Chris Davis is a journalist, artist, musician, and storyteller living in a gothic cottage in Memphis, TN, with his wife, Charlotte, and black cat named Roo, He’s a retired columnist for The Memphis Flyer and his award-winning nonfiction has appeared in a variety of newspapers and magazines. Davis’s fiction appears in HeadCanon Magazine and Pulp Lit Mag. Three essays were collected in Garden & Gun magazine’s book The Southerner’s Handbook: A Guide to Living the Good Life. The Monster Box| The Bookends Review
– 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
Good Girl and Other Yearnings by Isabelle Correa (Photo: Write Bloody Publishing) Isabella Correa’s collection of poetry, Good Girl and Other Yearnings, carefully draws upon popular music and rhyme to interrogate the meaning of what it is to be a woman and a worker in the digital age. At the same time, sonorous lines and uncanny imagery explore tragedies of family relations. For example, in my favorite poem of the collection, “interview with a dead girl,” the spiritual intersects with t...| The Bookends Review
for Ava Today my daughter— now twelve and already looking like a young woman— stands with me at the edge of a field. I tell her California’s mustard flowers are an invasive species first planted by Spanish colonizers so they wouldn’t lose their way. She tells me about the blue bowl she made in pottery class, that comet pieces and moons make up Saturn’s rings. I point to the park on the other side of the road, where small children climb monkey bars, where we used to play every Saturd...| The Bookends Review
Jamie was determined to hide his anger. Bullies turned his anger against him. They made him look helpless and dumb to everybody on the school bus. Worse: they turned his joy against him too. Like that time when word got around that he was into dinosaurs and everybody started calling him Jamiesarus. Or when everybody found out he still watched Mr. Rogers after school and all the bad things that happened after that. And if Jamie ever got mad and made a fist, or answered back to defend himself i...| The Bookends Review
N.T. Chambers has led an interesting life before becoming a writer. Among many jobs held were: cab driver, bus driver, sales drone, pizza deliverer, wine merchant, improv actor, editor, educator, professional counselor, and of course, every writer’s “go to” job, bartender. The author’s works have been published in the following magazines and journals: Grassroots, In Parentheses, You Might Need to Hear This, The Elevation Room, Wingless Dreamer, Months to Years, W.E.I.R.D, New Note Poe...| The Bookends Review
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
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
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
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
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
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
