Alina Kuvaldina is a journalist and writer of Ukrainian origin. Her stories in English are featured or forthcoming in Exposition Review, Beyond Words, Short Beasts, and elsewhere. Alina currently resides in Germany, where she’s working on her first book. The Beast| The Bookends Review
Marco Etheridge is a writer of prose, an occasional playwright, and a part-time poet. He lives and writes in Vienna, Austria. His work has been featured in over one hundred and fifty reviews across Canada, Australia, Europe, the UK, and the USA. Marco’s short story “Power Tools” was nominated for Best of the Web for 2023 and is the title of his latest collection of short fiction. When he isn’t crafting stories, Marco is a contributing editor for a ‘zine called Hotch Potch. In his ot...| The Bookends Review
Fortunately, the alternator in my 1984 Dodge Ram is easy to access, otherwise I’d have to take it to a garage to get it replaced. I really can’t afford a car repair this month; I’ve barely worked. This weighs heavily on my mind as I roll over in bed and try to tune out the sound of my wife, who is sitting outside the bedroom window in the driveway of our Hollywood apartment smoking cigarettes and drinking cans of beer from our red and white Playmate. I hear the lid scrape open and shut ...| The Bookends Review
The fall has halted for the yellow maple leaf, fresh caught, bright, casting a tiny shadow in the porch corner from the spider’s web in the last light of this October day: no escape, no meal. – John Beck Note: This piece was previously published by LansingOnlineNews.com, a now defunct local news outlet, in 2012.… ...continue reading The post Leaf appeared first on The Bookends Review.| The Bookends Review
Sara Mae (photo provided by Shlagha Borah) Sara Mae is a genderqueer writer raised on the Chesapeake Bay. Their work examines the surreal, the uncanny, body horror, and intimacy. They are a 2023 Big Ears Music Festival Artist Scholar, a 2022 Tin House Summer Workshops alum, a 2022 Open Mouth Attendee, and a 2021 Sewanee Writer’s Conference Scholar. Their work appears in or is forthcoming from POETRY, The Georgia Review, Muzzle, and elsewhere. They are a 2017 Individual World Poetry Slam, 20...| The Bookends Review
after Remedios Varo’s “Astral Entity” NOTES FOR THE BABYSITTER You can reach me at 555-GET-AWAY or call the Get a Break bar on Vacation Blvd. and have them page me. I hope you don’t do that though. She only answers to Astra, but if you have an emergency her name is Nora Boudeman and she’s six years old. She has no physical preexisting conditions. She will only eat sugar water and rocket pops and dandelion salad. The salad is in a Tupperware in the fridge. She’s in a phase. She has...| The Bookends Review
They gave us little yellow tickets and instructed us not to lose them. Yellow like the flowers sprouting from the ground, Wrestling blades of grass, Growing up towards the sun, yellow and shiny, Yellow teeth, dentist bills, That week was full of “almost!” moments. I almost called out but came in begrudgingly. I almost left the event early to return to my office and work in solitude or just left early for the day, stealing a roll of toilet paper on my way out. I thought about all of those ...| The Bookends Review
this heart of mine feels dull and lonely aching for your love, only are you thinking of me where you are? are you looking at the same stars ? did the moon tell you i’ve been telling her stories about you? and how every shade and every hue is more vibrant next to you ? carolina skies are nothing compared to your eyes and my my my… i sure do miss my guy the one who dons himself in paint my patron saint in t e c h n i c...| The Bookends Review
My fiancé does not like the smell of fast food, greasy paper bags or unrefined sugars. I like the scent, at times, more than the contents. Limp potato matchsticks with bits of potato skin left on make it seem more real. He scolds me when I come home with a Big Gulp in hand. He likes the gym and time management. “Managing time.” He stresses, finger pointy, seeking to transfer his passion for precision from his nail bed to my wrinkled forehead. Anyway, I knew this simply would not do. I di...| The Bookends Review
Group Portrait: Poems on a Photograph by Herman Landshoff (Parisian Phoenix Publishing) Fresh from Parisian Phoenix Publishing as of July 2025, Mark Luebbers and Benjamin Goluboff’s latest poetry collection Group Portrait: Poems on a Photograph by Hermann Landshoff takes on the ambitious task of tasteful extrapolation; in their examination of Hermann Landshoff’s 1942 photograph “Artists in Exile,” Luebbers and Goluboff aim to highlight the human condition itself as a collaborative nar...| The Bookends Review
The night before Christmas Eve. Bert watched the taillights of the Amtrak ‘Banker’ fade up the tracks toward Springfield. No one had gotten off in Hartford except him. It was clear and still and cold. Union Station was deserted. He was disappointed Trudy hadn’t surprised him and walked eight blocks to meet the train. In a way he was glad, too – still to be alone, still moving toward her. He carried his suitcase down Railroad Street to Asyl...| The Bookends Review
If only there could always be hamentaschen for breakfast: little cookie triangles crumbling into coffee.If only there was always coffee.If only the coffee would grind itself—silently.If only I craved tea in the morning and not coffee.If only there was always optimal-temperature tea and time to read during a rainstorm, soft light, a blanket.If only in the rainstorm a cat named Edith found her way to me. Or an...| The Bookends Review
Andrew Sarewitz has published more than 60 short stories, as well as penned scripts for various media. He is a recipient of the 2021 City Artists Corp Grant for Writing. His play, Alias Madame Andrèe (based on the life of WWII resistance fighter Nancy Wake, a.k.a. the “White Mouse”) garnered First Prize from “Stage to Screen New Playwrights” in San Jose, CA. It was produced with a multicultural cast and crew. Finally, Andrew is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America. Find him he...| The Bookends Review
Karen Lozinski hails from New York City and lives in New Orleans. She’s a multidisciplinary artist who earned her MFA at the California Institute of the Arts. Her photographs and artwork have been in multiple shows and are widely published, and a selection of her music photos is included in Can’t Be Faded: Twenty Years in the New Orleans Brass Band Game from the University of Mississippi Press. At work on a novel and a poetry collection, her writing appears in Mantis, The Citron Review,...| The Bookends Review
TJ Daly is an emerging writer from the East Bay who studies Japanese Literature. Some of the writers that inspire him are Soseki, Dazai, Tsushima Yuko, and Murakami. He is helped with writing by his Bombay Cat, Gigi. Tokyo Comedy| The Bookends Review
Interview with ‘Famished’ Author Anna Rollins| The Bookends Review
Anna Rollins’s debut memoir, Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl, will be published by Eerdmans on December 9th, 2025. Rollins blends memoir, reporting, and research to examine how diet culture and biblical purity culture instruct women to fear their bodies and deny their appetites. She is also the author of numerous essays and craft pieces including: Between the Sunflower Stalks in The New York Times; Running an Olsen Twins Fan page Taught Me to Craft an Online Identity i...| The Bookends Review
“It says here that when Leonardo Da Vinci died, he asked forgiveness for not using his art to the fullest of his abilities. That somehow, he had failed God and mankind.” A lanky man with a thick red scarf around his neck folded his newspaper, stuffed it into his jacket pocket, and turned to his companion not expecting an answer. The two men had stopped to take a break from their afternoon walk, sitting down on a bench overlooking a stretch of beach that surrendered to waves, the bay, th...| The Bookends Review
on this night I had a dream.conjurations by the fairies’ midwife it would seem, bringing me sweet visionsand courted by heart-strung decisions, swimming in soft swan featherswhile chasing him bound by their divine tethers. in the morning when I wake,the fog of courtship clears that memory made by mistake. then I shall cut the cord and cringe,taking her sickly medicine from a sharp syringe. i painfully pull out his gilded arrowand shake the nightmare out of my bone and marrow, purging misty ...| The Bookends Review
I sit at the dining table, and the warm spring sun falls on an empty sheet of paper. I draw almost every day now. And no matter what I start to draw, I see myself in the end. The day before yesterday, I was a tennis ball. A green one, with light lines wrapping around my body. Such balls are usually picked up by men in snow-white shorts. Those with strong hands and stressful jobs. They grab the ball, lift the racket, and swing it against the wall. Just to have fun and relax. “Stupid ball!”...| The Bookends Review
Announce the Morning. Yesby going about Your day. Yesraise Your well-rested Flesh,dress It & take It to Café Colao. Note the warmth in warmth.Note the Sun & Clouds.Note the Bus Driver & His solemn, stoic face. Note the patience it takes to wait for the walk sign to turn white.Note the Woman as You enter,whose car has gone missing| The Bookends Review
“Katherine, I believe it’s important that we clarify your goals concerning these recurring dreams. Think of it as a springboard for the healing process, the starting point for our journey.” Ten minutes into a fifty-minute hour, and Kat is already eyeing the door. Katherine Wyatt is not a person who seeks psychiatric help. Normal people don’t see shrinks, and normality is Kat’s calling card. Yet here she sits, chewing the end of her braid while Doctor Bramble smiles at her. Fucksake,...| The Bookends Review
When the school in Japan asked in her interview why she wanted to teach overseas, she didn’t give the real reason: that it had been an ear infection. Her parents had rented a lake house for early July. The first day, water had gone into her ear and had stayed in, resisting head shakes and leg kicks. She was the oldest of four. When she was younger, relatives called her “Young Mother Hen” because she changed diapers, helped with homework, and, later, drove her brothers and sister to thei...| The Bookends Review
I wandered the streets in a haze. For the first time in many months I moved about directionless, and without idea of where to find a cause to travel. So I simply moved, passing under street lights and swimming in the cold haze of night between their islands of effervescence. I glided through Shibuya, through Akihabara, and eventually into Minato. All the while awaiting a reason to move, a definable destination. Finally, I reached the Minato train station. It was then that I saw the woman. She...| The Bookends Review
It’s mid-May, and after a long slog of last-minute client requests and petty politics in the office, tax season is finally over. Tomorrow is my chance to fly away to a five-day vacation with no schedule and no responsibilities. Double tall mocha in hand (including whipped cream), I find my gate and practically dance down the concourse to board a late morning non-stop, Seattle to Philly. Tonight, I’ll meet my friend Louise and after visiting overnight with her husband and twins, the two of...| The Bookends Review
Ghost Lake and Zombie Dad| The Bookends Review
After a record-breaking season of rain, the five-year mega drought in California was over. Atmospheric rivers and bomb cyclones rolled inland, brought steel gray skies, charcoal clouds, and torrents of water. Snow wrapped mountaintops, and for a brief moment, it seemed all would be well. But the relentless sun grew hotter than ever before. The snow melted and the streams, rivers, and waterfalls gushed to the valley below. And there emerged a ghost lake, Tulare Lake, once...| The Bookends Review
Some time ago, while walking up 8th Avenue in the black night hours, I nonchalantly crossed the empty road, heading for home. What seemed like out of nowhere, a car came barreling at me. I froze in the middle of the street. The driver passed so close, the door handle brushed against me. The rear tires locked, causing the car to skid and fan towards the far curb, scratching the paint of a parked Chrysler before careening back across the lanes, swiping another parked car and losing one of i...| The Bookends Review
Why bother bending utensils when you can bend minds, bend limbs, bend roads? We pulse from city to city, light streaks even a map can’t catch. Sammich sustenance absorbed in rest stops with carelessly locked bathrooms and landscaped-area flowers flaking color into the absence of light. At least the sprinkler timers are working. The visitors from the Continent stitch the air in my car with vexation over how to locate themselves in/on Google while I creep streets striated in freezing pr...| The Bookends Review
A piercing morning sun promised no relief but only more heat as the carefully tanned woman stood waiting with the little girl in her overly heavy dress and orthopedic shoes. The woman was sporting faux haute couture in crisp white shorts and a mind-blowing bright blue halter, her blonde hair carefully arranged in a silky ponytail. Delicate leather sandals with a troublesome strap were a bit loose, but she loved the look. Sunglasses, not Bentley Platinum but knockoffs, shielded her eyes from t...| The Bookends Review
We cry, with the throb of deception,Because we’ve seen the tongue of deceit, without exception.We cry, and we feel guilt,Because we’ve spat the words of trickery ourselves, knowing what it would wilt.And so, we speak in feathers of white, to cover our scarring words,Even when we know white lies can so easily be tainted by the song of black birds. But why can’t we speak in different shades of light?Periwinkle lies, so soft and pure it would chirp with joy even through the darkest of nigh...| The Bookends Review
It would be love after a few sights. Last Tuesday, she caught my eye again, and I caught hers back. I’ll probably ask her to prom – betraying the pact made with my two closest friends, to go together rather than with dates – but I need the confirmatory third or fourth sight of her. Then I’ll tell her that I fancy her. With the frenzy of two months before prom dominating classroom and corridor conversation, our minds are occupied. We’re unusually busy. Much to our teachers’ dismay,...| The Bookends Review
What shook them loose from those grim days, news from my mother’s uncle domiciled in Australia, a firelight dream, some cinematic malarkey, a maggot, or just bad memories? Emotionally ransacked in hospital waiting rooms and cemeteries, the economy’s renewal slower than my mother’s stoic sighs, she read my great-uncle’s blue aerogrammes, creative non-fiction right to the thin pages’ edges and along the sides like ant trails. An example of English parsimony, or adventure? Did my...| The Bookends Review
He sat perched in his old place, where he had sat a thousand times before. From that lofty height he turned and gazed upon the green patched floor. He saw all that there was to see; there the smoking chimneys and there the willow trees. Nothing could escape his gaze, there was nothing there he did not know. He knew the lanes, their bends and straights. He knew the hedges, farms and loam. He knew each cheerful homestead and each happy family. He knew the little streams and brooks, he knew each...| The Bookends Review
After the shipwreck had finally been pulled onto the beach, back in March, a salvage crew kept cutting up the crab boat’s hull and cockpit. The workers had shooed her off like a small girl, even though they must have seen the trash bags she carried full of the styrofoam, fiberglass, and plastic every new tide spat at the beach. If she wanted to play, they had scolded her, she could do so farther north, past where the creek emptied into the ocean. She’d kept silent through their tirades, m...| The Bookends Review
The Elegance of Shadows| The Bookends Review
What grace given as redemptioncan this grace be now? she wonders,walking past his corner againin the glassy white glare of 6 o’clock,seeing what little is leftof what he gave his life to. This was a man who worked the same jobfor twenty-seven years, fixing machinesmade by other men, machines meant to breakfrom wear, from neglect, from war.A man who worked in a concrete boxon the corner of Patterson and Mainin a soiled, quarter-sleeved jumpsuit,washing away the work each nightback home – c...| The Bookends Review
In all the horror movies I’ve ever seen, the haunted are powerless to the ghosts who do the haunting. Ghosts invariably arrive on their own terms: a quick flash of their reflection in the bathroom mirror when the victim wipes away steam; a vase that, unprovoked, falls to the floor and shatters at the living’s feet; a shiver that raises goosebumps all over a grieving lover’s body on the hottest day of the year; a disembodied moan outside a widow’s bedroom window on a windless night. So...| The Bookends Review
People claim to have been crushed by love.I doubt it.Alien compression most likely, pressed for time,squeezed into a photo booth or lostin the grip of gravity. I often contemplatewhat 3 Gs might do to an unwary spine.But I won’t take the fall, there’s still spring in my step.Once on a field trip I gazed out the windowof a trans-galactic express and immense objectsappeared out of nowhere, threatening to demolish the ship.I rubbed my lucky wart and secured safe passagefor saint and sinner a...| The Bookends Review
The rustling sound and movement in the bushes alarmed him. When he had lain down in the darknessbefore, it seemed that there was nothing in the nearby woods that would be a problem. Suddenly,he felt that might not be the case. As he shaded his eyes from the bright, hot light above, he began to seethe creature stepping into the clearing where he had slept. Surprisingly, it looked like him, somewhat, butwas different in unfamiliar ways. Its movements were graceful and determined, showing no sig...| The Bookends Review
This story based on Stephen King’s prompt in his book “On Writing” comes with a 30-year delay. Did she have an imaginary friend? Yes, she did. Nelly would say he was quite real, even if other people could not see him. His name was Sinbad like the cartoon character. He had huge dark eyes, tawny-brown skin, a turban and those funny pointy-toed shoes on his feet. Sinbad came to her house when her mother moved out. Her mother Jivka changed her name to Jane when she left for London. Sinbad k...| The Bookends Review
Sometimes I wonder if everyone doesn’t need someone to missA peg where they can hang that heartache hatAnd its miles of cloudsIts volume of sleepless sadness.You are the doorway through which my mourning passes.We could not house happinessBut you remain safely in my heartWinnowing the sadness. – Jenny McBride| The Bookends Review
as a ship in a bottlebelieving every wooden piecea symbol of somethingthat can be shaped. I see each fragile word nestled in yourlined fingers being carefully homed.Eyes straining, focusing,anything can be built despitethe small opening. You laughwhen I tell you the shipwill never sail.My words, random particles,amass to nothing.| The Bookends Review
My two brothers share a bedroom in the middle of the hallway. I share a room with my sister down at the end, across from my mom and stepdad’s room. My sister and I share one full-sized bed that’s pushed right up next to the window. I sleep on the window side. On the wall across from my sister’s side is a big mirror and when we jump on the bed, we watch ourselves in it. Laughing. Floating. Hung up by a nail next to the mirror, right by the door frame, there’s a small, pink porcelain Lo...| The Bookends Review
“Don’t hang up on me, Emily.” “Why are you calling, Roger?” Remember, the judge ruling on our divorce recommended we employ a mediator to determine how we’ll divide everything rather than hiring more lawyers.” “How do we divide the furniture, cut them in half? How do you split the bed, the one we slept in and fucked in for five years?” “This is not the way to resolve this. Neither of us can afford more legal fees. The judge gave me the names of three mediators, and I check...| The Bookends Review
Surrounded by lavish mansions, the old beach cottage looks small, forlorn and utterly out of place on its water-front lot. A red estate sale sign is the only color in the withered front yard. A middle-aged woman sits on a bench in the entryway holding a wad of cash in one hand, her cellphone in the other. Lost in conversation, she smiles as I walk by on the sidewalk and waves me toward the front door. It is mid-February and I’ve just escaped an Idaho winter for a short trip to Coronad...| The Bookends Review
She deftly navigates the aisles of the flea marketwithout paying much attention to the furniture,jewelry, rugs, posters, pottery, books, any of it. Nibbling at a tissue-wrapped éclair in one hand,she thumbs away at a cell phone game on the otherand, to the irritation of vendors and customers alike, concurrently holds a conference call with speaker on.She cuts deals, makes trades, accuses, cajoles.A fluffy white Pomeranian on a leash of sapphire beads is tethered to her gold lame belt. She ...| The Bookends Review
I’m not a youngster anymore. Our family doctor says I need to exercise more, to lower my blood sugar and to lower my weight. So I walk. A lot. I walk the treadmill at the gym every other day. Four times a week, I head up the road to the Echelon Mall to do my five miles there. Yes, I’ve become a mall walker – I never thought I would. The first Sunday this March was windy and cold. I grabbed my favorite jacket, a well-worn, tan hoodie I’ve kept at least ten years longer than I should. I...| The Bookends Review
The trees with branches thick and coarse, barely move when children swing from them. Those trees have strong, deep roots that won’t let a child fall. Such trees have branches that can hold the weight of an argument over who did the dishes last. Such trees can stand to have the very bark torn from their bodies over screams of ‘I hate you’ and ‘just leave me alone.’ Such trees know how to bounce back and start a fresh the next day. ...| The Bookends Review
By now my mother and I do not speak. Nonetheless, she is a presence hovering everywhere I go. She has smelled the same for as long as I remember. When I had outgrown the powdery smell of babies she too stopped smelling like talcum. Now she smells like bubblegum as if littering the air with a confetti of bubblegum wrap long after it has lost its sweetness in her mouth. I assess that smell in the room to confirm she has left or if she has merely retreated to a far corner where I won’t hear th...| The Bookends Review
In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf captures the allure of gardens for those with equivocal feelings about fellow humans, writing that Sally Seton “often went into her garden and got from her flowers a peace which men and women never gave her.” Gardens offer us a glimpse into prelapsarian natural beauty and slow living, but as Olivia Laing demonstrates in The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise, not everyone gets to relish the peace of these Edens. They are inherently politic...| The Bookends Review
Gerald looked up at the sky, wiping his hands on his overalls. The rain is coming again. It will be arduous, and the crops will probably fail. However, after that comes the season of plenty. The crops will grow. They’d better. Marcus, his son, walked along carrying two milk buckets. They exchanged glances. “Come here,” Gerald said, taking off his tattered Stetson and dropping it on the porch beside him. “We have to talk” “I’ve got to get the milk over to the...| The Bookends Review
(I just happened to be both) When my parents divorced, I was seventeen years old. By that time, my alcoholism was in full swing. I came by it honestly. Alcoholism runs through my father’s side of the family like a brush fire. I wasn’t self-aware enough at the time to understand that my thirst for alcohol was a combination of genetics and a desperate desire to feel the way other people looked. Even if someone had told me this back then, I probably wouldn’t have cared. In fact, ther...| The Bookends Review
Suite 815 smells aggressively of hydrangeas, which makes me miss my mother and long instead for the typical sterile smell of hospitals that I am used to. I whisper my name to the woman behind the desk, and she whispers something back about date of birth and take a seat and with you in one minute. I take the photo-sized piece of paper she hands me and don’t hear what I am supposed to do with it, so I use it as a bookmark instead. As I sit, I realize the way I gave my birthday under my breath...| The Bookends Review
Normally, they would have been up by 7:30—they got up when the dog did—but their dog had had a big day yesterday, an extra walk up and down the hilly streets of Baltimore and a longer than usual game of tennis ball in the backyard, and was still asleep. So the problem wasn’t that it was too early when they heard a woman’s voice calling them from their living room at 8:45; the problem was that a woman’s voice was calling them from their living room. “Jerry? Sandra? You there?” It...| The Bookends Review
They don’t tell you about what lingers after – not the pollution or those fiery regurgitations but the wispy krakens, the spiders and their webs. Cracks in the window of the sky. Desire lines circumvent the cumuli, trails forging intersections before they ever burst, and the sky goes lighter each time these paths retread. You know that there is no such thing as independence. You remember the first time you saw the show. After years of just hearing them through the walls of your bedroom an...| The Bookends Review
The door to the high school principal’s office stood open, so I nipped in to get a quick opinion on my son’s desire for a summer job. He was not yet sixteen, and possibilities didn’t seem to extend beyond fast food, which he didn’t want to do. “You have to hate your first job and get fired from it.” the principal opined in his ever-congenial way. Neil Diamond album covers lined a couple of shelves of the small office, Neil’s grave visages suggesting he agreed with this thought. ...| The Bookends Review
Today we elected Cameron. He’s sixteen. It wasn’t legal but a few months ago Congress got together and changed the laws so that he could run for office. And it was a landslide. He refused to do any of the debates. He’d just drop another video on his channel that’d get tens of millions of likes. The networks needed the viewing numbers so badly that they would just play his videos when the other candidates were finished speaking. Even the other candidates liked it. The conservative (wha...| The Bookends Review