notanotherbookreview

Called "one of the innovators of the short short story" by Publishers Weekly, Peter Cherches'  Whistler's Mother's Son and Other Curiosities (3/23, Pelekinesis) is a marvel of wit an ingenuity. In this collection of short works, over 100 pieces of prose, he veers from minimalism to satire, noir to children's tale, abstraction to surrealism. Cherches' imagination takes a variety of forms; parodies, standarized tests, nursery rhymes, conundrums, rescued cliches, misbegotten mysteries, dark Americana, existential misdemeanors, optimistic nihilism and more. Whistler's Mother's Son features material never before published, published in small magazines, and from his early  Condensed Book .   Here are beloved characters; Hamlet, Gertrude Stein, Amelia Earhart, Fred Flintstone, Mr. Mondrian--hard-boiled dicks, a man with two mustaches and even a confused Peter Cherches. Though I have read  Between a Dream and a Cup of Coffee,  Lift Your Right Arm  ...

THE DOG SEATED NEXT TO ME by Meg Pokrass (Pelekinesis, September 15, 2019.) Pokrass' flash fiction has the magic of loved and lost, humans and creatures. Imagine Flannery O'Connor would enjoy the dark wit of  Meg Pokrass ' THE DOG SEATED NEXT TO ME (Pelekinesis, September 2019) . Here the usual mysteries; love, youth, age, the games people play with themselves and others, the texture of time and our bodies, are given strange life. Pokrass often writes about us as creatures. The wilds we are and inhabit may refer to "familiars." Canine, avian, insect qualities are guides of sorts for the women relating stories. One shelters under her lover's wing. Another disappoints her husband when she falls for a blue tongued squink instead of the idea of a new baby.  Some samples below. The Rescue He told her how his parakeet died, all at once, in the middle of a regular day. A bird holocaust. She could see, behind his words, such gorgeous, frantic color that...