I’m back with the rest of our staff’s picks for #TheMissouriReview ‘s #NationalReadingMonth, this time, just in order. Hope you enjoy!
16. “Love Poem as Eye Examination” by Victoria Chang. Her quote: “I wrote a poem ruminating on an eye doctor visit, and since I’ve struggled to write love poems on many occasions, I decided to work backwards and make the poem a love poem. This process helped me to write a love poem, although in the end, like many of my poems, there’s an acidic strain that runs through the spine of the poem.”
17. “Love Letter to Flavor Flav” by Marcus Wicker. This poem—equal parts playful and poignant—was born out of the writer’s ambivalent feelings toward the titular pop culture icon: “I’ve always been troubled by my own willingness to accept Flavor Flav as an important popular icon. As a former member of Public Enemy, he operated like nightly lubricant for the group’s straight ahead politics; but one can’t deny, he’s a bit painful to watch. When Flav still had his VH1 reality show, I tuned in every week to watch him parade around a mansion, announcing his wild-ass presence in the world of my living room. Admittedly, I think that’s kind of dumb. But also kind of cool, and maybe honest.”
18. “The Wall” by Emma Törzs. In this 2015 Jeffrey E. Smith Prize-winning fiction, set in contemporary Israel, a young Jewish woman seeks to bridge the divide between life and death as she mourns the loss of her brother.
19. “Swarf.” In this essay, Tyler Keevil writes about an accident and ensuing medical emergency during a fraught time of global recession.
20. A Poem of the Week from 2010 titled “Noli Me Tangere.” The poet, Traci Brimhall, said that the poem came from “a desire for absolution.” She felt guilty for helping with animal studies despite the fact that “helping to catch endangered frogs for future study meant that there would be hope for the species….”
21. “Motherland” by Min Jin Lee was awarded our William Peden Prize in fiction when Judge Alice McDermott selected the piece as our best-of-volume fiction for that year.
22. The story pulls you in from the very beginning—or, more accurately, from the title itself. “How to Kill Gra’ Coleman and Live to Tell about It (Vauxhall, NJ, c. 1949)” by Kim Coleman Foote is partially born out of the author’s exploration of her own family history, which she later described to TMR’s editors. In my first semester interning at #TMR, I read this piece with classmates. It’s killer.
23. An excerpt from Alethea Black’s memoir, You’ve Been So Lucky Already. In this piece, titled “A Place in the World,” the narrator explores the aftermath of grief while navigating through a world that’s changed overnight.
24. The poem of the week from last May, “he doesn’t flirt with me, he just texts me love poems,” by Zain Murdock. In the author’s note, Murdock described how emotional honesty factored into the poem: “This poem was really the first time I allowed myself to write about love in a way that didn’t make me feel ashamed.”
25. “Serpentine,” an essay by Ember Johnson. In this piece, which was a finalist for the 2018 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize, Johnson masterfully evokes tension and anguish through her poignant exploration of her experience as a military wife and widow, offering a unique perspective on the burden of carrying on alone.
26. “A Djinn Hums in Sakhnin” by Tarik Dobbs. The poem, which he wrote “frantically on [his] airplane home,” includes reflections on his Muslim faith.
27. “Heart-Scalded” by Daphne Kalotay. In this story, a terminally ill woman attends a party where she knows she’ll have to brave a fraught encounter with her ex. In this narrative of emotional pain and acceptance, we find intimations of magic—and mortality.
28. “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie” by Jennifer Anderson. This raw portrait of Anderson’s experiences providing “diversional activities” for nursing-home patients was a 2012 Editor’s Prize finalist in nonfiction.
29. “Actaeon,” by Kelly Weber. On the origin of the poem, Weber said, “When I started writing about my personal experiences as an aroace woman, I turned to the myth of Artemis as a model. What I found compelling about the story of Actaeon and Artemis is how it differed from other myths like that of Daphne, for example, who becomes a tree to escape Apollo. In the Actaeon story, it’s not Artemis who must change but Actaeon. His entire way of being in the world must fundamentally shift, putting the burden of change and responsibility for his actions back on him instead of the one he gazes upon.” This one’s up next on my list, as I’m studying Ovid this semester.
30. A 2021 Poem of the Week, “Not an Ode to April 22nd, 2019,” by Gisselle Yepes. On the poem’s craft, Yepes explained, “This poem is one, too, that thinks with the anaphora, the litany in Aracelis Girmay’s poem, ‘Here,’ as it thinks with and revels in rupture, in grief, in noticing how we, Afro-diasporic people(s), more specifically Puerto Ricans, grieve, smoke, love, yell, wail, weep, and silence.”
31. A historical persona poem by David Mura titled, “A Soldier of The 100th: The Lost Battalion.” To provide some historical context, Mura explained: the 100th battalion “was part of the 442nd regiment, the most decorated unit in Europe [during World War II], and was made up of Japanese Americans from Hawaii and the mainland; the families of the latter were imprisoned in internment camps during the war and deprived of their rights as citizens.” We hope you’ll take the time to read this powerful piece.
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