Four hits in a row!

 kw: story reviews, anthologies, literature, fiction, poetry

In the past 24 hours I read just four pieces in 2024 Pushcart Prize XLVIII: Best of the Small Presses, edited by Bill Henderson and others. Surprise, I liked all four, so I'll give all four "the treatment".

"Two Breaths" by Christina Rivera Cogswell – A wife and husband scuba dive at night to observe Manta rays off Kailua-Kona in Hawaii. The Hawaiian word for the Manta, hahalua, means "two breaths". The woman cannot get her mind off her two children, asleep at home. Much of the story is her stream of consciousness as she copes with near-panic, something she didn't experience before becoming a mother (mothers reading the story will sympathize). The image was created using Playground AI.

"It is Once Again the Season of Corn" by Onyekachi Hoh – Thirteen couplets of free verse, full of observations and wishes. One of these, "let all the rifles become violins…" evoked the image. The final wish is for an orchestra. The image was created using Dall-E3, which threw a horse into the image I liked most.

"The Magician's Assistant" by Kelsey Bryan-Zwick – Four quatrains of free verse: after the act is over and the magician has sawn her in half, the assistant sews herself back together. Her thought near the end is poignant: "the applause is for his miracle and not hers". I also used Dall-E3 to produce this image. Dall-E3 didn't like the first prompt I tried, "too violent", so a more innocuous one produced this image.

"Tomorrows" by Lakiesha Carr – A slot machine addict, coping as best she can. It's no surprise that her familial feeling for fellow slots players exceeds all others. At least she has an income. This image was created using Playground AI. Note that we can control the aspect ratio of PG-AI images.

At this point I am just past halfway done with the volume.