“How to Breathe,” by Joseph Goosey
Published at New Dead Families
There’s something twisted going on here, and it involves Hannah and “you.” Use of second-person narration seems to be all-the-rage at the moment in Indie Litland. It might be considered a cheap trick to engage the reader by actually tapping him on the shoulder and planting him in the story’s action, but if it’s going to be done, and I’m going to be a part of it, I better be kept stuffed in a coffin at the whims of a sadistic, sometimes naked 11th grader – and fed spit, I think? – in Catfish-Father’s home. I like sentences like this one: “Now Hannah’s spit is your spit and it will build a small cottage in which to create art.” Goosey provides more than a few of them.–Ryan Nelson
Published at Indigest
The author of this story does radio and it shows. Listen to this. It’s a funny tour through the lives of the crunchy hippie/hipster folk in Wisconsin: Yoga, cats named Micky Rourke, marijuana, ideology, etc. As we get further and further into postmodernity (the postpostmodern) we’ll be getting more and more quality satire about the postmodern itself. This is one such account. —David Backer
Secreatrio by Catherynne M. Valente
Published at Weird Tales
Poetic writing isn’t uncommon, but prose that dares to refine its every aspect – narrative, character and pacing – down to the poetic, while still retaining prose style, is an exotic species of story. When it works, it is marvelous. SECRETARIO works beautifully, taking the themes of dark crime fiction and distilling them to a splendid tale composed of lines as potent as a row of brimming shot glasses. She abandons specificity of place and identity and in doing so, gains the heart of her genre. This aria of noir is not to be missed. –Matt Funk
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