Diane Douglas lives in Seattle, where she hikes, sews, writes and helps social sector organizations deepen their impacts in the world. Her book, Choosing Craft, documents the inspirations, training and methods of American artists in their own words. Her fiction explores ethics and memories that haunt her–boldness, pain, wisdom, ease transferred through families, generation to generation. Over Her Shoulder| The Bookends Review
I. They call me a monster, ignoring the true Frankenstein, who crafted me from stitched sinews and mismatched skin and lopsided limbs— an amalgamation of forgotten scraps— he who activated my heart with a defibrillator, then abandoned me, fearful of his own creation. II. They call me a monster, screaming when I approach or murmuring when I leave. Flinging darted glances as I stand in a grocery store line, holding a birthday cake with one candle. Don’t they know this skin was not chosen?...| The Bookends Review
“Drinking drivers/Nothing worse/They put the quart/before the hearse/ Burma-Shave” Series of roadside signs by Burma Shave, 1950s In the driveway sat the 1950 Buick Roadmaster Estate Station Wagon, its toothy grille like an angry steel smile, proud of its dynaflow automatic transmission, and wooden body side panels. The back of the car was packed with suitcases for a trip to my grandmother’s funeral five-hundred miles away. Dad was intent on making the trip there in one day, go to the s...| The Bookends Review
My daddy didn’t teach me how to hold my keys between my knuckles or scare off a cat-caller. Coming from the country, I never had to worry about them; strange men didn’t make a habit of lurking out in our woods. We did have chickens, though, and they were high on the menu for a lot of mean critters. So, my daddy saw it fit that my self defense lessons consisted of which color of bear to run from, which snake bites will send you to the hospital, and how to fight off a coyote. Thumb in the e...| The Bookends Review
Again the scent Of wet fur and burnt grass Returns to this humble abode The wolfman is crashed on my couch, curled ball that twitches and growls In slumber, a comfortable comforting Old friend, though strange even to I Who rests by the window Empty wine glass in hand, Taking in the music of the night An hour will pass And he’ll leap to his feet Alive! We’re Alive! We’re not old news Time to hit the town And spread some fear! Time to crash the club To Monster Mash Or at least Hit up McDo...| The Bookends Review
I am the bad seed who chose where to sprout, alongside these meadows. I moved again despite your need for me. When I came out West without one look toward where I had been it was because the things that choked me—worse than thistles or stones, all the ordnance thrown, your savage son waging unholy wars in the memory of Cain. But here I own my square, honest piece of the well-worn dream one half I’ll mow and leave the rest to woods enough room to take root by friends who seem quite happy I...| 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, onc...| 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
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
The first time Liz Chaffin saw Mickey dancing was at the funeral of the dead Mexican boy. She had long since forgotten the Mexican boy’s name, but she remembered that they kept the pine coffin closed because the boy had died from a shark attack. Her father offered no more details, but the closed coffin, topped with exotic flowers from the Yucatan, was sufficient for her imagination. They kept Mickey’s coffin closed too, not because of an irate shark, but because of what he had done to him...| The Bookends Review
Luke weaved between honking, fume-belching metal to catch the bus coming up the other side of the road. The bus stopped just after taking off from a bus stop to let Luke on. The quizzical faces inside the bus facing Luke espoused: “Why did he get on here?! Him?!” No tourist sights existed where Luke had boarded, where English was limited, traffic chaotic, crossing streets perilous, traders screaming out prices, pedestrians mixing with horn-blowing vehicles, everything just missing each ot...| The Bookends Review
Christi had a birthday party scheduled over at The Glass; a gritty, cozy, and unwilling place to be. It was a bar and that was enough for me, I guess. Wednesdays are a good night to drink just like any other day of the week and it was one hell of a day. It was Christi’s twenty-third birthday and although the day was shit, I tried to have a good time. She phoned me. “Are you coming tonight?” she asked. “It’ll just be a few of us. We’re meeting at The Glass at 7:30.” “I’ll be ...| The Bookends Review
It was early August. On that steamy Saturday night, which was slowly changing over to a Sunday morning, the temperature was still in the 90’s. Under the heat dome, there was no relief. Kevin was smoking and pacing in front of the pizza place. He checked his watch and saw that it was ten till midnight. Kevin looked out at the street, but there was no sign of Wayne, who’d promised that this last run of the night would be really quick. There was nothing Kevin could do, so he sat on the curb ...| The Bookends Review
Todd Floss here. A quick note about my future. I plan to write a few fiction novels now that there is a huge need for them. I’m shooting for high six figures for the first one. Toby Vonnegut’s book Ass in the Chair: Writing Your First Blockbuster was a big help to my thinking, so I’m way ahead of the curve. I have sixty-eight ideas as of noon today. My plan is to print the ideas and tape them on my living room wall. In that way, they will be staring me down. I’ve dipped into some fict...| 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
Even though it is her second trip up the Balik Pulau hill, Sanhui still turns into the wrong lane. She does not understand why her father chose to live so high above, in the middle of nowhere. But she made a promise to visit him at least three times a year. After twists and turns, she finally reaches Lotus Garden, where the buildings are adorned in earthy tones and overhanging gable roofs. The sunlight falls on the shoulder of a large golden Guanyin Pusa statue, which meditates on top of a gi...| The Bookends Review
“See you tomorrow,” says Grandpa Julien, as his fake daughter drops us at the door for our usual weekend visit. He waves as she skitters down the steps. The stinkers. I sling my backpack hard into Julien’s messy living room and stomp into the house. He looks the same as always with his rumpled velveteen jacket and a wild geranium in his snow-white hair. Mom and Julien pretend he’s our grandfather. He is really our father. Mom was really just a model for his paintings. They’re not r...| The Bookends Review
I used to be jealous of the rising tide, for it could never leaveJust lap at jagged teeth and spray its foam upon your sleeveMy blindness felt the seagulls flee, their mocking heard no moreYet still the tide, it rose in time, to crash on rocky shoresI know why the kestrel races, on the hunt for freckled facesIn the beaches, ports, and harbors, raving for its saving gracesIn the alleyways, for forty days, I heard them cawIn the burning trees, I heard their pleas, their throats so rawI swore th...| The Bookends Review
That damn commercial. It kept airing in between game shows, its sentimentality breaking up the raucous flow of applause and flashing lights and cartoonish contestants. A little girl calling her grandmother on an iPhone and telling her about a sunflower she drew at school while the grandmother looked out the window at the lone sunflower in her yard and smiled. After about its 50th airing, Lottie powered on her father’s old desktop computer and ordered an iPhone on Amazon. She hadn’t made a...| The Bookends Review
Did I feel reformed? I can’t say. But, as I watched those heavy, black gates dizzyingly sweeping to a close, one thing was certain – I never wanted to see them again. That day, with the last rays of the sun, a period of my life ended that I wished never to relive or recall again. The railway station was teeming with people, fortunately for me. After all, where could a person hope to attract least attention if not in a crowd? Nonetheless, there must have been somethi...| The Bookends Review
The old man crouches beside a straw basket, weary from his travels, his skin glistening with sweat. Children run past him, tumbling through bright saris hanging from twine. Squatters look over his clothes, the few possessions he’s carried for miles on his orange turban. He closes his eyes and blows into the tip of a pungi, emitting a low humming sound. “Come one and all to see what the divine Nagas reveal! The guardians of water have surfaced from great depths to tell us their secrets.”...| The Bookends Review
Founded in 2012, The Bookends Review is an independent creative arts journal dedicated to bringing you the best original fiction, nonfiction, poetry, interviews, essays, book reviews, and visual/musical works from around the world. General inquiries can be sent to info@thebookendsreview.com. Jordan Blum (Founder/Editor-in-Chief + Features, CNF & Book Recs Editor): Jordan Blum holds an MFA in fiction and teaches composition and creative writing at several colleges/universities. He’s publishe...| The Bookends Review
The moon’s gaunt and narrow.…………..They say our corridor through life’s…………..measured by the moon.…………..Slim as a tunnel, I tuck my legs under my knees. Pat scratches licks on the rosewood,…………..strumming them in fragments of silk and nylon.…………..Three-Part Rasguedo, Golpe,…………..Rumbagitana.…………..He plays. Fire-starting calluses, fireboard,…………..spun Mullein, none of these items…………..are amazed by their use. In the...| The Bookends Review
Laura liked to think she was honest with herself; it was everyone else she lied to. In the end, what difference would it make? It would only cause everyone to worry and fuss and make a big deal out of it, and she just wanted to live what little life she had in peace. Was that too much to ask? Actually, if she was honest with herself, she needed to acknowledge that it couldn’t be a secret forever. Questions would start popping up on the lips of busybodies, especially a...| The Bookends Review
It was May 14th 1971, my seventeenth birthday. I was stuck in the restaurant kitchen at chi chi Bullocks’ Department store in Sherman Oaks, California, working the early dinner shift for Tuesday’s weekly designer fashion show. It sucked being young and poor, but restaurant work was a good source of rent and provided meals every shift; two blessings for an only child in the recession of the 70’s living with a single, bipolar mom. I reached up, tore the sole remaining ticket off the stain...| The Bookends Review
Today, Aloysius O’Leary picked the wrong pocket. From the tippy-top of the Ferris wheel at the St. Louis World’s Fair, he watched blue-coated coppers weave around fairgoers at the crossroads of Skinker and Ceylon. With over fifteen-hundred structures and tens of thousands of people, he thought they’d never nab him or his accomplice. No problems all week, but if separated, they’d meet at the Ferris wheel. Not only could Gertrude pick pockets, but she could steal pearls from a woman...| The Bookends Review
I lived with a singer once, a number of years ago in that distant valley called youth. She had been the singer for a group called The Savage Blusterbox, and you can get the idea of the sort of music they made from that name. I was the roadie. I had no musical talent. I have no musical talent. Or even much interest. The band’s leader, Jorge, probably thought I took an interest in his music, if not music in general. This was one of many demonstrations of Jorge’s denseness. His stage name wa...| The Bookends Review
It was the morning glorywreathed around the jersey’shorns that turned you intoa vegetarian. The beast stoodthere in the green pasturelike some bovine Ophelia,brown, beautiful and tragic,trailing white flowers, green hearts.How could I ever eat you? youmurmured and made a pactwith the future never to do so. I, with my eyes on the traffic lights,missed the scene and the promise,being concerned with the moreimmediate future by depressingthe throttle and heading down the road. In any case, my c...| The Bookends Review
It’s not often that a writer is equally adept at poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and literary criticism, yet Lee Upton has been an exception to the rule for over a decade. Unsurprisingly, her latest novel—Wrongful—only cements that fact, as it’s a thoroughly stirring and imaginative but realistic mystery/character study (in the self-aware vein of Agatha Christie) that exemplifies her many talents. Per the official synopsis: When the famous novelist Mira Wallacz goes missing at the festiv...| 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
