– after Rita Dove Morning. I look at my fuzzy chest in the bathroom mirror. What are these hard disks, like quarters, under my nipples? I’m a boy; am I growing breasts? I can hear the girls in my class giggling. Last evening during homework, my father called me to the living room, and back at my desk, I couldn’t remember what he’d said, but I realized he had not yelled at me like the day before and the day before that and . . . The letters in the book swam like fish avoiding a bigger ...| The Bookends Review
Joe my brother says, spitting smoke toward the ceiling. Another long story. Joe I say. Joseph. Guy is a year and a half younger. We’re both Joe. Another long story. He tips back in the recliner. We sit watching football in the parlor of our youth, monk-bald middle aged men sinking into furniture. I am back for the wail and wallow of an Italian funeral. No need to be coy; it’s my mother’s, she whose legacy was to withhold all the Italian except the swears. Let ...| The Bookends Review
Sophia Lambton (Photo: Amazon) Sophia Lambton reached out to me, a book reviewer, to review the first book in her series, The Crooked Little Pieces. Researching Sophia for one of my CLP reviews, I found out that she also writes music critiques, which at the time, my son, a frequent concert-goer, thought he might also like to try his hand at, and I asked for her advice. We struck up a correspondence that has grown into a friendship. Sophia has also published a consummate biography of Maria...| The Bookends Review
Sweetness begins like the drizzling of a raincloud Sporadically spitting in tasteful bursts Like ink blotches on wet parchment, Sugar waltzes with taste buds and Bides its time before bursting the dam And flooding the mouth with ambrosia Pray the bees do not mind. – Sarah Al-Hajj Note: This piece was previously published in Sarah Al-Hajj’s poetry pamphlet, Wonky Fingers, in February of 2024.… ...continue reading The post Raiding The Honeypot appeared first on The Bookends Review.| The Bookends Review
Confronted with the dim lighting, dark wood, and the tangy, sweet scents of barbequed meat, Kaylee stomped her right foot twice, then, lips pursed, exhaled. Better Ribs BBQ had no signage directing DoorDash drivers where to pick up orders and she dreaded asking. “Can I help you?” said the young woman at the hostess station. “I’m…here…for…Door…Dash.” The hostess tilted her head. “You drive a car?” If Kaylee could speak normally, she would––every day, every time, every...| The Bookends Review
Tick. Tick. Tick. Kenny watched as the clock on the wall of his seventh grade classroom moved closer and closer to twelve, it seemed to taunt him with its slow, unending ticks. His foot had begun to shake uncontrollably in anticipation, smacking against the tile flooring like the applause of a crowd. In about five minutes, when both hands of the clock met at the very top, the teacher would call out Kenny’s name and he would have to go give a speech at the front of the room. The speech was o...| The Bookends Review
When he first showed me the crescent-shaped rash on his chest, right over his heart, I glanced at it from across the kitchen. My husband was fresh from the mid-summer garden, dripping fresh salty sweat on the floor. I knew better than to come too close, and there was always something. The cactus splinters in his hands, the twig in his eye, his darkened rotting toe. “Feel it!” He didn’t sound too desperate, so I said, “I’m not a doctor.” That afternoon, I scooped cookie dough. My h...| The Bookends Review