family gone wrong. What's interesting is how Graham manages to make the story so sad while providing for us this incredibly happy narrator. In fact, the narrator is so happy that in some ways, it's hard to feel so sad about what's happened. There's something to be said for a cheery disposition. Read the story here at Corium.

On "Corona Cafe" by Mary Miller (306 words) ****

"I'd left my husband because I was never going to be the person I wanted to become," Miller's narrator states. It's a kind of window into the tale as a whole, the last half of which is a recounting of a date, that whole awkward lustfulness of going out, the desire to be past the dating stage and yet uncertain how to get there or even whether it's worth the bother. The last half begs the question, what is the first half--a beautiful description of the fall--doing in the story? I think it might be tied up in that line I quoted. Fall is a time of turning, but it's also a time of death rather than new beginning. The narrator spends her time paying attention to her outer surroundings, now that she's single, and she finds, really, that there still isn't much to her. And for this, she looks to her date--and her imagination. What do you think? Read the tale here at Corium.

On "Ex" by Glen Pourciau (703 words) ***

Pourciau's finely observed "Ex" revolves around a dating couple who can't get over their respective former spouses. I say "finely observed" because the description of the restaurant that serves as the setting for this date is marvelous. You get the feeling of a place that's packed, that's not intimate in the least (the people have to shout at one another at the tables). And that lack of intimacy works nicely with the hurt that each character feels and the way in which neither character wants to open up. Read the story here at Corium.

On "The Long Swim" by Jenny Bitner (955 words) ***

I've read stories about fat before, but I've never read a story that celebrates fatness like this one. Here, fatness is our primate self, our peaceful self. Bitner's words flop over one's ears like rolls of fat hitting skin, only these rolls are beautiful and so is the skin, and one wants more and more and more. Pass the butter please, and the cream cheese, and that hot dog. Read the story here at Corium.

On "Something More Interesting" by Tara Laskowski (2435 words) ****

Heidi is out to make some changes in her life. What is interesting to me about this is that we get to see her make those changes. She's suffered a breakup with a boyfriend, who has offered her various reasons. It seems we'd more likely, in a story, get the things leading up to the breakup. Or we'd get a story about someone coming to terms with the breakup. Instead, Laskowski sets up her character with a self-improvement regimen, of sorts. Heidi's life is changing, but what that means we don't really know. Read the story here at Corium.

On "Trinkets" by Eric Bosse (235 words) ****

A story of mine was recently rejected for being too predictable. You knew, the moment the story starts, where it's going. It's something, of course, that I am considering about the story and its opening, though my intentions with it were really to write something that wasn't so much unpredictable as intensely disturbing in a matter-of-fact way. I think of that story when I think of Bosse's short piece here. It isn't disturbing, but it is surprising--in the best possible way. It takes you somewhere you don't think it's moving toward. There's something to learn about craft from this piece. Read it here at Corium.

On "All the Imaginary People Are Better at Life" by Amber Sparks (3830 words) *****

Here's a piece about a gal running away--from herself, from the people she knows, from her sanity. It's gorgeously written--and funny. Sparks knows how to turn a phrase into ending that doesn't belong with the beginning. We learn, for example, that some people aren't very good at being alive (not quite her words, but the gist of them). And in a sense, this is about that--and about the imaginary world such people resort to. Read the story here at Corium.

On "All Our Canoes Are Safely Ashore" by B. J. Hollars (1519 words) ****

Another grand story from B. J. Hollars, this one is full of surprises. The piece works with short paragraphs and minimal presentation. At first, I found that form rather irritating. But the minimism works here because a few paragraphs down something's going to happen that can't be easily explained with a denser tongue. We get externals. Characters struggle to do right in the face of a situation they didn't foresee. And then . . . Hollars does it again, as he brings us to the end, tying these characters together not once but twice, in ways dissimilar and yet, if you believe George Battaile's ideas on sex and death, not dissimilar at all. Read the story here at Corium Magazine.