​Say Nephew by Steven Pfau is a collection of essays revolving around a nephew’s understanding of his gay uncle, Bruce, as he grows up learning he himself is gay. The essays navigate queerness and mentorship through discussions on topics such as cruising, hosting (both parties and hook-up), the kink scene, and a leather bar, among other things. The uncle-nephew relationship is also looked at in a critical lens with references to a controversial book titled The Story of Harold to the nephew of Gertrude Stein who posed for Picasso. And Pfau also discusses the more taboo side of that relationship which parallels that of a daddy/boy kink some queer men act out. Though, the essays provide an understanding of a man who has found a mentor in his alcoholic, lively, and queer uncle when he was growing up and wandering Bruce’s house that had pictures of revealing men to a moment right before he leaves for college. This moment in particular, a moment on a couch where Bruce seems to be pining for his real-life nephew when he was quite drunk, may be what enhances, or puts more nuance to, the relationship. As the speaker notes, “Whenever I could see you in the future, I could be more afraid of you, now that I know what you’re capable of…” Though, there certainly are lighter moments such as a man stealing someone else’s pee at a bathroom bar trough and pouring it over himself to a couple hosting him at a cabin while they have their way with him, or finding a stray dog and raising it. A decent read.
 
3.5/5

​AGNI Issue 101 is a collection of essays, fiction, poetry, and art mainly centered around conflict and the pain of war. There are pieces on Gaza and most notably the art feature of the issue is art done by a Palestinian artist. And the pieces I particularly liked were ‘Pandora Addresses the Court’ by Vanessa Stauffer, ‘Catching My Breath, I Nearly Forget the View’ by Jim Whiteside, ‘What I Can’t Say’ by Brandi Bird, and ‘Curly’ by Ahmed Douma. Though the piece that has stuck with me the most is ‘Florence, now a bird’ by Silja Liv Kelleris which is about a girl who begins growing wings. The government then takes her as a young girl and cages her up in the center of the town as a tourist attraction. After many years, they sew up her mouth and put a beak on her mouth. After a while, the government takes her out of the cage and makes her “fly” from the top of a building, which is really her plummeting to her death. Overall, a decent issue.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​New Ohio Review Issue 35 has a variety of interesting pieces, a part of which is a folio on how dance in poetry is an act of resistance, joy, and the taboo. Other parts of the issue expand on themes of pets, humor, and an essay comparing Darwin’s illness with the writer’s own Long COVID. Pieces I particularly liked were ‘The Smoker’ by Johnny Cate, ‘Carls’ by Craig Bernardini, ‘Spring Cleaning’ by Emma Wynn, ‘Strike a Blow for Liberty’ by Rose Lambert-Sluder, and ‘Thinking About My Father’s Erector Set from 1948’ by Jen Siranganian. For me, the highlight was the story by Craig Bernardini with how intensely humorous it was in referring to the Carls (as neighbors) and then their Carl (their son). The story follows the parents as they try to keep their son away from the neighbors because they know he’ll become indoctrinated by them and turn out badly. And its tone really worked for the narrative. Overall, the issue had very few misses, though not as many hits as I would’ve liked.
 
Final Rating: 3/5

​The Kenyon Review Fall 2023 is comprised of two main folios: a folio on and about food, while the other is about ‘Gender as a Vessel’. These two themes create a delightful issue in which stories about people being eaten in Douglas Silver’s ‘Taste’ are situation alongside discussions about the body being remade and changed. Other pieces I was fond of were ‘Lemon Season’ by Rebecca Ackermann, ‘Thunderhead’ by Gregory Spatz, and ‘Gulp’ by Dare Williams. I think my favorite—for how strange the story was—was ‘Taste’ in which a man’s hollandaise sauce was so good, it caused people to eat each other. A decent issue overall.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​The Paris Review Issue 135 is a collection of fiction, poetry, interviews, features, and art that is quite jam-packed with heavy-hitters. Though for the first half of the issue, nothing particularly stood out, except the interview with P.D. James—in a bad way. The interviewer, over the course of multiple questions, goads James into discussing feminism, eventually producing a very outdated understanding of the movement. James says, “I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.” James is referring to how in a college she visited, there were posters up informing students about help-lines for harassment and date-rape, which she disliked. Now, over thirty years later, the same line about people being too “PC” is spouted from the mouths of actual fascists—or in the very least neoliberals who deride the left rather than the right. Regardless, the question stands: how does political correctness instill fascism? Is it how, as a society, we’ve agreed upon a set of words to describe people and that other words are deemed inappropriate? In that case, no one was stopping P.D. James from saying what she wanted. Sure, the consequences of James’s words could bite her back, but that would be expected with anything one is to say. This interview was a low point in the issue because the rest I quite enjoyed. There was quite a bit of poetry by Carl Philips that I liked. The interview with Thom Gunn was fascinating when he talked about the classics and his process. There’s a diary of taking a semester with Allen Ginsberg, which was insightful into Ginsberg as a poet and as a person. It was alluded in his talks and in the excerpts of Ginsberg’s past lovers, and the fanboys who lingered at the edge of his class. Though, for me the breakout piece was a story by Rick DeMarinis called ‘Experience’ about a 14-year-old boy who has a Ham radio set-up in his bedroom that’s in the basement, a step-father that wears a green pinstripe suit to every meal, and a friend whose cousin showed him her privates.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​The Paris Review Issue 235 is a collection of poetry, prose, interviews, art, and stage plays published essentially at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. I found the interview with Edward Hirsch to be quite funny and also enlightening. There were other pieces that enjoyed such as ‘The Loss of Heaven’ by Dantiel W. Moniz, and “1976: A Lyric, A Memory, A Lie, The Absolute Truth” by Mary Crockett Hill. Though the stand out story for me was ‘River Crossing’ by Jack Livings which is about this town that’s centered around trying to cross the river to another encampment that’s far livelier. However, the river is infested with killer hippos and alligators such that it’s almost impossible to cross. There’s lore about the town building billboards on the river to signal to the other side, and the main industry of the town is an idea generation of how to cross the river. There are also people who decide to trek to outposts higher up the river that takes multiple lifetimes to get word back about what’s going on up north. Essentially this town’s strangeness and customs surround the desire to cross the river. So one day when the narrator’s daughter wants to become one of the people trekking northward, the narrator and his wife freak out. They try to convince their daughter to stay, but she’s unwilling to change her mind. Eventually the wife asks to join the trek. But before they can do anything, the narrator decides to go to his brother who was hiding a possible way across the river: a mechanical hippo. The story ends with the narrator starting his crossing. It’s a strange story and reminds me of another story called ‘The Sleep’ by Caitlin Horrocks which involves a whole strange town. Overall, I found this issue quite delightful.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​Black Warrior Review Issue 52.1 is a collection of poetry, essays, fiction, and comics. The fiction in particular displayed the monstrous, the strange, and the surreal while the poetry interrogated the political. The pieces I enjoyed were ‘Four Teachers Stapled Together’ by Brett Hymel Jr., ‘Bring us to the Egalitary, Bring us to the End’ by Rishona Michael, ‘Dear Property Owner’ by Renata Golden, and ‘How to Catch and Cook a Mermaid’ by M. Lea Gray. One of my own stories is featured in this issue, but it was a delight to read such brave works of art.
 
Final Rating: 4/5

​Three Guineas by Virginia Woolf is a letter addressing the indecency of war, how society views women, and how women must fight in their own way to combat war. It details the ways in which women in Britian at the time (and largely the century before) were dependent on men, not necessarily because they needed the resources their fathers/brothers/husbands provided, but because men forced that servitude and reliance on them. Woolf outlines how education, specifically education of women, is one important pillar of preventing war. While another point she makes it noting how society must restructure itself around women independence. The message is clear in her letter: war is evil. And the man she is addressing in the letter must do what he can do as a man to prevent war, while women must separately do what they can. The letter notes the beginning of Hitler, but the devastation has not quite become apparent, seeing as Woolf passed away in 1941. It is haunting and telling, while also deeply unfortunate how even before the worst of World War II, Woolf was sounding the alarm bells.
 
Final Rating: 3.5/5

​Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley is a book about the author trying to understand the aftermath of her friend’s suicide. It accounts Crosley’s time in the book publicist world where she met Russell, her boss. They immediately create a friendship that lasts years up until the day he hanged himself in his barn. Around the same time, Crosley’s apartment gets robbed of her grandmother’s jewelry which causes her to go on a massive search for what is lost. In the book, the two events (the theft and the suicide) become interlinked and play off each other in profound ways. Crosley also meditates on how the pandemic occurred right after Russell’s death, while also recounting the slow trajectory downward of the popularity of the publishing industry. Near the end, Crosley herself contemplates the act while cliffside in Australia, but her body tells her to stop. The accounts of moments with Russell as well as the discussions of grief felt heavy but also heartwarming.
 
Final Rating: 4.5/5

​Copper Nickel Issue 40 is a collection of poetry, fiction, and essays. There were a few poems I particularly liked, such as, ‘Man Bowls a Perfect Game with Father’s Ashes Inside the Ball’ by Matt Donovan, and ‘Spring Snow’ by David Hopson. Though, the sand-out piece was ‘Ritual’ by Yang Hao, in which a man helps dispose of dead bodies in the near future. Though, the rest of the pieces didn’t feel as full as the ones mentioned above.
 
Final Rating: 3/5