Dear Readers, Welcome to the Summer of 2019 issue of River & South Review! Being part of a literary magazine is an interesting experience for…
The build, this build a painful narcoleptic my dissonance evokes the somber chi that lives in all of us. Remnant memories of my by gone.…
When I was three and when my father’s hair was still black, an errant baseball thwacked the rear window of our car. At the time,…
Frame by frame, this game:fast forward, reverse; zoom in, retreatto the panoramic, commentary astute, shrewd,witty, and—my husband points out—spot onwith what I noted (the week…
Easy sigh me Kiss the very blears of my corners Calm my rustlings Hush my eyes Dawn my furrowed nocturnings Easy sigh me Whisper near the crest of my shadows Pause…
Benny kept babbling, kept saying, “Man, I’m breaking apart. Man, I’m breaking apart.” And I wanted to tell him to fucking chill. To just let…
This final forest thins out ahead.I can see through the trees nowas the stand diffusesstretching their shadowsleaving only space – a barrenwithout blueberries perhaps. Moss…
does not want attention when she goes into town to shop. She’s hadenough of people’s taunts, their opinions of her looks, her clothes,her lifestyle. Her…
The trail maker — I want to meet her. She swings me ‘round the boles of the bigger beeches, then along a slope with skinny…
One morning, I woke up in Jaisalmer, India with one thought on my mind: I must get my nose pierced. I do not recall making…
Theirs was a marriage of skin conditions, heartbreak and rashes, wrapped in a perilous geography: concrete for her, and his pocked valleys. My mother preferred…
My mother was raised by alcoholics in Arkansas, then fled to an aunt’s house in Gary, Indiana, when she was old enough, or as she…
He spilled things: tiny gold necklaces into shag carpet, wine coolers over a plate of snickerdoodles, letters out the edges of the high school yearbook.…
descending down the lonely dark hill snow pouring down from the darkness down in cones cast from the yellow street lights driving carefully down route…
How quickly it transits, an arc of ice tightening from west to east. A rock thrown into black water shivers into the deep, empty belly,…
outside her window, spiderweb branches crawlacross a darkening sky — the cold, wet, whitemakes faces in the glass — the light bulbsemit their white light…
There is a feather: the outer vein is edged dark, like charcoal ash, while the longer side bears an oyster-shell lightness. Gathered from the yard,…
This year, she rememberseveryone—daughter, daughter-in-law,son-in-law, grandchildren—but early,March Hallmarks arriving beforeSeptember’s almost-autumn,age a wish we’d rather wait onbut still welcome with open mail slotswhen her stamped…
Today, the dentist pulledthe last of yournatural teeth andreplaced them withfalse ones. Tomorrow, you will turn eighty-three. I wonder howmuch of usis left — really still…
“So, how was your day?” she asked. “Fine,” he answered, just as he had done twice since coming home from the grocers. He had already put…
In three seconds, she/I will no longer remember the inconsistency of this moment, or the mundane thrill on your/our breath. An umbrella, which she/I/we thought…