The Bookends Review

– Anna Frankl…

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I can’t say the name of the school, but I guarantee you’ve heard of it, a world-renowned elementary school that looks like it should be the kind of bucolic liberal arts college where Donna Tartt might murder undergrads, only it was in Manhattan. That’s all I’ll say. I don’t want to give you too many clues. Legally, I can’t. 

I was introduced to the twins my first day. The headmistress had told me about their family during orientation. “We give all our students extra special attention,” she said. “We give the twinses extraordinary special attention.” She then gave me an extraordinarily slow wink. There were three sets of twins in this family. Thus, twinses. I was the only person who seemed to think that odd. Or be bothered by that grammatical choice.…

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I dredged the river of my childhood,
cajoled every voice, pressed every drop

of juice out of silence. Confidence
was an orchard in the sun, rays

revealing the shiny plumpness of apples.
Ripe. Ready. Like a ritual, every gesture

was its own reward, like the return
of the father in the sunset,

who was walking home
bringing a round loaf of bread

and a bottle of red wine as if nothing
had happened. As if he didn’t know

how long he’d been gone, his eyes
lit up: he liked what he saw.

– Lucia Cherciu…

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TAK Erzinger is an American/Swiss poet and artist with a Colombian background. Her poetry has been published by The Curlew, The Beautiful Space Journal, The Rising Phoenix Review, among many others, and her debut chapbook, found: between the trees, came out last year through Grey Borders Books. It chronicles a life interrupted by mental illness (specifically, PTSD) and explores how love and nature can help us find forgiveness and healing. She’s recently found a publisher for her second, lengthier poetry collection, been accepted to a writers/artist residency in Italy, and much more.

In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum chats with Erzinger about her artistry (both written and drawn), overcoming and normalizing mental illness, coping with the current pandemic and quarantine, and much more!…

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Will you taste as good in death
as you do in life?
You say that’s up to you, isn’t it?
After you’re cremated, you said,
you don’t wish
to be scattered, rather
you want to be spooned into my daily
morning espressos. I agree.
Sugar ruins the bitter
anyway. In Massachusetts
you’re mandated
to be burned in a coffin,
so I’m already imagining pine,
robin songs
trapped, Costco-brand
lacquer, the wood’s cheep
eons commingled with your tattoos
savory memory, the guttural
romance of your unmentionables,
every still-uncooked
bone. This delectable grief
should take years,
you say. Revolting how we’re supposed
to sit out eternity on a shrine,
or bubble wrapped in an attic,
or tossed to the wind
like a common grandmother.
No. Death, you say, must feed, nourish.…

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for Tony H

Your canary no longer sings.
Its empty beak is filled with foam,

wounded by the body’s unfortunate guest,
a softness disease has taught us.

When color of the sky found us silent;
before illness captivated you, reminding

me of when that hard rain came & we
walked around the block, hands clasped,

as the chemo froze every word, and 
we talked to simply stay warm.

If Love is a language that doesn’t exist
until conceived by a bounding sound, rising

in your chest, we’ll put you to bed to sleep
& dream behind an ethereal curtain.

Holding beauty is hard, especially when your
hands are hurting from the strain of letting go.

– Kevin LeMaster…

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I stood up on my pedals for the climb’s final push, motivated by visions of finally winning one of these local mountain bike races.  Clenching my teeth, I leaned forward and stomped my foot down, only to hear the grating metallic snap of a broken chain.  My feet spun aimlessly, I lost my balance, and I fell to the side of the trail – right into a Carhartt-clad, muscle-bound man, the guy everyone in town referred to as “Rasta.”  He’d been posted alongside this steep hill with a first aid kit and a radio, assigned to call in the bib numbers of passing riders and to help with crises as they arose.  I think the only crisis that day was mine. “Looks like you might could use some help,” he said, once I’d unclipped from my pedals and crawled out from under my bike.…

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