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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · 11d

From "Toxic" by Laurie Tobenkin, CQR #41:
"'Which of the liquids in the smaller beakers is toxic?' Luisa puts her head down on her desk, atop the photocopied quiz. She doesn’t give a shit about the beakers, would never give a shit about the beakers unless one of them was filled with vodka."

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · 12d

From "The Funeral Supper" by Henry Murger (Translated & adapted from the French by Zack Rogow) CQR #41:

"The story I’m about to tell you concerns my late friend, Count Ulric-Stanislas de Rouvres. He was a very good friend; such a good friend, in fact, that I’m expecting him for his funeral supper."

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · 21d

From "Exercise in Causality" by Alison Braid-Fernandez:
"The window is broken up by rain.
Moss grows greener in the seconds before lightning.
Deluge leaves a screaming blue sky behind."

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · 22d

From "Here To Save You" by Genevieve Abravanel, CQR #41:
"They gave the heart to a man named Jacob: middle-aged, white, ailing, dying. Ben had been thirty-six and in perfect health."

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · 22d

From "The Road To Mineral King" by Merrie Snell, CQR #41:

"I thought I knew dust.
Soon as you leave the towns
California atomizes.

Mica flecked and rattler skins
unshook the ground we made
driving up that heat—taste it—
on the road to Mineral King." #poetry

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · 23d

from "Abduction" by Tim Raymond, CQR #41:
"After twenty years of no contact, my brother, Lucas, called me last night to say, sorry, Jake, but he needed me back in Wyoming for a little while. His son, his boy, had gone missing."

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · 23d

From "Occlusion" by Christopher Nelson. CQR #41:

"full moon risen in
partial eclipse
above silos and skeletal

grain chutes—
you watching
as well all those states over

texting its colors
almost lemon...now it’s
tomato red..."

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · 24d

From "Don't You Remember" by Julie Esther Fisher, CQR #41:
"Just after dawn, she left the flat and advanced toward the mysterious purple light she saw in the distance. Her shaky gait was that of one restored to her feet after a long convalescence."

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · 24d

From "How To Shop For Groceries When Your Friend Is Dead" by Matthew Parris, CQR #41:
"First, notice how the white fluorescent bulbs flatten everything, make the grocery store look colorless and dull. This is totally and completely normal."

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · 27d

From "Memory Artist by R. Craig Sautter, CQR #41:

"I remember everything. Growing up, that was an advantage.
As a young child, I lulled myself to sleep recounting the number of apples on the apple tree and those that had fallen to the ground in our back yard..."

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · 29d

From "Bee Dance" by Jeffrey Utzinger, CQR #41:

"Everything about this plan seems like a bad idea. Installing a bee- hive inside my home requires a window entrance, which will establish a beeline waist high that intersects the path we take to tend the garden, chickens, and the duck."

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · Sep 14

From "Johnny Bonebrake & The Nightfish" by Christine Byrne, CQR #41:

"we back the boat
down the landing
his father’s
black chevy keyed
4 miles to empty
his jeans wet
to the knee
Johnny tries the motor
over & over..."
#poetry

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · Sep 14

From "Of What I Felt" by Sarah Dunphy-Lelii, CQR #41:
"In this little town on the west coast of Mexico where I flew to be away, I eat breakfast the first morning in the town square with eight sunburnt Americans and three dogs in neckerchiefs, listening to Billy Joel."

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · Sep 13

From "No One Needs Cheese On Thanksgiving" by Brian Ellis, CQR #41:

"First day at Willy Wallas Food Market I was enrolled in Cheese University. The unspoken syllabus had one item: become well acquainted with what you are about to sell." #fiction

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · Sep 13

From "The Chord" by Marjorie Stelmach, CQR #41:

"Early evening, in a light spring rain, a young composer
strolls the gravel roadway leading to his studio.

He will work into the night layering bits of world-sound
beneath a nearly finished score—a fabric of shadow-tones..."
#poetry

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · Aug 26

From "Little Pete" by Andrea McLaughlin, CQR #41:
"Pete had been to a few sessions with a therapist who insisted on introducing him to the different parts of himself. There was Little Pete, Teenage Pete and Big Pete. Until recently they were all jumbled up in his mind."

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · Aug 25

From "Amortization" by Phillip Jones, CQR #41:
"As we pull away from the drive-up window, my father hands me a damp, waxy cup with milkshake inside. I feel warm air blowing from the dashboard to defrost the windshield on a cold night of dribbling rain."

Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · Aug 24

From "What You Remember" by Laura Rosenthal. CQR #41:
"a place with an exotic name Far Rockaway
sand and umbrellas as far as you can see
and the ocean the grownups warn you the undertow
could pull you down so fast you wouldn’t have time to scream for help..." #poetry

Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · Aug 23

From "Where Is Thy Sting?" by Michael Pulley, CQR #41:
"I’m certain it didn’t happen more than twice in my childhood, men hanging themselves in garages. But it seemed my mother would enter the kitchen and inform me at least biweekly, 'Mr. Morgan hung himself yesterday.'" #fiction

Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · Aug 23

From "New Names In Monterey Park" by Mike Yunxuan Li, CQR #41:
"Angela Wang, head researcher in the world-renowned UCLA chemistry program, fell out of character one day during her first trimester."

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · Aug 10

From "In Memory Of My Uncle" --who died helping to string a telephone line across a river in Ohio more than one hundred years ago
By William Virgil Davis, CQR #41:

"Because he was the best swimmer in the crew,
there was no question who would enter the water." #poetry

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · Aug 10

From "Blue Topaz" by Jason Mazzotta, CQR #41:
"The Perot/Stockdale ’92 sign from an election cycle and a half ago was still on display in the faded colonial’s attic window, and unkempt grass snuck up my jeans through the cracked cement walkway."

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · Aug 8

From "Ekphrasing Wener Herzog" Patty A. Gray, CQR #41:
"I am currently watching every film that Werner Herzog has ever made, in the order in which he made them. I have been engaged in this marathon for a number of years..."

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Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · Aug 7

From "I Run Into My Daughter And Her Boyfriend In The Walgreens Parking Lot Holding A Prescription For Birth Control Bills" by Dawn Dupler, CQR #41:

"and I thank God she’s on it. Twenty-one next week and last year
she dated a girl. Back then, a friend joked I didn’t have to worry..." #poetry

Chicago Quarterly Review @chicagoqreview.bsky.social · Aug 5

From "The Chief Is Never Wrong" by Ian Randall Wilson, CQR #41:
"When the squirrel was only about two stories above the ground, crouching on a setback that was an architectural detail of the lower floors to create shadow lines, the first reports of child separations at the border began coming in."