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