Stephen Dixon // First Two, Last Two
He gets a disease and suffers from it and dies. Before that Kirt visits him in the hospital several times. Once when Chris went in for tests to see what was giving him so much pain. Other times when he was in the hospital suffering from the disease the tests showed he...
Stephen Dobyns
Old House So much death in the room but no people--the candles burned down to their stumps,the food untouched, meat growing coldin its grease. Under the couch, the cat playswith a mole it dragged in from the bar.The mole crawls off. The cat drags it back.If cats could...
News from the Rialto
A thousand snaps for author Matthew Graham for being chosen the Indiana Poet Laureate 2020-2021. https://www.in.gov/arts/3013.htm
Lived Life, One Good Book
The Geography of HomeMatthew GrahamGalileo Press (South Carolina) 2019 Reviewed by Roy Bentley Excuse my needing to begin by saying, and bluntly, that some books are just sage-calm. Matthew Graham’s The Geography of Home is such a book. It maps Imagination’s...
Six Questions for Barrett Warner, Editor, Free State Review
Each poem or story is searching for freedom, but does the reader care if it can’t find the door to the emerald highway? Here are a few doors. https://sixquestionsfor.blogspot.com/2019/10/six-questions-for-Free-State-Review.html
National Poetry Day to Drake’s Birthday
October 3 to October 24, when the beach rentals are price reduced, and the municipal pool is closed but not covered up, and it’s still a month before Thanksgiving, and the threat of new syllabi is long gone, and it’s cold then it’s warm and if it’s cloudy it...
Steven Cramer
To Francis Jammes In a manner, we all pray. So I've walked out at 6 a.m.into the sound and look of things.Arc lamps hum in the city park,and accepting resistance,swallows lift in a sudden breeze.What presses against me now?Francis Jammes, you prayed to be...
Texas Crude: A Realistic Portrait of Gay Rural Life
by Derek Berry Texas Crude, the debut short story collection by Thomas Kearnes, offers an intimate portrait of gay lives in East Texas. In equal measures erotic, heartbreaking, and rousing, the collection invites us into his characters’ inner lives, whether they be...
They Promised Me a Cosmopolitan
We've added The Book Tavern in Augusta, GA--a great Indie bookstore. When I visited to ask if they'd carry Matthew Graham's The Geography of Home as well as our current issue of Free State Review the manager said maybe, but first they wanted to...
Matthew Graham
Our poetry consultant, Edgar Gabriel Silex, says: "Walt Whitman was a racist who called African Americans 'baboons.' White scholars attempt to dismiss his racism by claiming 'everyone back then was racist.' Here's a note to all those who buy into that scholarly...
