The Bookends Review

– George L Stein … ...continue reading

Kevin has cut his hand, and it’s really bleeding, pooling into the sink as the water cascades onto his fingers from the kitchen faucet. He’s not panicked though, it’s just stinging as he holds it underneath the spout; the rapids rush, masking the sides of his fingers, and he can barely see the wound, just the streaks of red that ruddle the water. It’s rather mesmerizing though, watching the water pass, millions of harmonized droplets falling at once, synchronizing as it pours, and Kevin forgets he’s even wounded, for a moment.

Gazing at the hand soap dispenser that sits on the edge of the sink, Kevin fixates on the buoyant sun sticker affixed to the front of the bottle inscribed with  “Antibacterial” in bubble letters; the first three letters darkened with dampness, making “bacterial” most discernible; he notices its corner curled, peeling from moisture until his focus blurs, and for some reason, he can feel the sunlight from the SoftSoap label tingling down his neck.… ...continue reading

“Ahyeon-dong is a motherless neighborhood,” Mother says as she looks out the narrow window of our banjiha.^[1] Half-underground, we can just make out the legs of a group of guys wobbling around and spitting on the street. One guy drops his cigarette, stomping on it like he’s dancing.

“Go on up to the store,” Mother says firmly. “Make sure everything’s okay up there.”

From my mattress, I run up the staircase crammed right next to me. Within moments, I’m standing behind the counter at Paddy-Go, where I stumble to find the light switch hidden behind the mini-microwave we use for our instant rice on weekday mornings. But today’s Saturday, so we’re in less of a rush, especially since we don’t have the usual herd of mothers stumbling in at five AM to buy last-minute school lunch items for their children.… ...continue reading

After walking a few yards
you breathe like someone
who has slipped across the border.

I am ahead, you are far
behind. There are no rest stops
on this rocky path to the summit,

no hedgerows to distract
our lack of common interests
or silences broken up with ums

and ers. You wear a jacket
of rain and I nudge you ahead with tuts.
At the top, there is nothing

but what a view. We are at opposite
ends of the plateau with only similar
rocks bringing us closer.

– Christian Ward… ...continue reading

I wake to the rotten-sweet smell of decomposing.

Maybe the smell is just the scent of dread, fear of our first Christmas Eve since our baby girl died last July?

Or did another raccoon die in the crawlspace below our house? Rancid odor, I open my face, wipe my face, eyes crusty, too, and a film of bubbles like peeking at the world through a Champagne flute, the blurry horror memory of giving birth to Jeanette tempered by too many pain pills wearing off.

Wave of grief, I puke in the toilet. Open all the windows and let the fresh air in, banish the smell, the feeling, everything. Flush and flop back into bed, empty.

Of course, my husband has planned to work overtime at the hospital today.… ...continue reading

The first boy I ever had a schoolyard crush on was Cole. I misspelled his name as “Coal” for many months. In first grade, just before the dawn of electronic filing when everything was still written on cards and you actually had to think about the Dewey Decimal System, I took on library duty with Cole. We were tasked with completing the tedious work of shelving and organizing books at our primary school. You know, just boys bein’ boys in the library.

He was a little blond kid with curly hair. I wish I could remember more about him, but that was over 20 years ago and I’ve taken a lot of meds since then. I remember he was kind to me and that I felt safe and authentic around him.… ...continue reading

They buried me alive because I didn’t pay. I always thought that was very silly. So he didn’t get his money. Why did he have to bury me? It wasn’t like he even needed it. He had so much of it that it’s just hard to grasp why he went and did me in like that. He had three mansions. The one in England was pretty old and it had a name that ended in shire or ford or something like that. It was pretty in red brick and white windows and looked very European and made of chocolate. He also had another one in Miami that was white and all glass and was on an island where only Rolls-Royces and McLarens were parked—real good shit.… ...continue reading