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Author: River & South

A Letter from Our Editor

by River & SouthPosted onJune, 2022June, 2022

Thanks for checking out the Summer 2022 edition of the River and South Review. While I’ve worked on other literary magazines in my time, this is my first time actually writing the customary letter from the editor…

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Saving Gold

Emily Updegraff

by River & SouthPosted onJune, 2022June, 2022

The women put up peaches each summer because trees give up their gold all at once. It’s hard to save something for later— to crush…

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With Oranges, from Naples

Jennie Long

by River & SouthPosted onJune, 2022June, 2022

There are vegetable gardens pressed right up against the train tracks. I spy rows of purple cauliflowers growing round in leafy beds as my train…

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Picture

Jerry Wemple

by River & SouthPosted onJune, 2022June, 2022

A few people said you looked like your father, but you weren’t sure whether they meant it or were simply seeking something to say to…

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Initiation

N.C. Miller

by River & SouthPosted onJune, 2022June, 2022

-1987- David Clubb watched the training instructor shave three days of growth off his face while steering the tractor-trailer down Interstate 44 at seventy-five miles…

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Cheerless Morning, RAT Beach

Tobi Alfier

by River & SouthPosted onJune, 2022June, 2022

Picture this summer scene…He wakes up so hungover his headache hurts him in the knees, campervan crooked-parked across three spots in the empty beach parking,…

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Fifteen Things to Consider during a 15-Minute Collect Call

Mikaela Kesigner

by River & SouthPosted onJune, 2022June, 2022

1. When your mother is in jail, there’s an endless list of things you get to feel guilty about doing. To name a few: showering…

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Pastel on Gray Paper

Jennifer Rodin Tabert

by River & SouthPosted onJune, 2022June, 2022

Dark reflections of pastel on gray paper curve into themselves a girl, her eyes night-lit, her hair catching faded sun turning the light…

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Backwards

Louise Wilford

by River & SouthPosted onJune, 2022June, 2022

“…The coroner noted that the body had signs of serious injury unrelated to the fall from the bridge, but recorded a death by drowning, probably…

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2-22-22

William Doreski

by River & SouthPosted onJune, 2022June, 2022

No woodpeckers pulping suet this winter, no juncos or finches throbbing at the sunflower feeder. Bad to find the woods depleted, the river sullen under…

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A Community of Means

William Doreski

by River & SouthPosted onJune, 2022June, 2022

Square old houses brace themselves against the raw intelligence that slowly devolves as history. We’ve never inhabited such rooms, being of sturdy peasant stock and…

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Beyond the Ditch at the End of the Road

Byron Spooner

by River & SouthPosted onJune, 2022June, 2022

My earliest memories are of my mother and have their origin in the brief period of time my family lived in central New Jersey. I…

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All My Friends Are Millionaires

John Dorroh

by River & SouthPosted onJune, 2022June, 2022

Perhaps I was too busy teaching school as they buzzed about the latest action-packed movie, the trendy new restaurant, the neighborhood going up across town.…

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Ponytails

Anna Oberg

by River & SouthPosted onJune, 2022June, 2022

I step out into the snow, big white flakes that won’t stick to the cobblestone for an hour or so. Nolan waves, leaves. I cross the…

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At Heart

Laine Derr

by River & SouthPosted onJune, 2022June, 2022

At heart, perhaps, I’m pig-like, a javelina with beastie lips and a barbecue belly. I’ve grown tired of speeches, yellow rumped warblers dreaming of dachas…

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A Letter From Our Editor

by River & SouthPosted onDecember, 2021January, 2022

Dear Readers, Welcome to the Winter 2022 issue of River and South Review! In a 1981 Washington Post interview about how she draws the reader in with…

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The First Man

Sarah Bruenning

by River & SouthPosted onDecember, 2021January, 2022

He holds in his hand a photo of me with a giant lollipop—half-sucked, colors relocated from the candy to my little mouth and he tells…

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Oyster Crackers

Robin Gow

by River & SouthPosted onDecember, 2021January, 2022

I wanted to be tossed in your salt water where the blue edges toward green and a siren pulls everyone’s hair down past their shoulders.…

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Talking Her Way In

Sarah Martin

by River & SouthPosted onDecember, 2021January, 2022

The August sun’s penetrating rays pierced through the glass of a curved windshield, illuminating the interior, and creating a brilliant light show, cascading from seat…

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Second Base

Donna Weaver

by River & SouthPosted onDecember, 2021January, 2022

6th grade: I woke up, found my nipples, they were no longer pink. They were brown suntanned, dry skin, not soft like the rest of my body.…

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The Day I Did a “Billie Jean” on a “Don”

Jennie Franklin

by River & SouthPosted onDecember, 2021January, 2022

It was all in the newspapers, and on the radio and the television, that Billie Jean King had just defeated Bobby Riggs on the tennis…

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On the Bank of a River Styx

Virginia Laurie

by River & SouthPosted onDecember, 2021January, 2022

We were too busy enjoying the dregs of our summer, the last August of adolescence, to pay much mind to the cloaked figure in the…

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Burial

Anne Rieman

by River & SouthPosted onDecember, 2021January, 2022

That morning, I buried a baby bird. She was small and brown as any bird who lived a few days in a box and died.…

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Ode to Sadness

Candice Kelsey

by River & SouthPosted onDecember, 2021January, 2022

a not admitting of the Wound Until it grew so wide that all my Life had Entered it ~Emily Dickinson Unzip me from the inside,…

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Neighborhood Séance

Vincente Perez

by River & SouthPosted onDecember, 2021January, 2022

My friends were fist fights we broke each other down. To withstand what was ahead  We ate and spat prophecies misinterpreted as code-switching cyphered with streetlight hymns…

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Margaret O’Connell from the Projects

Amy Soricelli

by River & SouthPosted onDecember, 2021January, 2022

Margaret was the smartest girl in the class because her lunch bread was stale and her windows were dirty. She spent most afternoons hiding from the streaks…

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Tangerine

Anastasia Jill

by River & SouthPosted onDecember, 2021January, 2022

I called my own answering machine to hear my mother’s voice. She’d run away again, this time, with the woman who taught science at my…

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today is father’s day

Ruby Mary Gill

by River & SouthPosted onDecember, 2021January, 2022

today is father’s day says every billboard in the city the mugs are on sale the surcharge on the brunch is exorbitant and the pub beers…

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Bergamot

Shauna Shiff

by River & SouthPosted onDecember, 2021January, 2022

Someone labored over this swatch of grass, removing sod with hoe then shovel, creating too-perfect a rectangle, severe straight lines with the crisp, stark angles…

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A Letter From Our Editor

by River & SouthPosted onMay, 2021June, 2021

It is always a challenge to put together a new issue of River and South Review.  Each of us reads every submission.  We discuss the…

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The New Jim Crow Pantoum

Charles Payne

by River & SouthPosted onMay, 2021June, 2021

Imagine a large herd of zebras grazing on grassy green pasturesFrom the scrub, a Lion sprints towards the optical illusion of black and white stripesInstincts…

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The Fertile Mountains of West Virginia

John Repp

by River & SouthPosted onMay, 2021June, 2021

She adored rhododendrons & the festivaldedicated to them.Imagine each lung is a sponge said the pulmonologistbearing the shiny frown of his profession. She smoked those…

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Vladimir

Donald Capone

by River & SouthPosted onMay, 2021June, 2021

It was just past noon when the county cop stopped Vladimir as he walked along the grassy shoulder of the Saw Mill River Parkway. The…

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The Barbara Jean Story

Charles Payne

by River & SouthPosted onMay, 2021June, 2021

Built by big, broken, and blistered Negro handsto serve the citizens of South Bend.They named me Public Natatorium,the largest indoor swimming pool in Indiana.I could…

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Signs

Alan Perry

by River & SouthPosted onMay, 2021June, 2021

He looked troubled as the requestcame over the intercom.Blind and deaf, he didn’t hearthe flight attendant or see the girlwho pressed the call buttonand said…

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Leave No Mousie Purse Behind

Leah Lederman

by River & SouthPosted onMay, 2021June, 2021

The lights came up and lifted me from my trance, the last note of the orchestra still vibrating from my seat into my limbs. The…

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Night School: A Cadralor

Carolyn Martin

by River & SouthPosted onMay, 2021June, 2021

1. Exhausted sheep have left the room.Too many nights fence-jumping beneathtoo many pounds of wool, they headfor pastures greener and compassionate. 2. A poem that…

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Florida Man Breaks into House He Used to Live In Because He ‘Felt at Home’

Paul David Adkins

by River & SouthPosted onMay, 2021June, 2021

Who hasn’t wanted to do that?He probably had the key,felt the familiar give of the tumblers. He knew the house wasn’t his,but wasn’t it? He…

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Felicity

Carrie Magness Radna

by River & SouthPosted onMay, 2021June, 2021

I wanted to walk down the aisle& see your beaming facethrough my lacy veil but my car was slammedinto the river; the veilthat now covers…

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Earlier, and Again Since

Brendan Todt

by River & SouthPosted onMay, 2021June, 2021

The delivery driver usually leaves your packages at the garage, but the muddy footprints lead up to the door.  They cluster on and around the…

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