This selection, chosen by Guest Editor t.r. san, is from Honeymoon Shoes by Valyntina Grenier (Cathexis Northwest Press 2023).
Ecologue
What are this chaste the in-charge rose freshly longer stem short green thorns over potato vines the squashy shade slugs happy as lettuces dug lamps in big leaves staked in earth a cane trellis the trailed pumpkin yellow pods and green bulging sunflowers the tops of beans paths and arteries that’s my geometry to burst the threatening fruit ripe rampant anarchy of summertime the end of always week’s end a couple in the garden
ValyntinaGrenier (she/her) is a multi-genre artist living in Eugene, Oregon. She is the author of four chapbooks and one full length collection. You can find those books at Bottlecap Press, Finishing Line Press, Cathexis Northwest Press and various places where books are sold. Her latest poems and visual art can be found in Beyond Words Magazine, Beyond Queer Words, Cathexis, Querencia and Wild Roof Journal. You can find her, her visual art, and links to her work around the web at valyntinagrenier.com.
t.r. san is a poet and translator currently based on Gadigal land, with recent work found in minor literature[s], The Cincinnati Review, HAD, Smokelong Quarterly, The Offing, &c. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter, or trsan.neocities.org.
Leah Browning’s Souvenirsfrom Another Life (Quiet Ocean Studio & Press, 2026) is the first full-length short fiction collection from the author, but the latest in a long line of chapter books, non-fiction, and poetry. With over thirty publications having originally featured many of the stories, this collection is an amalgamation of multiple years of work and dedication to the craft. At its core, the collection is a series of vignettes featuring life at its truest: in relation to others. From first loves to last days, the shutter closes on glimpses of parents, children, friends, lovers, and strangers as they navigate what it means to live a life.
In form, Souvenirs from Another Life is diverse. Its diversity is most evident in its inclusion of everything from full-length literary fiction to microfiction. The variation in the length, content, and perspective of each story maintains an engaging pace. With every page turned, completely new expectations are set. In theme, it feels almost voyeuristic, looking on at these faceless characters as they navigate the most arduous or joyous days of their lives. They have plain names and minimal physical descriptions, lending to that anonymity. We absorb these moments in singularity, often completely unaware of their backstory.
This book is the embodiment of the feeling when you are sitting at a cafe, sipping on your americano, when two best friends sit down at the table beside you. Just over the noise of the busy street, you overhear fragments of their conversation. One of them is breaking up with their boyfriend or dealing with a terrible landlord. You know you are eavesdropping, and you know you should not, but curiosity gets the better of you. That quiet thrill is what keeps you reading Souvenirs from Another Life.
In particular, the collection truly shines in its briefest stories. While the few plots that were linked were always fascinating, I found myself most struck by the ones that lasted a few mere paragraphs.
As I read on, I was particularly intrigued by the idea of absence. Without being able to sit with a character for very long, there is an intentional lack of intimacy between the reader and the narrator. You are being held at arm’s length by the form while Browning’s high stakes and distinct characterization pull you closer. But the less there is to know, the more room it gives for the reader to insert their own thoughts, beliefs, and interpretations. It invites an open dialogue, encouraging you to contend with the story and reflect on your own memories.
“If I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter.” Often wrongly attributed, the quote can be traced to a philosopher, Blaise Pascal. During my undergraduate studies in Creative Writing, my professors often cited a similar idea. Series are easier to master than a standalone novel. A short story is painstaking. A poem is completely, utterly excruciating. A single sentence can torment you.
See, an excerpt from “WORLDS,” a story that, in length, was under a page:
“But in the middle of the night, she’d lent me a toothbrush, and I’d watched her floss her teeth” (Browning 95).
In under twenty words, Browning masterfully presents setting, character, and action. Newness, uncertainty, and awe permeate the world of the narrator. There is an air of domesticity working in contrast to unfamiliarity. It is almost tangible. The cool night air, the white tiles, the silence. But all of that is there without actually being said. It is that absence that allows you to make a world feel whole without a whole novel to bring it to life. The story is colored by your own memory of longing. It is an invitation to reflect.
The intent of the collection is epitomized in the title story of the collection, from the point of view of an unnamed character:
“The photographs I found all over the apartment were proof that these things had happened: my courtship, my wedding, the birth of my child” (Browning 142).
At its most literal level, the narrator examines souvenirs of a life that was once hers but no longer is. We feel her grief, her regret, and her remorse. Many of these emotions permeate these stories, prompting the audience to use an insular moment to imagine a life that they are not privy to. Perhaps it even evokes nostalgia for former versions of ourselves. Times when we were still in love with that girl, living with our college roommate, or simply a time in which we did not understand heartbreak in the way we do now. The stories in this collection are steeped in sentimentality for life, in all its beauty and all its discomfort. It is an act of remembrance about what it means to be human.
The last line of the collection reads, “As she crossed the yard, Stacy had watched her, feeling the metal of the house key, warm against her skin” (Browning 220).
As we cross into the next chapter of our lives, may we always use Browning’s examination of memory as a reminder to look at our own souvenirs with grace and reverence for our past selves.
Reina Maiden-Navarro is an editor, writer, and photographer. She recently graduated from UC Irvine with a degree in Film & Media Studies and a minor in Creative Writing, cum laude. She also works as an Editor at Prompt and an Outreach Coordinator at Bookstr. If she is not reading or writing, she can be found traveling, painting, or baking cookies.
This selection, chosen by Guest Editor t.r. san, is from Honeymoon Shoes by Valyntina Grenier (Cathexis Northwest Press 2023).
Rub a Raw Slice Down the Middle or Modern Plants
My porch the limbo back when young leaves botched the ordinary harvest to garden the modified genetic why perfect the flame under blown out and understood suddenly to opt for the choice given a big bowl of home no doubt to tell them all of course we’re counting
on neighbors with Cheerios will ask made me smile well ask gave me fear Perfectly safe at the picnic though this obvious chance of water supper a beach invitation still the fireworks splay the way we work the middle slice up a raw cleave sticking keeping me that is
methodically untouched Thanking vacation the porch remained New leaves summer weeks late would you want let me ask Was there I press before a destination to select before a hint of the effect a new kiss gleans the same not simply
strong phenomenon of substantial equivalence that the asterisk pointed to as safe proof we could offer critique of a molecular avarice with tests/ scientists a safe potato has one machine metaphor bugs with evidently to kill to eat together
at The Best Bureaucratic-pestilence-wonderland a bit like the jurisdiction of eyes least/ lash/ regard Turned out freedom always assumed safety has been voluntary when the regulation /religion /surgeon of modified facts operates on me
ValyntinaGrenier (she/her) is a multi-genre artist living in Eugene, Oregon. She is the author of four chapbooks and one full length collection. You can find those books at Bottlecap Press, Finishing Line Press, Cathexis Northwest Press and various places where books are sold. Her latest poems and visual art can be found in Beyond Words Magazine, Beyond Queer Words, Cathexis, Querencia and Wild Roof Journal. You can find her, her visual art, and links to her work around the web at valyntinagrenier.com.
t.r. san is a poet and translator currently based on Gadigal land, with recent work found in minor literature[s], The Cincinnati Review, HAD, Smokelong Quarterly, The Offing, &c. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter, or trsan.neocities.org.
This selection, chosen by Guest Editor t.r. san, is from Honeymoon Shoes by Valyntina Grenier (Cathexis Northwest Press 2023).
Sources
Listed by chapter the principle facts are influenced by human bumblebee David’s life whose probably more than any other open-eyes nature
with the point of view of plants-imagination-rooted-in-fact what amorous amounts of books particularly illuminating a classic agriculture of people wild animals cultivate/ culture/
choose domestication conservation Environmental winter essays by the fire bring into context what constitutes fitness during the Neolithic era, then guns, germs and the fates
Disarm fake history hand botany the long quadrant of Manhattan an excellent precipitant some do not apprise the women’s journey in science and math manages to rise
Of angiosperms during the native seed’s search American agriculture point press-on evolution selects the origin of the selfish press Perilous grace— the meanings of life
how the leopard’s spots ghost the origin house for the red queen penguin city of night To the diversity of the University of the Diversity of Diverse Life
ValyntinaGrenier (she/her) is a multi-genre artist living in Eugene, Oregon. She is the author of four chapbooks and one full length collection. You can find those books at Bottlecap Press, Finishing Line Press, Cathexis Northwest Press and various places where books are sold. Her latest poems and visual art can be found in Beyond Words Magazine, Beyond Queer Words, Cathexis, Querencia and Wild Roof Journal. You can find her, her visual art, and links to her work around the web at valyntinagrenier.com.
t.r. san is a poet and translator currently based on Gadigal land, with recent work found in minor literature[s], The Cincinnati Review, HAD, Smokelong Quarterly, The Offing, &c. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter, or trsan.neocities.org.
This selection, chosen by Guest Editor t.r. san, is from Honeymoon Shoes by Valyntina Grenier (Cathexis Northwest Press 2023).
Square Dance
No other over you for the climate fire to end this whorl in wonder desire w/ our life’s great fortune confounded by virus/ police violence Cancel the rockets Spread out the world-weary sheet again over our brains/ banners/ bones Nirvana wins our hearts twin the hypotenuse to a new song on the radio we in wonder will we go with our lucky love north to Portland to the Oregon coast/ sunset sky/ halcyon line/ quiet/ freedom from heat wave of Chaos feast
ValyntinaGrenier (she/her) is a multi-genre artist living in Eugene, Oregon. She is the author of four chapbooks and one full length collection. You can find those books at Bottlecap Press, Finishing Line Press, Cathexis Northwest Press and various places where books are sold. Her latest poems and visual art can be found in Beyond Words Magazine, Beyond Queer Words, Cathexis, Querencia and Wild Roof Journal. You can find her, her visual art, and links to her work around the web at valyntinagrenier.com.
t.r. san is a poet and translator currently based on Gadigal land, with recent work found in minor literature[s], The Cincinnati Review, HAD, Smokelong Quarterly, The Offing, &c. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter, or trsan.neocities.org.
This selection, chosen by Guest Editor t.r. san, is from Honeymoon Shoes by Valyntina Grenier (Cathexis Northwest Press 2023).
Deities and the Human Brain
forgotten burgers/ lost theatre tickets our least fortunes last laugh to dis to leap a human genus/ genius wittingly advancing life too devoted to semper fie
equality never never grant it had Diana ocean or pursuit in a hydroponic closet exactly heaven broke free halcyon still like some kind of broccoli party
pushing scientists to garden wildness Consciousness doesn’t take the desire between give-in-and-take-out the dialectical intoxicating survival of plants Plants
can alter consciousness resting our brain in a sense like us leaning our head against the doorway of our love Every plucked petal cast for the plants’ we might
reinvent drives Whatever word-world desire has dance/ revolutionary actors/ all us bees pollinating equality leaning like us between our brain and deities
ValyntinaGrenier (she/her) is a multi-genre artist living in Eugene, Oregon. She is the author of four chapbooks and one full length collection. You can find those books at Bottlecap Press, Finishing Line Press, Cathexis Northwest Press and various places where books are sold. Her latest poems and visual art can be found in Beyond Words Magazine, Beyond Queer Words, Cathexis, Querencia and Wild Roof Journal. You can find her, her visual art, and links to her work around the web at valyntinagrenier.com.
t.r. san is a poet and translator currently based on Gadigal land, with recent work found in minor literature[s], The Cincinnati Review, HAD, Smokelong Quarterly, The Offing, &c. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter, or trsan.neocities.org.
This selection, chosen by Guest Editor t.r. san, is from Dressing the Bear by Susan L. Leary (Trio House Press 2024).
Afterglow
There is no more burning, just water just river just light.
Susan L. Leary (she/her) is the author of SENTENCE (Nine Syllables Press, fall 2026), selected by Eugenia Leigh as the winner of the Nine Syllables Press Chapbook Contest; More Flowers(Trio House Press, February 2026); and Dressing the Bear (Trio House Press, 2024), selected by Kimberly Blaeser as the winner of the Louise Bogan Award. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in such places as Indiana Review, North American Review, Third Coast, Cream City Review, Smartish Pace, The Arkansas International, and Verse Daily. She holds an MFA from the University of Miami and lives in Indianapolis, IN.
t.r. san is a poet and translator currently based on Gadigal land, with recent work found in minor literature[s], The Cincinnati Review, HAD, Smokelong Quarterly, The Offing, &c. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter, or trsan.neocities.org.
This selection, chosen by Guest Editor t.r. san, is from Dressing the Bear by Susan L. Leary (Trio House Press 2024).
We’ll Take the Riddle, So Long as It Remains Unanswered
Sometimes the blue is so blue it is every shade of blue at once. The first sound, the back & forth of the blue water. A pair of scissors is blue as is the hem of the blue hand that holds them. The first urge, to snip the blue heron from a swath of nocturnal shoreline. Discernment risks injury, so we sleep inside the blueish swirls of our own blueish bodies, mistake the brute flap of a wing for touch, suffering for the brief amnesia of stars. Distant or beloved, a man’s cigar smoke is blue, a vast graffiti of legs stretched into the blue of a borrowed beach chaise, the marooned bones fooled into a comfortable shipwreck, the lungs into ether or sea. A ghost can whet the blade & sit inside the blue of a palm without our knowing. What comes is the world before it’d begun, before the blue was anything other than blue.
Susan L. Leary (she/her) is the author of SENTENCE (Nine Syllables Press, fall 2026), selected by Eugenia Leigh as the winner of the Nine Syllables Press Chapbook Contest; More Flowers(Trio House Press, February 2026); and Dressing the Bear (Trio House Press, 2024), selected by Kimberly Blaeser as the winner of the Louise Bogan Award. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in such places as Indiana Review, North American Review, Third Coast, Cream City Review, Smartish Pace, The Arkansas International, and Verse Daily. She holds an MFA from the University of Miami and lives in Indianapolis, IN.
t.r. san is a poet and translator currently based on Gadigal land, with recent work found in minor literature[s], The Cincinnati Review, HAD, Smokelong Quarterly, The Offing, &c. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter, or trsan.neocities.org.
This selection, chosen by Guest Editor t.r. san, is from Dressing the Bear by Susan L. Leary (Trio House Press 2024).
dwelling
again my brother calls in the middle of Property Brothers to tell me he can build a better house. a blue house with a bluer door & a hundred noiseless windows where i can live overlooking the sea.
a writing desk. sheets of sun stacked to the ceiling like paper. miniature rooms hidden inside every doorknob, one with a library the size of my thumb, fleabane vased in barnacles.
i could live there, i say. in the house built in the company of tv static & other troubled men. feces on the walls & pillows soaked in piss, jumpsuit removed & toothpaste spread over one man’s genitals.
yes, even there, my brother thought beauty. even there, resting besides a hemingway novel on the bookshelf, will be an immaculate little dwelling for his urn.
Susan L. Leary (she/her) is the author of SENTENCE (Nine Syllables Press, fall 2026), selected by Eugenia Leigh as the winner of the Nine Syllables Press Chapbook Contest; More Flowers(Trio House Press, February 2026); and Dressing the Bear (Trio House Press, 2024), selected by Kimberly Blaeser as the winner of the Louise Bogan Award. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in such places as Indiana Review, North American Review, Third Coast, Cream City Review, Smartish Pace, The Arkansas International, and Verse Daily. She holds an MFA from the University of Miami and lives in Indianapolis, IN.
t.r. san is a poet and translator currently based on Gadigal land, with recent work found in minor literature[s], The Cincinnati Review, HAD, Smokelong Quarterly, The Offing, &c. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter, or trsan.neocities.org.
This selection, chosen by Guest Editor t.r. san, is from Dressing the Bear by Susan L. Leary (Trio House Press 2024).
Were God a Boy or a River Makes No Difference
Every boy is ancient & a river is as much a body as it is a pair of hands. Who holds the blade that fails
against the rush? What within the boy dissolves every trace of violence? The river speaks a name & a soft halo of sun
hovers over steel. The sun is gentle on the boy’s face. Which is preferred? That each dawn be new light or the same
light remerged for centuries. Strange metaphor for a resilient self. Even the wind appears reckless in its bloom-scattering
tantrums yet when a boy drowns, we never think to ask if the river meant to do it. The river is but river stretching
on for miles & the boy returns home a small god walking through fields. Until, there is no more light. Until, the stakes
of the ritual are so high the river can only mourn itself. The brain placed back inside the stomach & a pair of new
hands folded over a corpse. How does the boy come to know himself now? Whose name does he cry out over the wide,
rippling shoulders of the living? Mine, yours, his own, the troubled sun’s—for whom does it even matter?
Susan L. Leary (she/her) is the author of SENTENCE (Nine Syllables Press, fall 2026), selected by Eugenia Leigh as the winner of the Nine Syllables Press Chapbook Contest; More Flowers(Trio House Press, February 2026); and Dressing the Bear (Trio House Press, 2024), selected by Kimberly Blaeser as the winner of the Louise Bogan Award. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in such places as Indiana Review, North American Review, Third Coast, Cream City Review, Smartish Pace, The Arkansas International, and Verse Daily. She holds an MFA from the University of Miami and lives in Indianapolis, IN.
t.r. san is a poet and translator currently based on Gadigal land, with recent work found in minor literature[s], The Cincinnati Review, HAD, Smokelong Quarterly, The Offing, &c. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter, or trsan.neocities.org.
