Midwest Review 5

Lolilta Ditzler’s essay “Life With Linda,” published in the Midwest Review,  received a First-Place Award from the National Federation of Press Women. Awards will be presented at the Federation’s conference in Birmingham, Alabama, Sept. 7-9, 2017.  

by Dylan Krieger like armageddon in a meadow the buildings fall down all around us one nearly crushes your unconscious but it turns out you’re standing square inside the negated space of its sole window this is after all the cars have passed their idiot madrigals still thumping our ear […]

My mother’s younger sister in stocking feet, her shoes dangling from one hand, the other hand easing open the screen door, easing it closed, escapes into the shadows. My mother lies on the bed staring at a ceiling bright with starlight and longs to risk the two-mile walk to Pickerel […]

Underneath her, twigs tick. How thick grass dawns on her plastic sled. Her scoot over patches of snow grips a stuck tantrum of stopping dead. Rocks in palms—she signals potholes in March, comes bellowing home, tarring the air again. She goes, no speed, spin or shots past trees, no snow […]

The past is not where you left it. —Carolyn Forché The earwigs now own my dahlia—each leaf, cluster of pink petals, unfurled bud— my treasure a shredded stalk I would not have recognized last spring, reminding me the past does not stay where I left it— no matter how I […]

One morning all over town it began to rain, little downpours breaking out in the bakery, the laundromat. By nine it was thundering in the beauty parlor, drizzling in the jewelry store. All morning it kept coming down, big plump drops cascading over tables, countertops, wreaking havoc in the hardware […]

I can’t sleep, America. The coal cars vibrating, bulky behind the roadhouse where I stay, drum by the room at midnight, at one, rattle past this insomnia. A yellow moon stares in the windows, spotlight on dreams twisted in a cotton bedcover. The yellow moon over the railroad shed shines […]