Short Story Month of May, Part 4
John Carr Walker Sitting In His Little Room No. 98
For the month of May, I did something a little different in The Little Room. May is short story month, and stories in May don’t seem to enjoy the same attention as poems in April. I tried to pay close, special attention to the short story, reading one recently published story a day.
Below you’ll find my brief annotations on this week’s seven short stories, all published in literary magazines. I’ve linked to everything I can, to make it easy for you, readers, to leave this newsletter and read some stories! If you’d like to get caught up on the fun, or remind yourself of a story you already read, or read about, here are links to Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
Far below, see information on a different kind of short story contest and public reading I just finished jurying with my university students and Two Rivers Books. Submissions are closed, but if you’re in the greater Portland, Oregon area, please join me at Two Rivers Books for the finalist readings!
Annotated Bibliography 5/25-5/31
5/25. “PA,” Tobenna Nwosu, Diagram 24.1. About the death of a father, and his grown children in mourning, I think. The story dives deep in metaphor, so it’s difficult to say what happens in a conventional sense, but the ocean, the beach, and parents (ma and pa) are reoccurring images. I like how, in the last paragraph, the writer seems to bring us out of the figurative landscape to the real Brighton Beach, as if to anchor the story on the shore, and asks us to look back at the ocean, at all we’ve been through.
5/26. “The Living, the Dead, and Those at Sea,” Cary Holladay, The Los Angeles Review 10 May 2024. About a ventriloquist landlady who used to take the census, an artist best friend who suddenly and horrifically lost her little brother, and a new rich husband lost at sea, probably dead but maybe in hiding, all linked by a clear-eyed narrator, probably a young widow, who seems to have already lived her life. It’s simpler than it sounds: the style of the narration flows between event and memory, omniscience and what happens in front of us, creating a hypnotic effect, as if being lulled by waves. I love the journey of this story, to abuse and already overused phrase, it’s absurdity straight-faced yet mischievous, realistic yet magical.
5/27. “Farmland,” Elizabeth Conway, New Flash Fiction Review Issue 33. About a daughter born with a heart condition, the above-ground pool she uses for exercise and therapy (I think), and the open farmland surrounding it, touched by drought. The author’s adept at using sentence fragments as transitions, as a link between one thought and the next, belonging to both before and after, which adds to the circular, song-like feel of this story. The landscape is the main character here, the pool played against the dry farmland for dramatic effect, but the daughter with a heart condition raises the stakes of the landscape, of the conflict between drought and a full pool—powerful stuff.
5/28. “The Woman Who Looked Like Patti Smith,” Catherine McNamara, Craft. About a gay man who follows a woman who looks like Patti Smith right before she was famous, when she was the subject of Robert Mapplethorpe’s BDSM photos. The narrator’s attention flows between the external to the internal as he gradually invents the woman he’s following according to the books on his shelf, the art-world lore in his head, and an impulse he can’t name. I love the narrator’s self-awareness--he knows he’s being a creep—which makes the confrontation between narrator and woman (perhaps too strong a word for what happens) and the silence that descends on them all the more powerful.
5/29. “Victoria,” Haley Sharp, Litro UK May 3, 2024. About a woman who works in a club for the summer, makes mad cash, and spends it on cookware and a commissioned portrait of the girls who work in the club. The details suggest more than they describe, which in context of the story, adds to the secrecy and anonymity of the work, which in turn makes the portrait all the more powerful, as both an image and a twist in the story. The portrait occupies the second half of the story as talisman, monument, and crystal ball: the present, past, and future at once.
5/30. “The Wandering Womb,” Laura Leigh Morris, Fictive Dream May 26, 2024. About a couple trying to conceive, but he’s a jackass, and she can’t remember where she left her womb. The story follows her search for her womb, digging into corners of her house as if looking for her passport, and digging into her memories of the last time they were trying to conceive. Interestingly, the story is described as nonfiction in the author’s note—I love how that note asks the reader to look again at the story, to treat the action and events not as fantasy or metaphor, but a “real, true, honest” feeling, acknowledging the fact we so often treat fiction differently.
5/31. “Orchid Children,” Becky Hagenston, The Normal School April 2023. An imaginary blog about being the mother of an Orchid Child: a plant/human hybrid born after a plant-based virus jumped to humans. The imitation blog styling allows for direct address, informal language, cliches, which Hagenston uses for flavor and impact, and to chill the fantastic elements of her story; the blog gives a direct line to a mother’s struggles, worries, and reactions. I love the banter between the blog’s commenters, news from other blogs in the Orchid Child blogosphere, and the blogger herself—it’s a pitch-perfect imitation of the form, and in Hagenston’s masterful hands, an emotionally moving narrative device.
Had a lovely time listening to the finalists read their stories at Two Rivers Bookstore on Wednesday night. Congratulations, authors! I’ll share more news and pictures of the event on Instagram (@john_carr_walker) and Notes (
) soon.