Indie Lit Round-Up: What to Read This Weekend [Vol 21: Nov 3]
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.
“What could we speak of / before we forget everything? / Do we speak of beginnings / and the good old days?” | LUIS CUAUHTEMOC BERRIOZABAL has a poem, “What Could We Speak Of,” at Red Fez.
“This is how we fill our plates.” | KELLY MAGEE has two microfictions at Threadcount.
“When children on the easternmost tip of the District of Columbia try to explain where they live, they often say ‘by the Shrimp Boat,’ a worn seafood carryout whose small, barred windows look east to the city’s hardest ghetto and west to the United States Capitol.” | KATHERINE BOO with masterful, classic reporting in “After Welfare” at The New Yorker.
“You’re making good time. Keep this up, the splits will be amazing.” JEN MICHALSKI has a story about hurting and healing, “What Is Left,” at Heavy Feather Review.
“At the club, Clarissa listens to the Dirty Dancing soundtrack on her Walkman and experiments with sitting in different positions to watch her flesh ooze through the lounge chair’s plastic strips.” | KATE GEHAN has a quick flash, “Alone and Not Alone,” at Lost Balloon.
“I was almost named April, an easier name for me to pronounce and others to spell, a month announcing beauty, falling blossoms, a welcome change.” | JEANNINE HALL GAILEY, whose name I have been practicing spelling for years, has a stellar poem about how her name was “Almost April,” on Tinderbox Poetry Journal.
“Reading at school was agony. A slow, child by child rotation around the class, six pages each. Great Expectations. Vanity Fair. The Mill on the bloody Floss.” | KIT DE WAAL says to “Make Room for Working-Class Writers” at Guardian.
“There were fennel lungs / and they licked their way / up the hair.” | OLIVIA CRONK has a gorgeous excerpt from “Skin Horse” at Academy of American Poets.
“Here, the sentence will be respected.” | LAYLI LONG SOLDIER has a gripping poem, “38,” on Mud City Journal.
“In 1965, the actors playing the Von Trapp children march down the split staircase of their house.” | KATHARINE COLDIRON talks about “The Girl on the Bike” at The Rumpus.
