#chestnut review

[on-poetry]

I remember life. There was so much. I held it all. I held it all.

Michelle Hulan, “The Universe, as in One Last Song for the Lonely Hearts”, Chestnut Review

[kavikshiraj]

I develop this ritual: I get stoned and ride my bike for hours, listening to Toni Braxton’s Secrets on loop. It’s hard to eat, even when I’m high, and craving that album is the closest thing to an appetite I have. But after a few days, the album gets tainted by my grief. Every song I’ve ever listened to reminds me of the last time I listened to it, which is a time that has passed, which is a death. I try to put on new music but it all makes me dizzy. It’s like having to learn a hundred dance moves in a foreign language under gunpoint. New songs don’t understand me. Their hands don’t know the shape of my head. I run out of weed and decide it’s best I don’t buy more. I keep riding my bike. My knees ache, and in the mornings they are Frankenstein-stiff.

...

from “Grief Services” by Maxine Stoker, published in Chestnut Review

[bone-free-as-the-wind]

I wrote about rescuing a hummingbird, Chestnut Review published it, and they paid me well for it, amazed! They are accepting submissions for their next issue.