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Selected as one of PopMatters 2023 Best Books, WINDOW EYES is a must-read. Jennifer Vega wrote, "The depth and complexity of Philip Jason's Window Eyes become fully apparent when we step back and think about the many stories he has folded into one, the laminated, exponential layers of storytelling created by his frame structure and secondary narrator. In the outermost layer of Window Eyes, we are reading a novel about a man telling us about his friend's book. Go in one layer, and we are reading that re-telling. In still a third layer, the unnamed protagonist of Kellan's book tells his golem the story of the hero Window Eyes, who has vanished and is being forever sought by Glassman, who loves her."In the wake of a tragedy, eccentric comic book artist and writer Kellan Savoy created one final work and then disappeared. That work, a series about a man who tries to make a golem to replace his dead lover, is presented here for the first time: Window Eyes is a collection of annotated issue summaries summoned from the memories of the only person to read the work before it vanished with Kellan, Kellan's best friend Thomas Levi, who hopes that in sharing it, he might be able to shed some light on the mystery of its creation and disappearance.

As Timothy Dugan makes his way through life, he is beset by a growing list of problems.His girlfriend, a full-time college student, wants to have a baby, he hates his job, and his mother announces that she and his father, long divorced, plan to remarry. He copes by drinking too much. When his mother suggests it's time for another round of therapy, Timothy loudly resists. He knows his outlook is sour and vows to do better. Then Harcourt, a former fraternity brother, presents him with an attractive business opportunity to get in on a home-building business, and things start to look up. Timothy happily resigns his position as manager of the local GAP store. Harcourt, however, has a bad habit of cutting corners to save money and things fall apart. Timothy feels the best way to get his feet back under him is to nail things down with Sam, so he buys her an insanely expensive engagement ring she says is all wrong. She comes around to the idea of marriage after meeting Melissa, Timothy's former girlfriend, who has a son Timothy didn't know about. Timothy's feelings are stirred up by Melissa's presence, and he goes into a slow-motion train wreck. Promise after promise is broken until Sam reaches a breaking point. She's committed to Timothy, but their future is dark. Will her love light the way again? Or has she finally had enough?

Sequence Dancing: a different type of ballroom dancing where couples dance to a named and well-practised sequence of steps to sixteen bars of music. Repeating that sequence five or six times. Moving around the dance floor in the same direction and at the same tempo. Together. But really, she adds, you need to see it, to properly understand.THE SEQUENCE DANCE is another riveting short story collection from Nova Scotia author, S.B. Borgersen.

NIGHT HAG speaks of femininity through the eternal mouth of Lilith, the first woman.¿¿Subterfugestained cloth gusset lined with cotton traces of lace grace the front face and flowers so many flowers purple and pink concealed by the flow no- the flood of an unexpected collapse of uterine lining early or late its timing had slipped off the calendar gone unnoticed now the search for supplies begins the furtive quest the bleeding heroine's journey to escape the attentions of every major and minor player in this chapter of her story the dispenser appears loaded but she has no spare change in her pockets no will to ask for a loan because lending grants permission to ask questions gain answers and access to classified intelligence so plan b is to ascertain the degree of the leak and the damage done from the blackish burgundy endometrial tide that reeks of dead fish washed up on a sultry June beach fold and wad one-ply toilet paper into a makeshift pad remove sweatshirt and tie sleeves securely around waist ward off the urge to slink back to trig unnoticed they will see through attempts at stealth coldly calculate that strutting in late reeking of Marlboro Reds provides the necessary smokescreen to remain undetected.

A rust belt city in decline retains the solace of romance, which often proves to be an empty promise or even a curse. With a wry perspective and unflappable determination, Curt embodies all the town's ills, including his own problems with drinking, work, and relationships, as he tries to save himself and rescue his friends in his own unconventional and unlawful ways. In The Bridge on Beer River, a novel-in-stories set in Reagan-era Binghamton, New York, characters scramble for subsistence while hoping for love and a better life.

Fearing the future laid out for him by his father, recent college grad Jacob Constantine accepts an offer to work in Germany for a year. When his ex-girlfriend Diedre suddenly attempts to rekindle their relationship, the unexpected presence of the past castsa shadow over everything. With the help of a new environment and some new friends, Jake tries to navigate his emotions in Germany. But as he speeds toward his predetermined future, it seems that nothing can keep the dark secrets from the past from being stirred up in Diedre's wake.

At the center of The Ballad of Two Sisters are Stella and Helen, two sisters who die on the same day. One fragile and one strong, the sisters confront the troubles of the past and the uncertainty of the future as they seek connection, joy, and completion. Though at times circuitous, the paths the sisters travel ultimately lead them back to each other, until finally, they can never be parted.

What is the love poem's function? Does it eternally preserve the beloved as they actually are, or does it warp and suffocate them, locking them inside stanzas and lines from which they will never escape? In Ventric(L)e, Jerrod E. Bohn dissects the heart's labyrinthine structure. The organ is an intricate house, full of delight, surprise, and possibility; however, its chambers are also walled, barred. The heart is equally a cage. What began as a series of love poems took a turn with the relationship's erosion. Are the poems themselves at fault? Did the page become the prison from which the beloved struggled to break free, and when they couldn't, did it hasten the physical act of leaving? And what remains behind when the beloved is gone? Are they still entrapped even when another comes along? Through meditations dense with sorrow and hope, the sacred and the profane, Bohn explores the love poem's power to both create and destroy.

In this stunning abecedarian poetry collection by Susanna Lang, the words come to comfort, to exhilirate, and to ignite. Lang's e-chapbook, Among Other Stones: Conversations with Yves Bonnefoy, was released by Mudlark: An Electronic Journal of Poetry & Poetics in June 2021, and her translation of Baalbek by Nohad Salameh was published in October 2021 by Atelier du Grand Tétras. Her third full-length collection of poems, Travel Notes from the River Styx, was published in 2017 by Terrapin Books. Her poems and translations have appeared or are forthcoming from Prairie Schooner, december magazine, Delos, New Poetry in Translation, American Life in Poetry and The Slowdown. Her translations of poetry include Words in Stone and The Origin of Language by Yves Bonnefoy, and she is now working with Souad Labbize and Hélène Dorion on new translations.

Queen Anne Cowboy is like rain on a windshield, breaking up the dust. The rain is a singer-songwriter named Terrell Jamestone, telling the story of his kid brother, Ethan, a seventh grader who scored high enough on the SATs to skip ahead to college, but cuts himself with a razor blade late at night. The dust is the kind of trouble that hides in good neighborhoods. Maybe you know something about that. Guiding Ethan from self-harm towards compassion, Terrell still succumbs to his own inner demons, abandoning his dreams to alcohol. The daughter he leaves behind, Belinda, grows up to be wild and strong, an aspiring teenage poet hurting from his absence. Crossing into adulthood, Ethan tries to repay his brother's kindness by looking after her. Ten years pass-ten years of rainforests and meditation, bad romances and road trips, public schools and gentrification, alternative colleges and mass incarceration, polyamory and drug addiction, house shows and red wine-before Terrell comes home again.

The fictional Sunset Inn is a seedy motel with a storied past on a neglected block of Hollywood Boulevard. In twenty linked tales, Motel Stories takes an empathetic deep dive into the eccentricities and troubled lives of the diverse guests who check in to this refuge of last resort-for either pleasure or escape, and always an interrupted night's sleep. Edward, the motel's cynical but occasionally accommodating manager, confronts a daily cast of ever-changing characters. A man who dances with dolls. Central American immigrants from civil war celebrating their honeymoon. The addict mother of a newborn infant facing a fateful reunion with her long-lost brother. A disgraced politician forced into hiding. A Vietnamese mama's boy waiting to meet his foreign bride. An elderly couple checking in to the same room where they first met sixty years earlier.¿Four interrelated stories complete the collection. A Filipina internet bride struggles to maintain her autonomy in suburban America. A teenage boy flees his hometown to escape persecution. A female impersonator replaces her glamorous mentor on stage. A gay, middle-aged gallery owner confronts his own errant past when his troubled teenage nephew visits. William Torphy portrays these characters with both empathy and wry humor, revealing their universal desire for love and connection, recognition and security. Sometimes raw, and often humorous, this timely debut collection pierces through both the loneliness and the humanity of distressed outliers temporarily set adrift by circumstance in the American underbelly.

The poems in If The Sky Won't Have Me weave a brilliant tapestry of the human condition, focusing on nature, the female experience, family drama, aging, politics, and regret. Images of water feature strongly, as do rebirth and regeneration, both physical and spiritual. A perfect sequel to the author's debut collection, the moon won't be dared, these poems expand and deepen our understanding of what it means to be alive in a complex world.

March 18, 2020Corona and CancerHow much time do I have? The man asks.With words muffled behind my double mask,I mumble something. He accepts the answer,the non-answer. Sometimes, you ask just to hear the question and not the response.Is death disguised in the cancer cells inside him? Or is it floating in the air around us?I give him chemotherapy to chase away the first.I wear a mask to trap out the second. Equal fight?Unknown. The answer hides behind the mask of uncertainty.What I had mumbled was:How much time does life on Earth have?I am glad he didn't hear it.He is glad too.Talking to people behind masks is tricky.They can only see your eyesand the frown in them can't hide behind a smile.Truth. The truth is more naked behind a mask. I feel each breath I take. How precious life is behind a mask!Unmasked, you're never aware of breathing.I hear my breath behind a mask. How loud life is behind a mask!Masks don't cover your vision. Only your gasp. Google statistics.Roll, roll, numbers roll. County's count. State's count. Nation's count. World's count. In the beginning, I could add and subtractyesterday's cases from today's. How many more?Now I can't. With six digits, you lose track.No. You won't lose your job,I answer my single-mother secretary.Did she smile? Can I see her mouth behind her mask?Did she see the truth in my eyes?Thank God for masks. No one questions the truth in the eyes if it doesn't come out of the mouth.How many masks do I have? I have to make some from scratch this weekend.

The Bunker Book is a work of poetry by Anne Babson that revisits medieval plague tales in an era of American pandemic and French Resistance literature in a divided nation. Set in New Orleans and other cosmopolitan destinations, it presents the problems of Kyiv, of the Second World War, and all fights against fascism as a way of talking about America today. This poetry collection makes the new cosmopolitan South confront the ghosts of the old problematic South and exorcise them. While it occasionally echoes sentiments present in Atwood's work, it offers hope to the reader despite all. Focused on the life of a woman who hides herself and the books banned in an oppressive society in a bunker, her library comes to life and speaks to her in the voices of figures like Machiavelli, the Wife of Bath, Marlene Dietrich, Margery Kempe, Rhett Butler, Saint Thomas Moore, and Christine de Pisan. It contemplates the cloistered life of pandemic and religious medieval women mystics in one idiom. It imagines the underground resistance of Paris during the Nazi occupation reenacted in our times in an American setting.Works as old as Beowulf find themselves enacted on the banks of the Mississippi, and poems as present-tense as the latest headlines about the war in Ukraine also find a home on Tchoupitoulas Street in New Orleans.The Bunker Book calls the reader to hope despite reasons to despair, to overcome fear and to fight the forces that would silence artists and political dissidents everywhere. Anyone feeling frustrated with our times might take solace and encouragement from these defiant and hopeful words.

Joshua Roark's poetry is crisp and refreshing -- a book of freshly squeezed lemons -- poems that reach out and grab you. Make you laugh. Fill you up. "Buy Your Own Classroom Supplies"Your classroom binder should be big, beefy, yellow maybe, or red, easy for spotting, smudged with something like chocolate, coffeesplashed across the pages and set in the rings.Your pens should be sunset colored, show thatyou mean business, even from your pocketor dry, chapped hands-oh, and don't forgetthe bottle of sanitizer. It'll sit fatlike a trophy at the edge of your desk.Your closet should hold four white button-upshirts, two pairs of heavy polyesterpants, black, creased, and a single ink-black clip-on-tie, bought at an army surplus store.Trust me, full length ties are not worth the risk.

In the desolate woods of northern Wisconsin, there is a cabin. Inside the cabin is a figure of evil, a witch performing an unknown ritual. There is also a young boy, Ryan Amherst, who is part of this strange ceremony: a pattern of sacrifice and resurrection known only to the residents of the tiny town of Grange.Nearby in the village, a man named Nathan Amherst - Ryan's father - meets with a middleman named John Linden. Nathan asks when his side of the "contract" will be fulfilled. John can only assure Nathan that he will be compensated for his troubles. Meanwhile, in Milwaukee, a police officer named Ben Dmitrovich has a tense confrontation with his superiors. After beating a suspect in a domestic violence case, Ben is placed on a mandatory suspension - another in a long line of heinous police scandals. Ben, who is struggling to overcome his own personal demons, decides to retreat to his family's cabin up north.By coincidence or a morbid twist of fate, he ends up in Grange and meets a woman named Maria Amherst - Nathan's wife, who apparently died seven months ago. As he unlocks the mystery of Maria's reappearance, Ben discovers a shocking pattern of child disappearances and strange resurrections. A young piano prodigy named Amy Dorian may be the town's next victim, but Ben races to rescue her before it's too late. Hurtling towards a cosmic judgment, Ben has a final shot at redemption or damnation.