Mud Luscious Five
Mud Luscious Five
from DEGENERESCENCE by James Chapman
Nomenclature by Joseph V. Milford
Something Before You by Tyler Enfield
Erosion by Michael Howarth
Urban Myth by Jon Longhi
The Cadence of Life Doesn’t Cease on Windy Days by Jayt Catlin
A Select Scene From The Life Of A Boy With Webbed Feet by Robert Swartwood
She Might Have Been Marie Antoinette by Earl J. Wilcox
Balloon Swords by Robert Aquino Dollesin
a review of Joseph Goosey’s A Comfortable Place with Regular Sunshine by J. A. Tyler
a review of Noel Sloboda’s Shell Games by J. A. Tyler
a review of Steven J. McDermott’s Winter of Different Directions by J. A. Tyler
This is Kisses by David McMullan
I love to kiss. I love that way she leans in close to me with hot breath, eyes down to see my lips. What she wants.
Lips are bags that press together as one. Tongues find each other. We share each other, passing saliva, spittle, mucus, germs and bacteria.
Feels like black eels wriggling in glee. Looks like birds feeding the young.
Then she bites in.
I feel her teeth go down into my mouth. She sucks what I have. She takes what I got. Everything rushes up from my windpipe: my soul, my heart, my love, in sweet black-tar treacle. And now she feeds.
Blood is dark from the mouth, and it is warm. It runs down my chin and I am glad. It trickles down my neck as she devours me face first.
My lips, my tongue: they’re all hers now as she pulls them from my face the way someone might extract a mask. Flesh stretches and goes tight. Peeling away the disguise, the hidden me. There is no more pain. I close my eyes.
I close my eyes and feel my jaw crack and split, coming off. She tears it with her little dainty hands. Her nails rip at my neck and I love her.
She takes it all in a kiss. My face crumbles. But what a kisser. (Shame about my kisser.)
Last thought: when two people kiss on lips, side profile is a heart shape.
Ah, this is.
Kisses.
from DEGENERESCENCE by James Chapman
Dif, before Dif was born, her hands shook. Upon her birth, Dif saw the clay jug painted with orderly yellow lines in paint. With her foot she kicked the jug so that her foot bled out. She stamped the jug with blood, she painted her nose with blood, she left blood in the dirt of the earth.
She immediately walked to the village, she left blood on the footpath. She spoke to no person, she spoke to all the gods at once. She said they were all one word. No one in the village noticed her speaking, but she did not need their notice.
Dif could see. She saw the faces of persons, so she shouted to the gods. She saw the skin of trees, so she shouted to the gods.
She became dizzy and fell. She shouted, she stood and spun, she fell, she became dizzy and fell. She could not see, then she could see. She swooned out.
Every day she fell and shouted. In her head pained her and she called to the gods for help. The gods did not come.
She became a god, that is what she said. She could not remember being a person. She was not the same as other persons.
She stole food from every person. She ate all night, she took food from the forest, she ate all day. She could not remember eating, she remained hungry, she ate. She stole items from every person and buried them. She grew fat as a water jug.
WOE came to her and she bit WOE on the arm, she bit WOE on the face. WOE brought her home. The household of WOE was ruined by this all-eating daughter. All daughters of WOE had nothing to eat, because Dif ate all there could be.
Dif became a saint by speech. She saw the god CARROT of the word “carrot,” she saw the god FISH of the word “fish.” Then she saw both have another god in common.
She wondered, she felt, she ate, she wondered, she saw. She called the god of a word a god, like everyone does, but she suddenly spoke: “There is a word called ‘god.’”
All her sisters heard her and fell to the floor. Because the god of the word “god” would have to be GOD, the god of every word there is, the god of every thing there is, as it would be the god of all gods.
Dif was then a saint, but was disliked, because of the burden she placed upon words.
No one would come near to her, she was fat, she could not walk, she could not steal food and no one came to feed her.
WOE shouted at Dif, angry. The daughters of WOE shouted at Dif, they were angry.
Dif said, Look at me, I am all the gods, I am truth, I never shout. I am never angry, I am all, I am all.
Finally she was full of spirit and she burst within. She could not speak. She ceased. All gods escaped her at once, and escaped the three worlds, after being trapped in the gigantic Dif.
When she was dead, the gods should have returned to the three worlds. The love of the dear gods and words should have returned. But the gods had now been told of GOD, they were afraid, they were angry with Dif, they were angry with WOE.
WOE’s seven daughters, the dead and the unborn daughters, her seven daughters surrounded her and asked her how to live in the world, they asked her what to do. They asked her how she had lived in the world, they asked her what she had done.
They asked her:
Why have you arrived here.
What do you believe in.
What can you swear upon.
What do you care about.
Have you been in love.
What is important to you.
What do you live for.
WOE answered her daughters:
I do not know.
I do not know.
I do not know.
I do not know.
I do not know.
I do not know.
I do not know.
All the daughters, all the dead and unborn daughters, became ill.
Opa became ill because she spoke too much. She fell to the ground and tasted the dust. She wept and hated herself and asked her sisters to kill her. She spoke too much, she became sick, she was sick from her own speech, she stopped from eating.
Twick became ill because she spoke too little. She only said the words necessary to say, so that she forgot how to laugh, so that she forgot how to move forward. Her hands could not hold, there was nothing in her eyes, there was nothing in her mind. She curled up in the mud, then she remained there.
Glasp became ill of opinions. She had an opinion about every item of earth, also every person, also every action. She saw errors every place, and ran and fell. She was sick from knowing the answers, she asked her sisters to help her stop knowing answers. Her teeth chattered, she sat huddled, she sat freezing.
Icic became ill because she spoke her own name. She could see herself at all times and called all other persons by names that came from the word Icic. When she began to believe that the earth was her own belly, she fell face-first and could not rise, she wanted to protect the earth. Her own belly ached.
Dif became ill because of confusion. She was born in a confusion. She saw a bird, she believed it was a path. She saw the sea, she believed it was a wall. She saw the love of a man, she believed it was light. Sunlight was conversely fondness to her or love. She became ill from confusion. She fell sick due to her confusion. She saw her sickness as truth. She became more sick. She fell to the ground. She saw the ground to be a place for her to be born. She then became sick so that she lost her awareness of all things. She dreamed, and her dreams were accurate and not confused.
Test, who was not yet born, was not yet ill. She would become ill because of the attentions of men. The glance of a man was pain to her. She was made for aloneness. She was born to be alone. Her several beauties caused her to wince, shrink back, feel pain, feel ashamed, feel lost, forget her real self, forget aloneness, forget her voice, forget her true appearance. She believed she was truly beautiful, and this made her ill, and this was her illness. She spoke in the manner of a sick person, senseless, without self. She broke with all former habits. She forgot her sisters, she forgot her mother. She saw that she was not beautiful. This made her healthy, but she was ill such that health made her more ill. She fell into the still pond, she lay beneath the water, she was looking up at the water surface. That is a way to see the world without your face in it. She remained underwater and waited.
Hit, who was not yet born, was not yet ill. She would become ill because of voices she heard. She heard voices no one could hear. She heard voices, they told her things no one can understand. They were not her own voice, they were not her own speech. She ceased to be a person. She waited for voices to think for her. She waited for the voices to live for her. She forgot to eat. She supposed the voices would eat when they needed. She forgot to drink, the voices never spoke of water. The voices told her about wives, daughters, wars, machines, music, sorrow, disease. Some of these voices sang. She weakened. No one could remember her name, because she forgot her name, she took all other names, she forgot her name. She was thin. She sat down and could not stand.
The illness of Hit, the illness of Test, these illnesses will be with them when they are born. The illnesses of all the elder sisters, those were also waiting at the time of the birth of them. The death-illness of any person is waiting at the time of the birth of the person.
Opa, Twick, Glasp, Icic, Dif, Test, Hit, all became ill. All the daughters, all the dead daughters, all the unborn daughters were ill. They looked, and they saw no person who would speak their names to them. If the life of their legs failed, and the life of their arms failed, and the life of their chests failed, and the life of their heads failed, and the life of their eyes failed, then they would go off the earth. There would be no breath in their mouths, they would never speak.
They saw they were alone. No one was here to cry out for them. No one was here to moan or lament. If they lost life, no one would give them weeping or mournfulness.
They lived life so as to have no friends. Their mother will leave them alone, their mother WOE will go away to live with birds. Their fathers are unseen like vapor. The stones of the ground saw the dying sisters, the stones did not speak or care.
After the sisters die, no person will know them. No word they spoke will be recalled. After they die, no deed of theirs will have a result. They will pass over the earth without touching it.
They looked at the sky, they imagined themselves in the sky. They looked at the ocean, they imagined the ocean bottom. They described and imagined every thing and every place. But they did not go to those places. They stayed at home.
After they die, their bodies will be distributed by crows. Crows will be made brilliant by the spirit of the muscle meat of these sisters. Such crows will fly in circles, looking for a way out of the sky. Such crows will fly straight up, flying to the sun. Such crows will sing in a thousand voices. But they will not be practical crows, they will forget to eat, they will not live.
Nomenclature by Joseph V. Milford
Because of you I went to naming.
I named every chink in a roly-poly's armor once. No shit.
I did it like the Golden Mean, the Fibonacci Sequence, Pythagoras.
I named every plastic utensil in the cabinet. I named every leaf of kudzu in the foliage. I named every dust mote in the basement. I named every scale on the largemouth bass before I ate it and then I named each bite. I named every minute of the fortnight we were apart. I named the glints of light on the windshield while passing through the downtown tunnel. I did not name them after you.
That would be blasphemy and we all know that the naming of things is much more important than the name we carry and sing.
I named every hay-bail and fencepost. I named the barbs on wire enclosing those. I named the hairs on the lip of the provost. I named the imaginary children of her. I named the cat's individual purrs. I placed names in crevices that would surprise anyone without a name. I named all of my favorite songs different names.
That would be blasphemy and we all know that the naming of things is much more important than the name we carry and sing.
I named the pebbles in the gravel. I named the molecules inside of each pebble. I named the angles at which each pebble placed itself from the corner of the house where the names of the Sun cascade at a certain minute I had renamed in the setting. You could say I was obsessed with it.
I am sorry I can't tell you the names. Can't destroy my magic.
I named the folds in the curtains and the stains on the carpet. I named each guitar string. I named each beer before I drank it. I renamed myself Rufus, Jonah, Judas, and Elias. I felt invincible when I saw one name name itself and make its exodus.
That would be blasphemy and we all know that the naming of things is much more important than the name we carry and sing.
I renamed the graves, and the stones began to hover. I renamed the trees and they inverted, roots shivering. I renamed the stars and they filled my eyes with black rays. I renamed the ripples in the sink while doing the dishes and like a god I then renamed each soap bubble.
Yet, it is your name I say in the morning and your name I say at night.
Your name changes, riding a horse of tongues through my insides--you morph and tell me to keep renaming.
Blasphemy is to ignore this--blasphemy is being tied down to a name by kudzu, plastic forks, stars, ripples, wire, tetrahedron--just don't let that name tie you down.
I rename every freckle on my right arm. Rainbows come out in the utterance.
I say your name and remember the ultimate Logos.
Names, stop crawling all the time under my thin skin.
Something Before You by Tyler Enfield
Each morning I wake and hack the vines from my bed. I hack them to bits, then lay back on my pillow, smoke a few cigarettes. Just waiting for my mother’s voice through the door. She’ll ask me to help with the garden and I will tell her I can’t. It’s impossible. I have too much to do. And besides you are dead.
She will scamper up the walls like a spider and I will watch the smoke twist from my cigarette, spin across the ceiling, listen for the crunch of my daughter’s footsteps on leaves. She kicks up her feet when she swings, throws her head back and says, Daddy, when will you swing too?
Soon, I say, but she knows the sun is too bright, knows it gapes like a mouth and roars all living things into whiteness. When your mother arrives, I tell her. I’m still searching for your mother, can you swing until she and I meet?
I can swing forever, my daughter says. And then she swings so high I lose her to the sun. I blink back the white spots and she is gone.
Suzanne invites me to the beach every Saturday morning. I arrive ten minutes early, and she is already ankle-deep in the Atlantic, the seaweed hugging her feet. She beckons me toward the shoreline, her black hair spinning in the breeze as she unloads a backpack full of shovels and pails and cracked sieves. In her purse she carries a stack of Swedish tracing paper, folded into perfect little squares and smudged with elaborate sketches of Chinese temples and Italian palazzos. An architect, she will spend the entire summer building a series of byzantine sand castles. She is in love with space and volume, with the beauty of infinite lines. Together, we dig holes and fill time. We begin when the tide is low. “Because the sand is more firm,” she says. “Grainy and silty. More accessible for building a kingdom.”
When Suzanne and I go to the beach she talks about domes and cupolas. She explains ashlars and vineyard seating. I give her an A-frame hug, our shoulders barely touching as we bend at the waist. Her bikini is emerald green, and I think of shamrocks, wondering if it’s true that the Irish have all the luck. She instructs me to dig a hole close to the shore. She tells me water is the glue that holds the sand together. When I speak to her, she smiles and nods. She talks in half sentences, her words thick and dense, bunched together by the saltwater taffy she constantly chews.
I watch as she splashes through the surf to fill her plastic bucket. I smile as she removes each thread of seaweed and flicks it off the tips of her fingers, her mouth set in a thin straight line as she stares into the murky depths as though contemplating the complexity of construction theory. Instead, she scoops out pebbles and bits of seashells, sometimes a slimy snail or a crusted barnacle. Patches of water cling to her body like oceans on a globe. I study the tan line rippling across her abdomen, a disappearing stripe that makes me think of olive crests and white troughs, and how any sane man wants those waves to wash over him at least once in his life.
Kneeling in the sand, I scoop out handfuls of moist, packed earth, my hands forming a bowl like a front end loader. Suzanne lines up the buckets and sieves, placing them around the hole in a colorful circle. She places a shovel next to each bucket, slow and methodical, fiddling with precision as though she’s setting a banquet table. She shapes the mound I’ve created, smoothing the edges into a square foundation, spritzing the sand with her spray bottle to keep it wet and malleable. When I offer to help she waves me away like I’m a seagull scavenging crumbs. “You need to watch the ocean,” she tells me. “You need to guard my castle from the tide.”
Suzanne builds each tower with deep, controlled breaths, her tongue peeking out at me from the side of her mouth. She takes a handful of damp sand and flattens it into a pancake. Then she stacks each pancake on top of the next, tier after tier, until each tower shines in the sun like a stack of bleached sand dollars. I want to carve our names into the side of the highest tower. I want to sculpt seaweed gardens and seashell spires, to dribble handfuls of wet sand around the moat where they run in tiny rivulets until jagged peaks form like centuries-old stalagmites. I dream of being a detailed blueprint, sheltered from erosion, studied for years under the soft glare of a fluorescent light; not some folded piece of tracing paper, crusted with sand and dotted with watermarks, forgotten in a trash can at the end of the day.
Cast adrift in my own private sea, I float aloft on her lavender creams and chamomile lotions, inhaling the perfumed scents of mandarin and freesia, of jasmine and sandalwood. I am drunk with love, building my very own castle in the sky. And while I’m basking under a cloudless blue of infinite possibilities, wanting nothing more than to be somebody’s obsession, a surge of water topples my reverie. And as the moat floods with seaweed, as the walls are swept out to sea in a grainy whirlpool, Suzanne caves in, her eyes roving over the crumbled towers and the sunken drawbridge. She shakes her head, twirling those gold hoop earrings I would gladly jump through in hopeful pursuit. Then, while beads of language pearl on my tongue like condensation, she picks up a shovel and tries to bring semblance to the ruined castle.
I remember back in high school when Jamie Littleton made a bong out of a vacuum cleaner and it sucked his lungs out.
The Cadence of Life Doesn’t Cease on Windy Days by Jayt Catlin
We found a mixer, a Kenwood, at a garage sale but we were on our bikes, planning that Saturday morning to ride over Maniac Hill. I’d started selling cheesecakes - ginger, chocolate, peppermint, apricot, to supplement my fees from dog sitting. He was in graduate school. We pinched together an income on his fellowship, making room in the budget for carbon frames but not for baking appliances. My mixer’s bowl had too much float, coming loose and wobbling at the vibrations from the motor. The screws pinged off the body. More than once I pulled a yolky silver nut from the cheesecake mixture.
I suggested he bungee the mixer to his handlebars or the rack he’d wanted to remove prior to the first climb of the spring, but he’d forgotten his task when I plied him with coffeecake bubbling plums. He wanted a new bike with double rings. They shift better, he said, but I took that to mean I was rigid in my thinking, wishing instead to be home with my fingers in the brioche dough, listening for the baby.
A Select Scene From The Life Of A Boy With Webbed Feet by Robert Swartwood
Nobody liked him, not even his parents. One time his mother tried to drown him in the tub. He fought and fought until she gave up. A cloud shifted and sunlight broke through the stained-glass window. Color exploded everywhere as if they were at the end of a rainbow.
She Might Have Been Marie Antoinette by Earl J. Wilcox
in a former life, except Marie was less
scheming, more transparent in showing
her trampy side. My neighbor has a
hearing problem, a quirky now I’m deaf,
now I’m not she flexes like a muscle
saved for sublime occasions. When
her poodle pees on my grass, she deftly
steps inside her kitchen avoiding my
pissed off attitude. Today, she slyly
approaches to ask solicitously of my
good wife’s health, feigning concern
about serious surgery weeks ago.
Marie would have offered chocolates or
cointreau straight up to chase a silly lie.
Balloon Swords by Robert Aquino Dollesin
They met in a park as children. It was late afternoon. His balloon sword was green, hers red. They stood opposing each other in the center of the grassy park. He charged, thrusting at her heart. She held her red balloon sword by its handle and waved it back and forth in front of her face, trying to defend herself. But using the sun behind him to his advantage, he ducked, blinding her momentarily, and his green sword struck home. Still holding her sword in one hand, she fell backward onto the grass and closed her eyes, resting her free palm on her chest and playing dead.
Years later, each time the battle was replayed without balloons, he would recall the dry heat of that summer afternoon in the park when they were still children. He recollected the chiming of a passing ice cream truck. He remembered the flitting shadow of a bird shading her pale face. And he would wonder, again and again -- how different things might have been if he hadn’t discarded his green balloon sword to drop onto his knees and see if her heart had really been pierced.
a review of Joseph Goosey’s A Comfortable Place with Regular Sunshine by J. A. Tyler
Some things Joseph Goosey wants to understand:
women, relationships, college, vaginas, & writing.
Some things Joseph Goosey already understands completely:
burn-out, confusion, & pabst blue ribbon.
Joseph Goosey is a poet & flash writer, publishing his work in a variety of places, most often with a tag in his bio about having lost a bottle opener. His work is habitually short-winded & strong-fisted, gut-punching its way through readers, & his debut poetry chapbook ‘A Comfortable Place With Regular Sunshine’ solidifies this aggressive tone & style.
A taste from the opening poem ‘All She Really Had’:
It was only yesterday
that I came to realize,
upon seeing a photo of her
and her dull-drunk
friends
who first informed me
of the wondrous trap
between her legs,
that Crème Brulee
was all she really had
to offer.
‘A Comfortable Place With Regular Sunshine’ contains fifteen of Goosey’s poems, all previously unpublished. & with each page turn, we are constantly pelted with feelings of disconnectedness & misunderstanding, an apathy & confusion for the world that surrounds us. & yet, even with this great strain of indifference, Goosey uses the strike & hammer of short lines to pull at the reader, to make the reader an empathetic ear instead of a sympathetic one. The power of a writer both listless & gifted.
A second bite, this from the title poem ‘I Live in a Comfortable Place With Regular Sunshine’:
I know nothing
about any of this and am continuously
shot down.
There is so much
that I will never
access.
As a debut release from the newly formed Poptritus Press, Joseph Goosey’s collection has relatively few flaws. Poptritus Press is a new venture from the fluid & elegant design aesthetic of Ben Biesek, the editor / designer of Cause & Effect magazine. Biesek obviously cares about the look & feel of the chap itself, & this is certainly commendable in an upstart chapbook press when so many others simply take quantity over quality. But while the design & formal line-editing of the collection are good & tight, there are a few middle poem selections that don’t seem to fit ‘A Comfortable Place With Regular Sunshine’ as well as they should. Pieces like ‘It Was a Tersa Sphinx’ & ‘Once I Stood on Someone’s Doorstep Begging for Pity & in Return Received a Slammed Door’ aren’t as easy to place within the rest of the collection, seeming to break from the connections & relationships that the chapbook is attemping to build.
But in the end, the work revolves back to where it started, questioning the disquiet of existence & the way things fit or do not fit together, making ‘A Comfortable Place With Regular Sunshine’ a good & admirable collection.
A third, this from the closing piece ‘The Poems That I Have Handed Out’:
The poems that I have handed out
to multiple females
over the years may as well
have been set aflame
or simply shit upon
Joseph Goosey is a writer who not only deserves the quality chapbook that Biesek & Poptritus Press have created, but one who also deserves to be seen & read for the clear, arresting voice that he is refining. Goosey’s writing manages to tread the line between punk & polish, between pabst blue ribbon, lost bottle openers, & the hopelessness of misunderstood relationships & disconnected lives. Buy it. Read it.
a review of Noel Sloboda’s Shell Games by J. A. Tyler
‘Shell Games’ is poetry & theater, monologue & fluidity. & Noel Sloboda writes from the interior, typifying the way in which we often dramatize even the most mundane events in our lives.
From ‘Coming of Reunion’:
Filled with girls
I never had the nerve
to ask on dates
most of my dreams
of high school seem
uncomfortably crowded
Mud Luscious was lucky enough to have a piece of prose / poetry from Noel Sloboda in issue four – a text aptly titled ‘Of Species’ – and even in the duration of this flash piece, the calm & relaxation of Sloboda’s writing was obvious. He writes in cool colors, washing words with temperance & ease.
From ‘Directionless’:
Today I try to write
wrongs I failed to imagine, to redo what
I have undone, to figure out what
my empty spaces say before
I am finished.
& one of the more interesting aspects of this collection is the way in which multiple reads layer & affect the relationships of each poem to the next. Initially there is a sense of fighting, as if Sloboda is only searching out the everyday battles, the competitions of life. But in successive reads, it is apparent that ‘Shell Games’ is doing much more than fighting, is in fact focused on creating a calculated sketch of a life lived – carrying the reader from the naming of an unborn child through to the dusty, bowed shelves of collected existence.
From the title poem ‘Shell Games’:
Sealed in duct tape,
shell shards held
together for eight days;
then something escaped
from a chink
we didn’t see. You
buried the little guy
next morning
in a battered Keds box,
probably for the best.
You couldn’t have done
more even if he had
been your own.
If readers are looking for aggressive poetry, writing that throttles the brain or grapples with hands & muscles, Noel Sloboda’s ‘Shell Games’ is not the book for them. But if those readers are looking for a collection of writing that condenses & flows, a series of poems that forces the mind into the complex & often unexplored simplicity of true life, then this is absolutely the book of choice, the one to pick up, the one to read through again, again, again.
a review of Steven J. McDermott’s Winter of Different Directions by J. A. Tyler
Steven J. McDermott is perhaps most commonly known as the estimable editor of Storyglossia, a 2007 StorySouth Million Writers Award ‘best online publication’ & home to innumerable talented writers including Matt Bell, Aaron Burch, Elizabeth Ellen, Kathy Fish, Steven Gillis, Anthony Neil Smith, & Mike Young. But McDermott also has a phenomenal writing career of his own, publishing short fiction in Smokelong Quarterly, Thieves Jargon, Word Riot, & other top shelf journals. & this trail of McDermott stories is captured honestly in the collection ‘Winter of Different Directions’.
From ‘Blue Jeans & Black Leather’:
'The hand rustles a bit in the jacket pocket. Blue Jeans smirks. I gauge my odds of getting to the hammer. Black Leather’s brow pinches, then he picks up, one at a time, the nickel and the two quarters and puts them in his pants pocket. He picks up the dollar bill, holds his hand out palm up, and wads the bill tight. He stuffs it into his pocket. His eyes are locked on mine and I hold the gaze steady, give him nothing.'
A frequent difficulty of short story collections is the notion of through-line: & while some have the inherent draw of being composed solely of flash or prose / poetry, short fiction collections most often rely on the author’s overall style to link each piece to the next. In many cases, the collection becomes a mixed read, holding in places & giving way in others, the author’s individual style simply too assorted to hold the pieces together. McDermott’s ‘Winter of Different Directions’ is a collection that manages the challenge, his style plentiful & sufficient enough to hold the texts together in the best possible way.
From ‘Delisted’:
'Ski-less, he rolled over onto his back and sucked several deep breaths. Other than his breathing it was eerily silent without the scrape and whoosh of his skies. His face tingled, became wet as the snow melted. He could smell his own sweat as the salty steam wafted up from beneath his collar. Clouds bunched up in front of the moon and he watched bursts of white filaments followed by thick clots of grey until the moon was gone.'
Overall, it is not a surprise that McDermott has so many fantastic publications to his credit & is able to publish such a hefty & intricate collection as this; his tone & style are a fine balance. McDermott has the ability to keep his stories linear & clean yet still pepper them with a wide range of structural ticks & descriptive innovation. So in a time of online journals like Storyglossia, where the linear story is becoming perhaps a bit more defeated & exhausted in the wake of structural experimentation & invention, Steven J. McDermott’s ‘Winter of Different Directions’ manages to skate the difference between the two, & create a collection of stories worth every sentence.