Indie Lit Round-Up: What to Read This Weekend [Vol 18: Sep 7]
The Coil editor rounds up the best literary pieces from the indie Internet for you to read this weekend.
There’s a lot of stuff on the Internet to read. Here, let me help you wade through the crap to get to the good stuff. This recurring column features stories, reviews, poems, interviews, essays, and literary whatnot that you might have missed, and you can come back every weekend for new great reads.
“Last year, I got rejected 43 times by literary magazines, residencies, and fellowships — my best record since I started shooting for getting 100 rejections per year. | KIM LIAO flips the lid on rejections and tells you “Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year” at Literary Hub.
“I took nighttime to hide in my hair and / considered how I confused lust with / a periscope.” | RITA MOOKERJEE has a gorgeous poem, “Fetish / Recluse,” on Flapperhouse.
“The idea of sororities holds stronger in the Deep South than in the rest of the country, and at my alma mater, Ole Miss, in Oxford, Mississippi, the Greek letters on T-shirts foretold a person’s station in life.” | PAIGE WILLIAMS tells the stunning story of disaster, heartbreak, mending, and how 25 years have changed the survivors in “We Thought the Sun Would Always Shine on Our Lives” at O, The Oprah Magazine.
“My father left. I woke up and could no longer smell him in the closed air of our home.” | ROXANE GAY has a heartbreaking story of surviving a father’s absence in “Glass” at Atticus Review.
“Indeed, there he goes, the happy cat. He walks along the streets, along the canals and beside flats and businesses practically suffering with primary colors.” | LILY HOANG tells “The Mystical Adventures of Happy Cat” at Threadcount.
“Aerial shot. The sun rises over a city of semicircles.” | CLAIRE POLDERS talks about “Amsterdam” at Heavy Feather Review.
“You couldn’t stop singing. You sat on a boulder by a rushing stream and sang and sang, all the songs you could remember.” | JACQUELINE DOYLE tells of songs and affairs “By a Mountain Stream in Northern Spain” at Lost Balloon.
“Somehow, when you weren’t / looking, the rancor slipped / its chain.” | GRETCHEN ROCKWELL has a poem of resistance, “The Rebellion,” at Glass: A Journal of Poetry.
“This is what I mean by a riot of openings: / five-petal leaves grow dripping / bones from the center vine.” | CAROL BERG has a poem, “Belly-Ache Bush with Giant Sphinx Moth: Plate #15 by Maria Sibylla Merian,” at Tinderbox.
“The silk threads of grief and time snap and spin away from the black looms, but all Freia wants to do is go back to Vienna.” | ANYA JOHANNA DeNIRO has a dark tale, “Faint Voices, Increasingly Desperate,” at Shimmer.
